Buddha's dialogues with metaphysicians. Translation from Pali, foreword, commentary

The paper contains translations from Pali of several small sutras from the canonical Tipitaka corpus of the Theravada Buddhist school, namely Vacchagottasuttam (Majjimanikayo #72), Samyuttanikayo, Nidanavaggo, Nidanasamyuttam, aharavaggo. #7, gahapativaggo #6, #8. In them the Buddha discusses with external thinkers inclined to metaphysical questions, for example, whether the world is eternal, whether the soul and body are one and the same, whether the person performing the action is identical with the one who has experience of the results of the activity, or they are different, etc. In all cases, it turns out that according to Buddha’s standpoint, the questions were posed in an unacceptable manner. In the answers, the Buddha offers his consistently procedural approach to understanding the essence of human existence, incompatible with essentialism. The sutras presented in the article are interesting not only from the point of view of content, but also in terms of the history of forming the conceptual language of Indian philosophy, the subtleties of terminology, and as material on the history of the non-binary logic of statements.