An Even Swifter Pair

Dear and beloved bloggists,

There’s been some discussion here on samatha/vipassana, sparked in part by my post on A Swift Pair of Messengers a few days ago. This is, of course, one of the old Theravadin family arguments. I’d like to congratulate the posters so far on their civil and engaging responses.

The spark behind writing SPM was simply this: that I had grown bored and frustrated with partial and inadequate ways of approaching this problem, which really is central to how we practice the Dhamma. Everything I had read, every conversation i had been involved in, had relied on one or two isolated passages, or on the discredited commentarial system of interpretation.

In writing SPM I thought that there was a better way. No, we cannot hope to solve every problem; but we can at least improve the quality of dialogue.

Since that time, every criticism of my findings that I have seen has been based on two things.

1. Completely ignore every argument and piece of evidence that I have so painstakingly assembled.
2. Invoke some obscure, irrelevant, or dubious passage from the suttas, a half-remembered quote, or an opinion from some teacher or other.

As we can all see from the response on this blog, this is still exactly what is happening.

This is not good enough. It is simply not adequate to lay out the spiritual path for Nibbana on such half-baked premises. This stuff matters, folks. Get real.

So, in the interests of getting realer, let me suggest some guidelines for debate.

1. Read A Swift Pair of Messengers.
2. Engage with and debate the contents and arguments that I have put forth there.

Disagree by all means. But do your homework – I did. When I say something like, ‘There is no path of dry insight in the suttas’, this is not because I am relying on some vague memory of something i might have heard sometime. It’s because, ten years ago, when I was researching this book, i systematically searched through every page of the Pali canon for passages dealing with samatha and vipassana. I believe I have identified every significant passage. Of course, I may well have missed something, and may well have misinterpreted some things. Fine, if that is so, point it out. But don’t just ignore the work that has been done.

Let’s have a debate – an informed, reasonable debate. Perhaps, then, we might get somewhere, rather than just rehashing the same old same old.

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