[Buddha-l] Loving your object of study

[Joy Vriens]

Richard,
>The context of the passage I have in mind is a dispute between three  
>monks. One claims that to attain nibbana it is necessary to practice  
>jhaana; another says it is sufficient to have an intellectual  
>understanding; a third says it is possible to attain nibbana by serving  
>the Tathagata. The three monks go to the Buddha to settle their  
>dispute, and he says that one can achieve liberation by ANY of those  
>three methods. Latter commentarial tradition identified the second  
>method in language that sounds a lot like the language used in  
>Brahmanical tradition to describe j~naana-yoga. The third method,  
>liberation through service, is described in ways that make it sound  
>very much like a counterpart to bhakti-yoga or karma-yoga, or perhaps a  
>combination of the two. 

Also see the KiiTaagiri Sutta,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.070.than.html
Gombrich dedicates a chapter to this subject in How Buddhism Began.

Joy