Talk:Sigālovāda Sutta

Inherent gender bias in this sutta

I simply want to make note of the obvious gender bias in this sutta insomuch that it assumes that a "householder" is male and thus, in the marital context, it directs its advice to a husband in terms of his culturally-based responsibilities towards a wife. As a one-time self-described femi-Nazi myself, this at times makes me cringe, but I feel compelled to maintain this viewpoint in describing the sutta per se simply to reflect the sutta honestly, to convey the Buddha's (alleged!) words honestly. Nonetheless, of course, if someone wants to add references (in the main text or end notes) and/or links (in the "External links" section) to works that have given this sutta a contemporary and/or gender-neutral interpretation (e.g., referring to "spouse" or "significant other" and/or "domestic partner" instead of "wife," or noting that householder responsibilities can be allocated in a variety of ways independent of gender), please do so! LarryR 15:21, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I've created a "Contemporary commentaries" section after the sutta summary so, if anyone has gender-neutral (or other useful) contemporary analyses, please consider adding them to this section. Thanks! LarryR 00:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
P.S. If anyone knows of meaningful traditional commentary, please add that somewhere as well ;-)

"Lord Buddha" vs. "the Buddha"

An anonymous user (apparently from Sri Lanka) recently changed the references to "the Buddha" to "Lord Buddha." I undid this however, with some reflection, I realize that my Edit Summary belies my own biases (and that I have yet to finish my first cup of coffee). I'd like to modify my Edit Summary's text and provide a more thoughtful reason for this undoing here:

1. The sutta itself does not refer to the Buddha as "Lord Buddha." "Lord Buddha" is an appellation applied after the Canon. This article is meant to convey the content of the sutta without implicitly invoking post-canonical sectarian terminology. (Of course, I think it is appropriate to talk about post-canonical views of this sutta in this article, but such content should be explicitly identified as extra- or post-canonical.)
2. In the Edit Summary, I refer to maintaining "Western literary standards" for this article. Having given this two seconds' thought, I think this is utterly incorrect. Wikipedia is of course world wide and one of its beauties is the balanced integration of non-Western knowledge and worldviews. Nonetheless, this is an English-language encyclopedia and thus I do think it is useful to abide by English-language standards to maximize user's comprehension of the material. Given this, I assess that most English speakers would see "Lord Buddha" to be more sectarian/religious than encyclopedic; and, that the norm is to refer to the post-enlightenment protagonist of the Pali Canon as "the Buddha."

I hope this makes sense. Sorry for my misconceptualized Edit Summary. I wish all well (including, of course, the editor's whose edits I just undid). Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

This reflexive edit on my part and ill-thought-out rationale has weighed on me. Basically, after some further exploration, I see that "Lord Buddha" in fact has a basis in some PTS-style (perhaps dated?) translations of the Pali Canon. From my unscientific gleanings, it does not appear to be "Lord" as is used in the Judeo-Christian world (or perhaps even the Mahayana world) — perhaps more a Britishism, like "laird" or "Lord of the manor," etc. I believe it is a translation of the Pali word "bhagavant" (e.g., see PTS PED entry for "Bhagavant," p. 495, on-line at http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.2:1:3436.pali) or perhaps even "bhagavato" (for which I am far more used to seeing "Blessed One" which is problemmatic in its own way).

Regardless, contrary to my own recollections and hemming and hawing, I see that the 1996 Narada Thera translation (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.31.0.nara.html) of this sutta, mentioned in this sutta's references (possibly by myself when I was editing this article) in fact has Sigalovada referring to the Buddha as "Lord." So, for all my huffing and puffing above, my primary rationale for this reversion is wrong. Let me be more succinct: I WAS WRONG.

So, I'm self-reverting my reversion. I deeply regret any confusion or negative feelings I have propagated due to my own ignorance and biases. While, obviously, I am loathe to refer to the Buddha as "Lord Buddha" in my own editing, I personally do not see a clear basis for my undoing other people's inclination to include such (although, in the future, I hope others would equally respect my edits and not simply change all my references to the Buddha to "Lord Buddha").

With metta,

Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 17:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

In addition, while pursuing something else, I see that in Maurice Walshe's translation of the Digha Nikaya (1987/1995; Wisdom Pubs), he appears to use "Lord" throughout to refer to the Buddha. (It's as if I somehow blocked this all out.) Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:18, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting. As someone who has an interest in Buddhism (beyond my interest in other religions, though I am not really a religious person) I would be rather unhappy with "Lord" being used in all our WP articles that refer to the Buddha. But, as you say, personal preference shouldn't be our guide here. Perhaps this issue needs to go up a level to be discussed at the Buddhism portal if it becomes a battleground (something I see no evidence of thus far). --bodnotbod (talk) 16:09, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Buddhism

Voice 2407:C00:E003:D1F2:1:0:D5BD:6FF9 (talk) 10:24, 12 March 2022 (UTC)