From Visuddhimagga to The Path of Purification
The Pāli Tipitaka assumed its final form at the Third Buddhist Council, convened circa 250 BCE by the Mauryan king Ashoka at Pātaliputra (today's Patna). Among the many missionaries who were dispatched by the king to take the message of the Dhamma far and wide, his son Mahinda, a revered monk, was sent to Sri Lanka, with which India had, even then, a long history of continuous emigration and trade. Over the succeeding centuries, scholar-monks in India and Sri Lanka amassed a body of secondary literature: commentaries on the Tipitaka, historical chronicles, textbooks, Pāli grammars, articles by learned monks, etc., many of which were written in Sinhala.
By the 5th century CE, Buddhism was on the wane in India: various Buddhist sects had arisen, each claiming to be the authentic representative of the Buddha’s sangha. According to tradition, it was at this time that the precocious and eloquent monk Buddhaghosa expressed to his teacher, the Ven. Revata Mahathera, a wish to compose an authentic and concise commentary on the Tipitaka.
The pitakas had been well preserved in India, but the commentaries were not universally accepted. In Sri Lanka, however, those brought centuries earlier by the Ven. Mahinda, and translated into Sinhala, were considered still to be representational of the orthodox Theravāda school. So Buddhaghosa departed for the island, undertaking to learn the language and begin the laborious task of collating these ancient Buddhist writings and translating their essence into Pāli.
In the eyes of most Indian sects, the Theravāda monks of Sri Lanka were not held in high esteem, and the Sri Lankans were well aware of conditions in India. The Sri Lankan sangha was quick to recognize the genius of the new arrival from the north, and the benefits to the sāsana that would likely accrue from the realization of his idea. They consequently turned over all the texts at their disposal and provided him with every facility needed to carry out his self-assigned task.
The fruit of his determination, the Visuddhimagga, a profound and coherent compendium of Buddhist doctrine and metaphysics—originally written by hand with a stylus on palm leaves—is both a concise synopsis of the Buddha’s teaching and a systematic manual of meditation. Composed of three parts, it discusses:
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sila (discipline) - the rules of discipline, and the method for finding a competent teacher and a suitable place to practice;
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samādhi (meditative concentration) – the concentration objects, and the ever subtler stages of concentration; and
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paññā (wisdom) – the analytical study of the soil in which understanding grows—the khandas (aggregates), āyatanās (sense bases), cattāri ariyasaccāni (four Noble Truths), and paticca-samuppāda (dependent origination)—and the development of wisdom through the practice of Vipassana, emphasizing the refining forms of mental purification emerging from the practice.
The text describes the progression from initial discipline to nibbāna, considering seven stages of purity: sila (virtue), citta (mind), ditthi (view), transcending doubt, discernment of what is the true Path, discernment of progress on the Path, and deliverance freed from clinging.
Buddhaghosa was no philosopher; he had an extreme reverence for all that was traditional. Although he was a critical scholar, he did not set out to interpret the scriptures. In spite of his single-minded industry and extraordinary talent, he did not propose any further development of the doctrine, since, for him, it embodied the very words of the Buddha himself.
As foreseen by the Theravadins of Sri Lanka, once a concise rendering of the traditional island commentaries was available in Pāli, a language understood by the monks of India, a new impetus was given to the study of the orthodox school, and their interpretation eventually prevailed. Since at least the 12th century CE, the traditional understanding of Theravāda scripture has generally meant “as reconstituted by Buddhaghosa.”
Of the numerous works, mostly commentaries (atthakatha), that he wrote, the Visuddhimagga is generally recognized as the most important Theravāda text next to the canon itself, and its author the most renowned compiler and exegete.
As the distinguished Pāli scholar, G.P Malalasekara, said in his prized-winning book, The Pāli Literature of Ceylon, the Visuddhimagga “is a masterly production, and Buddhaghosa undoubtedly took great pains over it. The quotations mentioned in it, which occur from beginning to end, are plentiful and varied. They have been taken from nearly every work in early Buddhist literature available at that time. The result is an extraordinary book written with admirable judgment as to the general arrangement of the matter, and in lucid style free from argument and discussion—a book which, Carolyn Rhys Davids called ‘a closely-packed microcosm of macroscopic range’.”
An English translation of the Visuddhimagga was first attempted as part of the Harvard Oriental Series, founded in 1891 by Charles R. Lanman and Henry C. Warren. They planned to publish a scholarly edition of the Pāli text of the work, to be followed by a complete English translation. Warren submitted an elaborate analysis of the Visuddhimagga to the Journal of the Pāli Text Society for 1891-93. Afterward, the Visuddhimagga of Buddhaghosacariya, a text in the original Pāli in Roman script, edited by Mr. Warren from two Burmese and two Sinhalese manuscripts, was published as volume 41 in the Series. About one-third of the translation was done when Warren died in 1899, and, although it was Lanman’s intention to complete the project, it never was.
In 1922, at Oxford University, U Pe Maung Tin, who was already a noted Burmese educator and Pāli scholar (and, oddly enough, an Anglican), having obtained an M.A. at Calcutta University in 1911, was awarded a B.Litt. for his study and translation of part one of the Visuddhimagga. His complete translation, The Path of Purity, was subsequently published by the Pali Text Society, under the editorship of Mrs. Rhys Davids, in three volumes between 1923 and 1931. It was exceeding welcome at the time, remaining the only English translation available for more than 25 years, but it quickly went out of print.
