iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

As an addendum, Buddhist texts attribute several sayings to Vedic authors, and the Jains have a whole book of rishis including Buddhist and Vedic. The *idea* of preserving the teachings of another school in one's own scripture was normal. Whether these are accurate attributions is another question.

040

The Rig Veda is pre-Buddhist, and to answer my own click-bait question, obviously the Buddha did not compose this. But the Anukramaṇī is post-Buddhist. I can’t help but wonder if it means to refer to the Buddha as Bhikṣu Āṅgirasa, using his ancestral Vedic name to adopt him as one of theirs.

140

I spend half my life comparing Vedas and Buddhist suttas. Almost always it’s looking at things that seem weirdly un-Buddhist from a Buddhist PoV and understanding the cultural/religious context. I can’t think of another case that so clearly anticipates classically Buddhist thinking.

The mention of the “deeds of twins” anticipates modern studies of nature vs. nurture in twins. But “nature vs. nurture” is a different framing, as it is about what *happens to you*, not about what you *choose to do*. In both Buddhism and this Vedic hymn, character is seen in our choices.

“Two hands, even though the same, do not accomplish the same. Even two (cows) with the same mother do not yield the same milk. The heroic deeds even of twins are not the same. Two men, even though they are kin, do not give the same.”

“Who eats alone has only evil.” There is more in this vein. The final verse even gets at the basic Buddhist critique of Brahmanism, that it is not birth that matters but conduct.

“the wealth of one who gives does not become exhausted, and the non-giver finds no one to show mercy” “He is no companion who does not give of his food to a companion” “The stronger man should give to one in need … for riches turn like chariot-wheels: they come up to one man after another.”

They say, “A number of verses deploy what appear to be old sayings or popular adages, distilled folk wisdom.” Perhaps the plain, colloquial tone of the Suttas draws on such older sayings, or at least continues an established tradition. Here’s a few quotes:

Its attribution is also unusual. Vedic hymns are attributed in a later text called the Anukramaṇī, and here the author is named as Bhikṣu Āṅgirasa. J/B note that bhikṣu is not elsewhere found so early, but they don’t note that the most famous “Bhikkhu Aṅgīrasa” is in fact the Buddha.

Did the Buddha compose a Vedic hymn? I came across this uniquely “Buddhist”-sounding hymn on giving (Rig Veda 10.117). Jameson/Brereton note how unusual it is: >the admonitions to behave properly to one’s fellow men are direct and no gods are represented as observing and judging human behavior.

180

Actually sorry, that's a review of a previous book, some of the same themes tho. There was a Guardian interview with him on Ardor, but it seems to have vanished.

000

But Calasso’s life work does indeed have something to say. About life and death, but not death, killing; and how the gods are always present, in the mind at least, in killing and in hiding the act of killing.

020

That’s why I love Calasso. He’s such a big picture, huge generalizations kind of guy, but the details are always exactly correct. How rare that is! How few writers on pre-Buddhist India are remotely reliable, and how few of them have anything to say!

110

In Sanskrit present tense conveys an eternal present, especially with the verb asti. So when Parks infers, “As if one were speaking of hierarchy as much as chronology. The mind’s pre-eminence”, that’s exactly right.

100

And yes, asti is present tense. Parks says, “I’d hate to look up some English translation of the Sanskrit and find it said, ‘There was nothing before the mind.’” He can relax, Keith’s 19th century English translation is, ”for there is nothing prior to mind”.

100

The Sanskrit is, “manāso hi na kiṃcana pūrvam asti”, literally, “For than the mind there exists nothing before”. So yeah, “There is nothing before the mind” is exactly right. Despite Parks’ worry, na kiṃcana, manas, and asti are well translated as “nothing”, “mind”, and “there is”.

100

“… Are the concepts ‘nothing’ and ‘mind’ and ‘there is’ the same in Sanskrit? Or even remotely comparable? Who knows. That present tense is curious though. ‘There is nothing before the mind.’” So of course I had to look it up.

