Final Product

The final paper that resulted from the research found in this blog is posted below.  The author hopes that the summary and analysis presented in this paper will allow readers to learn more about this paramount text, the Mahāparinibbāna sutta of the Pāli Canon.  The conclusions drawn in this paper are the author's own, and any reference to or emulation of these ideas in further works should be cited and attributed to this paper.

A note on translation that was subsequently added to the "Overview and Introduction" page of this blog: Sanskrit and Pāli are very closely related languages, generally differing only slightly in pronunciation. This text was originally written in Pāli, so I have stuck to the Pāli title of Mahāparinibbāna sutta, although the Sanskrit pronunciation, Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, may be useful to keep in mind for those who are familiar with the terms "nirvana" and "sutra."  Mahāparinibbāna sutta breaks down as follows:

Mahā = "great"; pari = "final"; nibbāna = "nirvana," ("blowing out," commonly interpreted as "enlightenment"); and sutta = "sutra", or doctrine.

Here is the the final product of this endeavor of textual analysis.