[Buddha-l] 9. Attadiipaa Sutta (Joy Vriens)

[JKirkpatrick]

Hi Joy, 
My replies interlinear, indented:

Hi Joanna,
The evidence of the traditional reading given by Lance Cousins
seems quite compelling, but the metaphor doesn't work for me. I
don't find it convincing at all.

E.g. the island as a metaphor for refuge. Especially in the case
of a river island amidst two floodwaters. Imagine the water level
is rising, a little island is left in the middle which is
supposed to serve as a secure refuge? What a strange advice! I
would say get away from that river.
	O boy, do I agree. Definitely! Look at poor Bangladesh
(former east Bengal) now--	anyone caught between the Padma
and a tributary these days is almost out of land 	and
living. You can't live in palm trees (they propbably aren't as
solid as those 	columns used by the Egyptian 	Christian
stilites back in the day, in a desert).

And a temporary refuge when one is surprised by a sudden
waterflood?
This temporary refuge being the only refuge?  Moreover, the
comparison between crossing Samsara and crossing a river?
		
Perhaps an island in the middle of the ocean? With the rising sea
level and tsunamis etc.? With no other refuge than that (Ananna
Sharana)? Doesn't look very safe to me. Certainly not the first
image of a refuge to pop up. A mountain would be more like it,
say the summit of Mount Meru. And even then. Why would one pick a
metaphor of a geographical item belonging to a planet that one
knows will be destroyed, reappear, destroyed again? Light on the
other hand...
	Exactly--even in those days why would the mighty Indian
rivers that regularly flood 	the land and then retreat into
often new channels creating new doabs serve as a 	metaphor
for an inner state?? Better as metaphors for anicca and samsara.

Next the metaphor of Dhamma as an island. Paticcasamuppāda as an
island? Isolated from everything? What about its notion of
interconnectedness?

I remember a metaphor in the Saddharmapundarikasutra, where
merchants go to fetch jewels, become exhausted in the middle of
their journey and lose hope in the middle of the desert. Their
leader then creates a magic city (Las Vegas) for refuge. Not
exactly an island, but something similar and with a negative
connotation.
	These magic cities, often islands, can also be found in
the Bengali mangalkavyas (the 	Candi one for exc.)
	That literature as written-down is of course much later
than the Buddha--but my 	research so far suggests that
some of the figures (tropes) found in the mangalkavyas 	are also
found in avadanas and also in some canonic narratives. . 

And then, as you say, the recommendation to be like islands given
to members of the Sangha at the moment of the Buddha's death,
when unity is required.
I am not convinced. Couldn't it be that with commerce over sea
being more developed at the time the Sanskrit commentaries were
written, and dvipa being a very common word, that this meaning
came to mind first?
		Quite possibly!

The first meaning at a given time is not necessarily the first
meaning at another time.
That will make four cents with yours,
			Cheers for the lamp!!
Joy

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