Buddhistische Anthologie

(lit.: Buddhist Anthology)

A young Viennese translator's selection from the Pāli Canon, published for Schopenhauer's birthday and headed with the vocabulary of European philosophy.

by Gautama Buddha274 passages held

German, a translation held here

First published: 1892(published posthumously)
Original language: German

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Overview

Karl Eugen Neumann had given up a banking career in Berlin after reading Schopenhauer, and in 1892 he published this book at Leiden to mark Schopenhauer's 104th birthday. It is not a work of the canon but a translator's selection from it: sixty pieces of the Pāli Canon, announced on the title page as translated into German for the first time. The choice shows what Neumann was looking for. He opens with four discourses from the Majjhima Nikāya, among them the Buddha's own account of his search, under the title "Das heilige Ziel", "the holy goal", and the founding discourse on mindfulness. A fifth, from the Dīgha Nikāya, has the Buddha rank three kinds of wonder, putting the wonder of instruction above feats of magic power. Then come short numbered sayings of the kind the Aṅguttara Nikāya collects, then verses of early monks and nuns, among them the former bandit Aṅgulimāla and Ambapālī, the courtesan, and the book closes on sayings introduced by the formula the Itivuttaka uses for each of its pieces. Over these texts Neumann set headings of his own, drawn from European learning: "Das Principium individuationis", "Das Nunc stans", "Spiritualismus und transscendentaler Idealismus", "La vida es sueño" after Calderón's play. The first two are old scholastic terms that Schopenhauer had made central to his philosophy, and the headings read the Buddha through that philosophy. The discourse on the holy goal came back, under the same title, in Neumann's complete German translation of the Majjhima Nikāya in 1896–1902, and the anthology's archaic German, with spellings such as Erkenntniss and Schaale, runs through his later translations.

Key concepts

What are the three eyes?

The eye of flesh, the heavenly eye and the holy eye. The first is ordinary sight, born of the body. The second is the clear seeing of pure knowing, gained in meditation. The third, which the verse calls the highest of all, is the eye of wisdom, insight into how things really are, and the verse has it rise out of the other two.

What are the four kinds of deed?

The Buddha names four. An evil deed bears evil fruit, a good deed good fruit, a deed partly evil and partly good bears mixed fruit. The fourth is neither evil nor good and bears neither fruit: it is the deed that leads to the end of deeds. Release, on this account, is not a store of good karma but a way of acting that stops producing any.

In what sense is nibbāna visible here and now?

In the sense that its effect can be checked in this life. Inflamed by passion, the Buddha tells the brahmin Jāṇussoṇi, a person plans harm to himself, to others or to both, and suffers in mind. When the passion is gone, he plans no harm and suffers no torment. The same holds for hatred and delusion. Nibbāna is what that difference is, seen by anyone who looks.

What binds a being to come back into the world?

Two drives, which Neumann renders as the sexual drive and the drive to exist. Bound by both, a being returns again and again into this world of birth and death. One released from both is called holy, a destroyer of ill, and the verse says such a one has reached the world's end. Rebirth, on this saying, is held in place by wanting, not by fate.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Wonder of Instruction

A householder's son, Kevaddha, asks the Buddha to have a monk work miracles for the townspeople. What kind of wonder, if any, can make someone's trust worth having?

Three wonders are ranked. A monk who flies like a bird and touches the sun and moon is easily explained away by a sceptic as a charm from the land of Gandhāra, and so is one who reads other people's thoughts. Only the third proves itself: the wonder of instruction, teaching someone to think this way and not that, to let this go and hold to that. Then comes a story. A monk asks the gods, heaven after heaven, where the four elements cease without remainder, and even the Great Brahmā cannot answer and sends him back to the Buddha.

teaching
divine beings
knowledge
wisdom
liberation
spiritual practice

Enter a dialogue

Sayings in Twos, Threes and Fours

Much of the book is made of short sayings that count: two joys, three secrets, four kinds of mango. What can a teaching that numbers its points show that a long discourse cannot?

The counting is the method. There are two joys, the household's and the homeless life's, and the second is higher. Three things thrive in secret, women, priestly lore and false views, and three shine openly: the sun, the moon and the teaching. Some people are mangoes that look ripe and are not. Four things no one can bring about, not even a god: that ageing, sickness and death not come, and that evil deeds not ripen. And bathing in the Gayā river on frosty nights, the ascetics are told, makes no one pure.

karma
ethics
happiness
samsara
rebirth
death
renunciation
monastic discipline
spiritual practice
equanimity

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 274
distinct concepts: 243
by passages held, corpus-wide: #272

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “liberation” and “suffering”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 81 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
liberation	suffering	25
craving	liberation	18
aggregates	impermanence	14
craving	suffering	14
impermanence	mindfulness	14
liberation	meditation	13
aggregates	suffering	11
impermanence	suffering	11
aggregates	liberation	10
aggregates	knowledge	7
impermanence	liberation	7
craving	impermanence	6
meditation	mindfulness	6
knowledge	liberation	5
knowledge	meditation	5
aggregates	craving	4
craving	meditation	4
knowledge	suffering	4
liberation	mindfulness	4
meditation	suffering	3
aggregates	mindfulness	2
impermanence	knowledge	2
impermanence	meditation	2
mindfulness	suffering	2
craving	knowledge	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1892 Buddhistische Anthologie you are here DE
Dialogues of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya)
Of the five collections of the Buddha's discourses in the Pāli Canon, this one comes first and holds the longest pieces. Many of them stage an encounter: a brahmin, a king or a rival ascetic arrives with a question.
EN
Psalms of the Early Buddhists I: Psalms of the Sisters (Therīgāthā)
The companion to the Theragāthā, the verses of the elder monks, and less than half its length.
EN
Psalms of the Early Buddhists II: Psalms of the Brethren (Theragāthā)
Twenty-one chapters ordered by the length of each poem, from single verses up to Vaṅgīsa's seventy-one, ascribed to the Buddha's first monks.
EN
Sutta-Nipāta
An anthology rather than a single discourse: five chapters of verse and verse-dialogue, gathered into the miscellaneous fifth collection of the canon.
DEEN
The Book of the Kindred Sayings (Saṃyutta Nikāya)
Built by topic rather than by length, unlike the two collections before it: here causation, the aggregates of a person and the six senses each receive a book of their own.
PIEN
The Dhammapada (Dhammapada)
The best known of the canon's verse anthologies, filed with the miscellaneous fifth collection. Many of its verses recur elsewhere in the canon, and several early schools kept their own version.
EN
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikāya)
Where the Dīgha stages debates, this collection shows the Buddha at work as a teacher, with monks, householders and ascetics. Neumann's version, the first complete one in a European language, keeps the German spelling of the 1890s, with forms such as giebt and Gleichniss.
DE
The Udāna: Inspired Utterances of the Buddha (Udāna)
Prose scenes, each with its verse: a mixed form among the books of the miscellaneous fifth collection, where the Dhammapada and the Theragāthā are verse alone.
DE

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