Best Namarupa translation

Well, can I ask how many examples we have of rūpa ending a dvanda compound? Presumably there are enough to justify reading nāmarūpa as one?

Many Pali compounds are mere guesswork in translation.

In traditional Buddhism, dependent origination occurs over three lifetimes therefore a mind-body (nama-rupa) is required for the relinking of consciousness.

For those who meditate to overcome dukkha, they comprehend the body & mind (nama-rupa) are aroused by ignorant-sankharas, pushing the mind to give inappropriate attention to both the internal sankharas & corresponding external sense objects.

For those giving the impression they believe they are Brahma, creating the world around them via conceptual thought, their Solipsism inclines towards the translation of ‘name-form’.

Here, I doubt linguistics can resolve the different inclinations of different people. :slightly_smiling_face:

Really, it seems only DN 15 supporting the case for ‘name-form’. However, I personally I have never understood what DN 15 is describing. Possibly you or another can assist. For example:

  • What exactly are the “features, attributes, signs, and details” by which the category of mental phenomena is found?

  • What exactly are the “features, attributes, signs, and details” by which the category of physical phenomena is found?

Thanks :pray:t2:

nāmarūpa can be translated as “name-and-material form”.

  • The difficulty with translation is that there are various uses. There are two main ones, which are of course related but still separate. They are internal nāmarūpa and external nāmarūpa, mentioned for example in Snp3.6. The most common throughout the suttas is internal nāmarūpa, which refers to certain aspects of the being with its name and form. This explains various translations that exist, like “mind and body”. The external nāmarūpa is much rarer but is found for example in SN12.19. It refers to external objects with their names and forms. Here “mind and body” does not work, of course.

Part of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s footnote to the latter:

We may have here [referring to bahiddhā nāmarūpaṁ, external name and form], rather, a rare example of the term namarūpa being employed to represent the entire field of experience available to consciousness, "external name” being the concepts used to designate the objects cognized. […] it seems that here the text intends the term dyad to denote one’s own conscious body and "external name-and-form.”

Occasionally it may not be clear exaclty which of the two is implied, internal (the being) or external (thing in the outside world). Sometimes both may be implied. This happens mainly in verses, I belief. Either way, that explains why translators often choose to translate it very literally. Because there is no way to catch both meanings with English terms. (Nor does “name and form”, really, so in my opinion it is not much of an improvement.)

See also our other discussion.

  • As to your second point, no, it is definitely a dvanda (which means A-&-B for the uninitiated). See the definition of SN12.2 for example, which splits the two terms up.

And what are name and form? Feeling, perception, intention, contact, and attention. This is called name. The four primary elements, and form derived from the four primary elements. This is called form. Such is name and such is form. These are called name and form.

There are also verses, if I recall, that split them up something like nāma ca rūpa but sorry I don’t know the references, so you may have to search yourself if you’re still unconvinced after the last quote.

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Actually, it seems only ‘mind & body’ works here because name-form is always internal. For example:

They understand the minds of other beings and individuals, having comprehended them with their own mind. …

MN 119

Or:

There he sees a female scantily clad, with revealing clothes.

SN 17.9

The above two quotes sound like external mind & body. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thus, MN 62, for example, says:

Rāhula, the interior earth element is said to be anything hard, solid, and appropriated that’s internal, pertaining to an individual. This includes: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, undigested food, feces, or anything else hard, solid, and appropriated that’s internal, pertaining to an individual. This is called the interior earth element. The interior earth element and the exterior earth element are just the earth element. This should be truly seen with right understanding like this: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’ When you truly see with right understanding, you reject the earth element, detaching the mind from the earth element.

Or SN 22.59 says:

So you should truly see any kind of form at all—past, future, or present; internal or external; coarse or fine; inferior or superior; far or near: all form—with right understanding: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’

I’m not sure what you mean.

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That’s a fascinating insight about the leap from name-and-form to Dependent Arising. :thinking:

The suttas are full of teachings for different people. If one teaching doesn’t fit, we can always find another set of suttas that speaks closer to our understanding. And when I encounter suttas that I cannot grasp, I simply listen to them again and again. Invariable, insight emerges and my understanding shifts. Words gain new and richer meaning. I can see how “mentality and materiality” are candidates for translation–they do indeed fit. However, I find it perplexing why one would introduce strange new words in place of everyday words that help many other Buddhists. This thread has a very divisive title “Best … translation”. How can there be a best? Different suttas work for different people. DIfferent translators work for different people.

