The Pali Canon by Arnie Kozak, Ph.D.
A complete copy of the Canon, in original Pali as well as its English translations, is housed in the 4,000-volume library at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, in Barre, Massachusetts. The Canon occupies an entire bookshelf, standing two and a half by eight feet tall, comprised of 140 volumes on six and one-half shelves. These volumes contain approximately 30,000 pages of text.
One version of the Canon in the original Pali language has been published by the Pali Text Society in England; the other is published by the Vipassana Research Institute in India. These gray and maroon volumes with their Sanskrit-looking characters (Pali and Sanskrit are closely related) are embossed with gilded letters. These volumes represent the teachings of the Buddha. They are known as the pitakas (“baskets”). The Pali Canon was written down on palm leaves at the Fourth Council and was thus passed down intact to future generations of scholars and the sangha.
Pali is the language that the Buddha spoke. The Canon consists of the three “baskets.” The Vinaya (monastic code of discipline), which covers daily practices to how to maintain harmony among the monks and nuns. The Suttas (the popular discourses) contains the collection of the central teachings of Theravada Buddhism, including all the Jataka tales, the Dhammapada, and various discourses. There are more than 10,000 discourses.
The discourses typically start with, “Thus I have heard…” to emphasize the direct link to the Buddha. Also noted are the location and the audience the Buddha was addressing. The sutta (sutra) section of the Pali canon includes the Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses), Maijhima Nikaya (Medium-Length Discourses), Samyutta Nikaya (Connected Discourses), Anguttara Nikaya (Numbered Discourses), and Khuddaka Nikaya (Small Texts).
The Abhidhamma is “a compendium of profound teachings elucidating the functioning and interrelationships of mind, mental factors, matter, and the phenomenon transcending these.” In Pali, abhi means “ultimate,” so Abhidharma meant the “ultimate truth,” or ultimate teachings. The Abhidharma can be thought of as a view of the world from the perspective of ultimate enlightenment.The Pitaka was the written down version of the oral tradition that persisted at the time of the Buddha and in the years after his death. Recitation of the canon persisted even after it was written down and continues to this day. Contemporary Burmese master Mahathera Vicittasarabhivamsa can recite the Tipitaka from memory. Over the centuries, the Pali Canon has been preserved in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Cambodia, and the versions that emerged in these different countries are meaningfully the same, attesting to the validity of their contents.