110

Parks, unfamiliar with Sanskrit, worries: “Sometimes I do wonder when I look at these references. I mean, did the original Sanskrit of the Aitareya Brahmana really have the same feel as that simple English, ‘There is nothing before the mind’? ….

100

Tim Parks · Prajapati: hugging a fraud

I also just came across this article by his translator, also a great read for a Calasso nerd like me. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

lrb.co.uk

110

Read his last book, Ardor, it's incredible. He has this style where you read and enjoy everything, but have no idea where the journey is taking you. In Ardor, however, he makes his case more plain. This Guardian review is worth a read:

theguardian.com

210

Attercop is just English, albeit rare. And no, I didn't learn Elvish!

200

“We don’t have anyone to stand up for Christians” they've been the dominant force in the west since they took over the Roman empire and they're *still* bound and captured by martyrdom complex, the eternal victims.

010

Hate to say it, but "an attercop caught in the web she wove" sounds like a pretty good description of AI.

130

Besotted by lust they fall in the stream, like an attercop caught in the web she wove. The attentive proceed, having cut this one too, unconcerned, having given up all suffering.

150

Anyway, while I was looking into the word, I found there’s an Attercop AI. They’ve plundered Palantir, Valar, Anduril, Sauron, and now they’re taking attercop? Hell no!

It’s an archaic word, related to the Scottish and Norwegian words fro spider, so consider it an homage to my Norwegian friend Ven Brahmali. Normally we’d hesitate to use a quirky term like this, but it ends up flattening the original text. The Pali has a chime and lightness to it.

140

Dhp 347 has the extremely rare word makkaṭaka “little monkey” meaning a “spider” because they scamper up the trees like little monkeys. Cute! I wanted to honor the quirky Pali in translation and stumbled on “attercop”. Bilbo uses it, which means it’s in one of the most popular children’s books.

180

That's amateur hour! In Perth in the 80s we had a Nazi “Asians out” provocateur who burned down Chinese restaurants. Turned out, he was half Dutch, half Indonesian.

000

The Monastery at the End of the World · Lokantavihāra

Dark week is next week, I'll be talking about Nazis. So this week I thought I'd do something fun: death and hell. - Crows Nest Center, 7pm cu there. - Online via Lokanta Vihara.

lokanta.github.io

070

Ngl the drummer in that second image is cooking, real Keith Moon energy.

010

So on futurism.com, you'd think there'd be a celebration of progress, but on an article about ai induced urine psychosis, here's all the suggested articles. I honestly can't understand how the tech industry climbs out of the self-caused ai abyss. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Series of articles on futurism.com, all with terrible news about tech.

020

sujato @sujato.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Capital punishment was abolished by the Buddhist king Ashoka 2200 years ago.

080

The end of an era. Millions of deaths & uncountable suffering from long COVID (including me!). Now the last free vaccine day in Australia. One thing hasn’t finished, and that’s COVID. 2.5 million lives saved, one of the miracles of science. Help yourself & help others: get your jab. I did.

jamanetwork.com

Lives and life-Years Saved From COVID-19 Vaccination

This comparative effectiveness study analyses the number of lives and life-years saved worldwide among those who had been vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020-2024 years.

180

sujato @sujato.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Bitter, stupid, and cruel, the hollow men are leaching us of our humanity, drop by drop.

031

sujato @sujato.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I feel that the Buddha doesn’t get enough recognition for his support of female musicians in a notoriously sexist industry.

030

This popped up on my timeline, and it’s basically the flip-side of my little essay. We tell stories of longing for a unified, genetically pure origin, but the reality has always been much weirder.

020

Great article, thanks. Oddly enough, the article I just wrote on Uttarakuru also comes at eugenics, but from the other side, looking at how storytelling creates an myth of racial origins, whose ideal form is incest between twins.

000

As I’m sure Stanford has many different pockets. But it’s really striking just how many of the world’s worst people come from there.

000

Good point. It’s hard to escape your roots.

000