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The Book of Accounts is the third book of the Digha Nikāya, the Collection of Long Discourses of the Buddha. Like the previous ones and due to their length, they are not speeches given by the Buddha. In this case they are extensive suttas designed to support the missionary work of the bhikkhus among an audience outside the Teachings. The Book of Accounts includes eleven suttas, mostly lists of items, in which the last two stand out, Summons of the Saṅgha and Greater than Ten, which are very useful enumerations for memorizing the main points of the doctrine. Apart from these two suttas, DN 24: About Pāṭikaputta, a funny mocking story about a fool, stands out. DN 28: Inspiring confidence, it is an enumeration of how well the Buddha explains the teaching and his superiority over the others. DN 29: An impressive speech, continue along those lines. The rest, following the pattern of this Nikāya, are false suttas, not even falsified. They are marked with a double asterisk (**). From beating other ascetics and Brahmins to entering into mythomanias that are excessive even for Eastern tastes, either of universal monarchs or of thirty-two marks that, brought together in a single person, make that "great man" appear to us as a phenomenon of fair. And there is no lack of an enumeration of good things and bad things similar to a list of commandments, ending with a kind of protection spell. The last two suttas alone make this book worth it.

The Book of Enumerations - Digha Nikāya

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  • Digha Nikāya

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