Greetings, Friendlies. :) I notice I’ve started using the word “Fabricating”, which I inherited from Rob Burbea. I think (though I’m not certain) he’s talking about the fact of our minds fabricating/constructing experience, from the grossest levels of full-blown papanca all the way down to the subtlest levels of subconscious conceptualizing. And I think this […]
Tag: Translation
Greetings, Friendlies! One more round in Make-Believe Land before returning to complete faith and reverence. (Maybe.) An hour into that fateful saṅkhāra talk I asked something to the effect: “I get confused when people say: that’s a sankhāra, also, that’s a sankhāra, and that other thing. Also a saṅkhāra. Listening to this talk, I’m wondering, […]
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 […]
Perhaps. If it is the case that one’s understanding is demonstrated through clarity of instruction… then it may be we are in some trouble regarding the concept of Saṅkhāra. A particularly good example of a recurrent phenomenon: a 2022 retreat with Akincano Weber and John Peacock on Dependent Origination [1], the Saṅkhāra talk. Sixty-four minutes […]
Categories
Avijjā as Mis-understanding
Greetings, Friendlies. :) For your consideration: what about translating Avijjā as “Mis-understanding”? “Ignorance” seems a little pejorative, “confusion” a little apathetic. Mis-understanding may sound odd at first, but in dhamma circles we do something similar when we speak of dis-ease. We are not speaking of illness, we are speaking of _not being at ease_. In […]
Perhaps. Some dharma teachers claim there is no English equivalent for the Pāli “vedanā” . Although I do not know a word in common usage, there has been a word used in psychology since the 1930s, “valence”, that I think will do the job very well. [1] In (the HIGHLY recommended) How Emotions Are Made, […]
Perhaps. Regarding Viññāṇa, I first heard the phrasing “Consciousness Of” from John Peacock’s “Buddhism Before the Theravada” series (Part 5, 53:45): “…consciousness is always a consciousness of…” something. That is, Gotama spoke of consciousness always having an object. (MN 38) “Consciousness is reckoned according to the very same condition dependent upon which it arises. Consciousness that […]
Dear Friendlies, Greetings! Some of you will appreciate the pleasant vedanā I feel reporting that on “Discuss and Discover” (the Sutta Central Forum) Ajahn Brahmali is posting about his translation of the Vinaya Pitaka. He has also put out a request for comments on a draft of the introduction to the Bhikkhuvibhaṅga: I am currently […]
Categories
MN 139, Part 5: Subhūti
Maybe it’s not really about Subhūti?
Categories
MN 139, Part 1: How to Not-Conflict
Playing around with different translations for the sutta title. Parsing Pāli for fun and profit…
Categories
MN 122 – Translation Comparison
Greetings, Friendlies! This month’s homework for the Bodhi College CPP is MN 122, The Longer/Greater Discourse on Emptiness. As previously, I’ve compiled a spreadsheet comparing translations between Sujato, Ñanamoli, and Ṭhānissaro: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J23pjMQkIRkus0LOthLGtHriaZA6Pq4UTwjVaD0umlo/. Exciting stuff. Structure The sutta is not divided into chapters but seems to discuss 9(ish) different things: Mendicants should not allow themselves to […]
Greetings! For the Bodhi College CPP February homework (they don’t call it homework, but it’s totally homework), we were invited to read Majjhima Nikāya 9, the Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, “Right View”. (I shudder at that translation, but let’s go with it.) As with MN26, I’ve built a table comparing the Pāli and five English translations. You’re […]
Greetings! I’m currently participating in one of Bodhi College’s long courses, the Committed Practitioners Programme. Every month we are offered a “Continuing Investigation”. For January we were invited to read Majjhima Nikāya 26, the Ariyapariyesanā Sutta, typically translated “The Noble Search”. Since I’ve not made it very far in my Pāli language studies, I built […]
In Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs, the penultimate chapter, “Imagination”, begins with a quote by Richard Rorty: “[A] talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.” This is what Dharma PhD is all about, learning how to speak differently.
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 4. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 5, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! Also, the mindmap I created while studying this talk: […]
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 3. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 4, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! I created a mindmap while listening to this talk: […]
This talk was made available by Audio Dharma; the talk is available here: Buddhism Before the Theravada Part 2. If you’d like to explore further, we’ve produced a podcast episode about this talk (Episode 3, if you’re already subscribed). I’d love to hear what you think! Okay, okay. One more thing… I made a mindmap […]
Categories
Quit Your Cliticizing
No, ladies and gentlemen et. al. That is not a typo. Today my dharma-vocab was upgraded. Thanks to the inimitable Anu Garg at A.Word.A.Day, I now know the verb “cliticize”, which means “To attach or become attached”. From one practitioner to another I beg you: Quit Your Cliticizing.
Categories
Majjhima Nikāya 2 — All the Effluents
As I begin to explore the Tipiṭaka (the Pāli Canon, the Buddhist scriptures that began to be written maybe about 400 years after Gotama’s death), I find that I need to further translate the scholarly renditions (from Bikkhus Ñanamoli, Bodhi, Ṭhānissaro, etc), into an every-day English that I can more readily access. This seems to […]
Dharma PhD 