In 1948 at age 43, after serving in British Intelligence during WWII, a disillusioned Osbert Moore left England for Sri Lanka. The following year he became a novice Buddhist monk, and in 1950 was fully ordained as Bhikkhu Ñānamoli. At the Island Hermitage, situated on two tiny interconnected islands in a brackish lagoon near Dodanduwa, he began his studies with Ñyanatiloka Mahathera, learning Pāli and adjusting, in austere rural simplicity, to the quiet life of a Buddhist monk.
During the summer of 1952 Bhikkhu Ñānamoli first wrote of his intention to translate the Visuddhimagga into English. He took up the task, he said, for his own edification, and because the only published version—Pe Maung Tin’s—was no longer obtainable. By the end of 1953 his translation had been completed and put aside, but early in the following year he received a request to publish his recent translation. With conflicted feelings he eventually agreed, knowing it meant typing a manuscript of about one thousand pages. Spending all the daylight hours every day, it took him from April to October of 1954, typing about five pages a day and then revising them, and having someone read through them while he simultaneously composed a preface and an introduction. (It cannot be said that, although exceedingly studious, the venerable bhikkhu lacked a sense of humor: he began the first six sentences of the preface with the letters of his lay name, Osbert.)
At the very beginning of the second half of the Buddha-sāsana, in 1956, the First Edition of his Visuddhimagga translation, The Path of Purification, was published by Ananda Semage in Colombo (and followed by a Second in 1964).
Bhikkhu Ñānamoli soon began translating in succession a number of texts from the Pāli canon, and by March 1960, when he died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis while on pilgrimage, had produced lucid and erudite English translations of the some of the most abstruse: Khuddakapātha (Minor Readings and Illustrator), Nettipakarana (The Guide), Petakopadesa (Pitaka Disclosure), Patisambhidāmagga (Path of Discrimination), SammohavinodaniDispeller of Delusion), and Majjhima Nikāya (Collection of Middle-length Discourses). He also wrote a number of original works including The Life of the Buddha, Mindfulness of Breathing, A Thinker’s Notebook, and several collections of essays—in all, a signal achievement both in quantity and quality, during his brief 11 years as a bhikkhu.
Like the PTS edition before it, after a decade of so the two original Semage printings of the Ven. Ñānamoli’s translation had also become difficult to obtain. Recognizing the need to keep this laudable work continually available, and with permission from the original publisher, the Buddhist Publication Society, under the editorship of the Ven. Ñyanaponika Thera, arranged for the publication of a Third Edition in 1975, then a Fourth in 1979, and a completely electronically reset Fifth Edition in 1991.
Ñyanaponika Thera considered the Ven. Ñānamoli to have been, in his field, the outstanding scholar of his time: “His industry was tireless, and, though producing a remarkable body of work in so short a time, the meticulousness and accuracy of his scholarship never faltered.” In referring to his work, I.B. Horner, a former president of the Pali Text Society, concurred: “No one can fail to recognize his deep understanding of the subject, his considered and balanced judgments, and the clear-sighted and well-founded interpretations he consistently brought to bear throughout his translation.”
In 1999 the Buddhist Publication Society and Pariyatti executed a copublishing agreement so that quality editions of classic and modern scholarly Buddhist works would be easily available in America. The Path of Purification was the first title published, in both a hardcover and softcover edition, under the new BPE imprint established specifically for the purpose. The book was reprinted by Pariyatti in 2003 and again in 2006.
Ven. Ñānamoli’s translation of the Visuddhimagga —the work for which he is perhaps best remembered—would alone have to be considered an outstanding achievement of distinguished Buddhist scholarship. It is all the more remarkable when one considers that the translation was begun when he had been familiarizing himself with abhidhamma concepts and studying Pāli for, at most, four years, and was completed within 18 months. His rapidly acquired but profound knowledge of Pāli made it possible for him to expose to fortunate English readers some of the most difficult texts of the Theravāda canon. His very first translation,The Path of Purification, is now virtually universally accepted as the definitive translation of Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga.
It is perhaps no coincidence that the schema of seven stages of purity adopted by Buddhaghosa for the Visuddhimagga is virtually identical to that used by the acclaimed monk, the Ven. Punna Mantāniputta, in what came to be known as the Relay Chariot Discourse (Ratha-vinita Sutta, MN24). The bhikkhu Punna, replying to queries from the Ven. Sāriputta, explained—not knowing to whom he was speaking—using the simile of a relay of chariots, that each stage of purity is essential, not for its own sake, but in order to reach the destination—each stage is, in fact, a prerequisite for next stage, the last of which is deliverance freed from all clinging. “It is for the sake of final nibbana that the holy life is lived under the Blessed One.”
These two exceptional monks, the Ven. Buddhaghosa and his Dhamma-brother Ñānamoli, working on the same small island, though separated by some 1,500 years, together contributed to pariyatti, as pursued in English, a superlatively articulate and concise summation of the requisite stages of purity on the Noble Path to nibbana, the intended destination of every serious student of Vipassana meditation.
As for the importance of the Visuddhimagga to this quest, we should let the translator have the last word. In his Introduction to The Path of Purification, the Ven. Ñānamoli writes: “The Visuddhimagga is perhaps unique in the literature of the world. It systematically summarizes and interprets the teaching of the Buddha contained in the Pāli Tipitaka, which is now recognized … as the oldest and most authentic record of the Buddha’s words. As the principal noncanonical authority of the Theravāda, it forms the hub of a complete and coherent method of exegesis of the Tipitaka, using the ‘Abhidhamma method’ as it is called. And it sets out detailed practical instructions for developing purification.”