Secluded from desires with thought and thinking born of seclusion joy and comfort they experience the first seeing
so abhijjhāya is “looking” (for food, pleasure) while jhānaṁ is “seeing” (contentment, comfort)
It’s etymologically sound I think and draws us back to the fundamental idea of receiving food gifted rather than taken by acquisition, and nicely relates what is being done in the hinderences with what is being done in the jhanas.
And how do you expect to persuade anyone of the etymological soundness of your translation when you don’t even state what you believe the etymologies of abhijjhāya and jhānaṁ to be?
Thus far you’ve supplied an innovative and conjectural translation of the passage and merely averred it to be “etymologically sound”.
In order to show that it’s etymologically sound you would need to do one of the following:
Provide evidence that the semantic range of the roots of abhijjhāya and jhānaṁ includes the ideas of “looking” and “seeing”.
Or…
Make an argument for discarding what have traditionally been taken to be the roots of abhijjhāya and jhānaṁ and for embracing some other roots that really do mean “looking” and “seeing”.
To what you’ve written so far, I think Hitchens’s razor would apply.
In MN8, the arupa jhanas are called “Santā ete vihārā”
Santā ete vihārā ariyassa vinaye vuccanti.
So if we check “diṭṭha dhamma sukha vihārā”, if we translate
vihārā as “abiding/dwelling”
sukha as pleasurable
dhamma as idea? (as in 6th sense base mana-dhamma)
Now dittha according to the dictionary:
diṭṭha
past participle adjective
(passive) seen; recognized; being seen; visible; what is seen
(neuter) seeing; sight; perception
So while there is the word “seen” it is in the past tense according to the dictionary entry (eg. I do not know Pali grammar), “abiding” is the present action.
So we might arrive at translation “abiding having seen pleasurable dhamma”.
“ What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence
I think if you propose a new Pali translation that’s ‘etymologically sound’, some information needs to be provided about your translation choices and understanding of the source language.
‘Diṭṭhadhamma’ is a form of an extremely common idiom in Pāli. It means ‘in the present life.’ Trying to interpret this idiom into an esoteric, hidden meaning apart from common usage is just as silly as someone trying to interpret a common English idiom into an esoteric, literal reading.
For example, “having seen the… goodness.” You can’t literally see goodness. It would be a disservice to your statement if I go rummaging around for a way of turning your statement into something about literal vision.
I am not trying to render the passage as being about literally looking and literally seeing, i am trying to construct a contrast between the mentality of “looking for pleasure in the world” and “seeing/contemplating pleasure that is internal, independant of the world”.
Do i am using “looking” and “seeing” figurativly for abhijjhāya and jhānaṁ on the (perhaps spurious) etymological reading of √īh as “seeking” (looking for) and √jhā as “contemplate” (really seeing with the mind).
I thought these where what yhe dictionaries said, but i will defer to the experts.
Regardless the contrast between looking or searching for ones satisfaction (of hunger) in the world and seeing for oneself the satisfaction of freedom from seeking-in-the-world was what i was aiming at.
The term appears in what i take to be one of the oldest extant pieces of prose in the canon, DN2.
In that sutta the King is not asking about fruits visible “in this life” but fruits visible “here and now”, i.e the wages paid to a butcher.
Semantically english idioms like “here and now” and “in this very life” have a great deal of semantic overlap.
It is not clear to me, from the discussion of this term i have seen in other threads, that there is any decisive reason to prefer “in this life” to “visible here and now”.
Certainly the contrast in DN2 is not at all direct, the king is not talking about the whole of the life of the butcher, but thier present employment and expenditure.
None of the examples supplied by @Dhammanando in the other thread break if “visible here and now” is used to contrast with “visible in the next life”.
Deciding to render the term in such a way as yo highlight the connection with “the other half” of the argument while completely obscuring “ditth”, which has a clear sense, is a legitimate choice, but not the only one.
‘yato kho, bho, ayaṁ attā pañcahi kāmaguṇehi samappito samaṅgībhūto paricāreti, ettāvatā kho, bho, ayaṁ attā paramadiṭṭhadhammanibbānaṁ patto hotī’ti.
‘When this self amuses itself, supplied and provided with the five kinds of sensual stimulation, that’s how this self attains ultimate extinguishment in the present life.’
when I am amusing myself with sensual pleasures like touching a lover, that pleasure is “visible here and now” like, right then and there, not in some “lifetime” sense.
it’s not clear that the people holding this view even believe in such a thing as a “next life”, so in this case the translation militates against the sense of the passage, as it does with the way the king is using it in DN2.
another free reconstruction, purely in idiomatic English this time:
Thus has this one heard. All beings are sustained by food. some, give up killing, give up seeking food, taking only food that is given to them, not hungering for anything in the world not freely given to them.
Separated from the sensual, taking care with the senses and taking care with the mind, thinking joyous thoughts not connected with sensuality, the mind becomes joyous and the body becomes pleasant, this is their first insight.
With the calming of thoughts the mind remains joyous and the body remains pleasant, this is their second insight. With the calming of joy, the mind becomes tranquil, this is their third insight. Observing the calming of pleasure, the mind remains tranquil, this is their fourth insight.
The tranquil mind thus liberated from pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, thinking and sensing, can see the whole truth and is liberated. Thus has this one heard.
I don’t think that is correct. sambuddha is a past passive participle form of the verb “sam + √budh” where the preverb sam (which is one of 20 preverbs that modify the meaning of a verb root) does not mean svayam (Pali: sayaṃ). sambuddha means “fully/completely awake”.
The Monier Williams dictionary has this entry for the Sanskrit (and Pali) preverb sam-
“He gives up desire in the world — and lives with a mind sans desire, and having become focussed — he investigates his mind.”
Note: there are two similar sounding (but different) words in the above sentence:
The first is a feminine noun abhidhyā (desire), the same word recurs in the instrumental-case in the compound vigata-abhidhayā
The second word is a verb abhi-√dhyai (to focus on), here it appears in absolutive form i.e. abhidhyāya
The word dhyāna (Pāli: jhāna) is also derived from the root √dhyai which means ‘to think’ or ‘to meditate’ but is slightly different in sense when compared to abhi-√dhyai since abhi-√dhyai has a preverb abhi modifying the sense of the verb root.
I don’t think your reading is precedented or warranted. In Pāli, the word seems to remain the same. It means they purify the mind of/from abhijjhā. This is a whole corpus of literature with patterns of how words are used and in what contexts, especially when discussing doctrinal points. What evidence or attestations do you have to suggest a completely new reading with a new, coincidental homophone?
According to which authority? The DoP dictionary lists down both pali words whose Sanskrit forms I’ve mentioned above. They are not the same word, one is a verb in its absolutive form, and another a feminine noun.
There are 3 distinct clauses in the sentence - each clause has its own sense, and together they convey the totality of the sentence’s meaning:
So abhijjhaṁ loke pahāya = He, having given up desire in the world
vigatābhijjhena cetasā viharati = lives with a mind sans desire (or with desire gone)
abhijjhāya cittaṁ parisodheti = having gained focus, investigates his mind