It’s good to know how we each understand the phrase “namarupa”. It is NOT good to claim any one translation as BEST. The search for BEST is divisive.

MN103:7.10: But the venerables should know that this is how
MN103:7.11: such agreement on the meaning and disagreement on the phrasing comes to be.
MN103:7.12: But the phrasing is a minor matter.

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Greetings @Sunyo :

(Pardon me. I believe you are a Ven., so I will address you accordingly. If I’m mistaken, please disregard.)

In a nutshell, Yes! I think you grasp the ambiguity in the term I’m trying to point out and why I find pretty much all of the translations out there unsatisfying: there are levels of meaning which are not being brought out.

So, perhaps you’ll forgive me, Ven., if I pursue further clarification. I completely understand why you gave the example you did to demonstrate how it should be dvanda. I agree that, in that context, they are a set of paired equals, more or less, and a dvanda understanding is probably most appropriate.

But that says nothing about how they relate to each other. This might not be so important in examples like the one you provided, Ven., but what about in those “rare examples” I originally asked about and B. Bodhi mentioned? There how they relate is precisely where the focus should be. A dvanda can’t really do that, can it?

Interpretations of compounds is often very subjective, and different scholars will often classify the same compound differently. I myself often prefer to leave compounds untranslated, or at least translate as literally as possible, without any presumption regarding the relationship obtaining between the components. “Name-form” is inelegant, but it doesn’t close off any possibilities.

So, now, as before, I don’t dispute that it can legitimately be classified as dvanda–and times when it could only be classified as such. I’m only asking, Ven., if there is anything which precludes us from understanding an descriptive or adjectival relationship at those other times.

Yes, I do agree personal inclination is the sticking point here.

I found 11 discourses in the Samyukta (with 6 Pali and 1 Sanskrit parallel) and 1 in the Madhyama (1 Pali parallel) with the formula @Sunyo mentioned with the footnote from B. Bodhi. It’s out there.

The above seems to say DN 15 can be grasped. Personally, its one sutta I’ve never been able to grasp. I already asked:

  • What exactly are the “features, attributes, signs, and details” by which the category of mental phenomena is found?
  • What exactly are the “features, attributes, signs, and details” by which the category of physical phenomena is found?

Also, what is the meaning of mental phenomena & physical phenomena above?

So in DN 15, what exactly is nama-rupa? Is nama-rupa the mental phenomena & physical phenomena? Or is nama-rupa the features, attributes, signs, and details? :saluting_face:

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Yes, I’m a bhikkhu but you can leave the formal address, no problem. (Actually one reason why I don’t have it clearer that I’m a bhikkhu (like in a profile picture) is that people treat me like they would everybody else in their arguments and don’t take my words “for granted” just because I wear a robe.)

Well, both words are nouns here, so “named form” doesn’t work, for “named” is an adjective, and nāma is not. Nāma means ‘name’, particularly one’s proper name. So if it were kammadharaya (meaning basically A=B for those unaware) it would mean “form which is a name” which makes no sense of course.

Also, if a compound could technically be translated in different ways, you have to use the contexts to find out the meaning. And no context give precedence for it to not be a dvanda. And there is many that do the opposite. For very simple ones you can search for nāmañca rūpañca and will find various references in the suttas.

Also, this rarer use is found in brahminical texts more than the Buddhist ones, and there it is clearly explained as external objects with their names and formes, i.e. as a dvanda.

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Thank you. Very clear and informative. Exactly what I was looking for.

If I’m not misunderstanding what you wrote, whatever the relationship between the two may be, it seems it simply was not expressed in the compound. Very simple, actually. Thank you.

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Thinking of the mutual dependence of vinnana and nama-rupa in some suttas, how about “experience” as a translation of nama-rupa? Everything that one is conscious of.

DN15:20.6: “Suppose there were none of the features, attributes, signs, and details by which the categories of mental or physical phenomena are found. Would either linguistic contact or impingement contact still be found?”

When we recognize an old friend in the street just passing by, there is a moment of contact between various sensory inputs. A blur sharpens into focus. A gait snaps into familiarity. At some point a name floats vaguely onto the tip of the tongue then clicks into place. Without these contacts, there would be no greeting.

