Greetings, Friendlies!
Continuing from last time in our Neighborhood of Make-Believe…
Akincano Weber began that Saṅkhāra talk:
The word “karoti” means “making”. “Saṅkharoti” means “making things together”, means compounding things, forming things, processing things with each other.
…the noun saṅkhāra is applied to basically three aspects of a dynamic sequence. [1] It is applied to the force which propels a process. [2] It is applied to the action of engendering something, producing something, compounding something. And [3] it is also applied to the result of that process. So saṅkhāra is [1] the force, saṅkhāra is [2] the process, and saṅkhāra is [3] the product of a dynamic sequence of something.
He continued:
I have a long list of questions for the Buddha … One of my questions on that list is: … Why on earth would we want to name the formative force for something with the same name as the process in which this formative force takes shape? And use the same thing for the product of that formative process?”
Boom? It is in contradiction, in the inability to calculate the Mercurian orbit, where the gold lies.
Weber’s question points out a mis-match between the kind of conceptual chunking Gotama was doing versus the kind of conceptual chunking we are doing. If it is the case that Gotama was chunking differently than we are, what might it mean for our understanding of “Saṅkhāra”?
Next time: a provisional proposal to add to the pile…
With friendliness!
Dharma PhD 