DighaNikaya-SuttaReadings
Ranjith Daluwatta For Ven Chandana
The Pali scriptures here translated are from the ‘Triple Basket’ (Tipiṭaka), a collection of the Buddha’s teachings regarded as canonical by the Theravada school of Buddhism, which is found today in Sri Lanka, Burma and Thailand, and was until recently equally strong in Laos and Cambodia. It is now also well established in Britain and other Western countries. The claim of this school is to have preserved the original teaching of the Buddha, and there are good grounds for at least considering that the doctrine as found in the Pali scriptures comes as close as we can get to what the Buddha actually taught. In any case the Pali Tipitaka is the only canon of an early school that is preserved complete. It is not, however, in the true spirit of Buddhism to adopt a ‘fundamentalist’ attitude towards the scriptures, and it is thus open to the reader, Buddhist as well as non- Buddhist, to regard the texts here translated with an open and critical mind.