These contacts are a cascade of perception, an aggregation of awareness. And perhaps we can agree that the difference between mental and physical is simply the degree of contact. Physical phenomena engage multiple senses. However, mental phenomena are experienced internally and must be manifested physically to others. And so the mental feeling of “my friend” is expressed physically as “hello”.

MN44:14.1: “But ma’am, what is the physical process? What’s the verbal process? What’s the mental process?”
MN44:14.2: “Breathing is a physical process. Placing the mind and keeping it connected are verbal processes. Perception and feeling are mental processes.”

Name is a “handle” for a form. A “name” is a mental place, so “mentality” also works here. A form is materially an aggregate of shareable perceptions over multiple senses. The features that we recognize as our friend comprise the form associated with the friends name. Interestingly, names themselves are forms that can be spoken, heard, etc. And that oddity of endless aggregation (e.g., a sentence is a form of names) is indeed circular–it circulates into consciousness:

DN15:2.17: When asked, ‘Is there a specific condition for consciousness?’ you should answer, ‘There is.’
DN15:2.18: If they say, ‘What is a condition for consciousness?’ you should answer, ‘Name and form are conditions for consciousness.’

We can call this namarupa, name/form or mentality/materialism. We can call it whatever. What is certain is that grasping and clinging to that leads to suffering.

DN15:3.1: So: name and form are conditions for consciousness. Consciousness is a condition for name and form. Name and form are conditions for contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. Feeling is a condition for craving. Craving is a condition for grasping. Grasping is a condition for continued existence. Continued existence is a condition for rebirth. Rebirth is a condition for old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress to come to be.
DN15:3.2: That is how this entire mass of suffering originates.

:pray:

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It seems “a friend” is at least a form of “upadana”; some would say a form of “bhava”; some may even argue it is a “category of beings” thus “jati”.

“Contact” with a friend seems to arise after nama-rupa; rather than is nama-rupa.

  • “A gait” is a sense contact of an object.
  • “Familiarity” is memory of something previously experienced as sense contact.
  • “Familiarity” does not seem to cause “sense contact”.

You seem saying there is a “memory bank” of data in nama-rupa leaping out creating contacts it wants to reunite with; similar to flying to Europe or the USA to meet up with old long lost friends.

Yes, without these contacts, there would be no greeting. The greeting & naming arise after the sense contact rather than before it.

Perception arises after contacts; not before them.

DN 15’s narrative of features, attributes, signs, and details by which the categories of physical phenomena are found seems easy to understand.

You mean expressed “verbally” as “hello”. Regardless, the “hello” is occurring after contact and not before contact. The “hello” is not a cause of contact.

OK… (even though this seems to occur after contact).

OK… so you are saying what DN 15 describes as features, attributes, signs, and details by which the categories of mental phenomena are found is what MN 18 describes as “papanca”, which in MN 18 occurs after contact; but which DN 15 says occurs before contact. :hushed: :dizzy_face: :face_with_spiral_eyes::saluting_face:

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In the circle of aggregation, “before” and “after” chase each other. So I prefer to avoid linear interpretations in favor of the spiral. I joke to myself that thinking too much “screws us up”. As you have noticed, with this perspective, :face_with_spiral_eyes: is indeed an emoji of suffering.

Tangentially: In computer science, this circle of cognition even has names such as “Recurrent Neural Network”, where the “contacts” can be understood as the input/output transition of each layer in the network. One might say that AI automates the five aggregates. And that thought is sobering.

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Greetings, Ven.:

I am in the middle of the Olalde article and loving it! Thank you. But, perhaps because I lack the background, the entire first section on the Saussurean model and then the Ogden and Richards model (especially how it maps onto Buddhist scholars’ interpretations) is completely opaque to me.

Can you put it into layman’s terms? There are aspects of the second half of the article which are predicated on these models, and which I can’t fully appreciate without first understanding the latter. So, if you’re able…

Oh, that makes me feel less stupid, knotty. :laughing: Becuase I didn’t understand that part either! :smiley:

But I felt it doesn’t much matter because their conclusion was that this all didn’t apply to the common nāmarūpa in Buddhism, anyway, where it refers to the individual. I also got the strong sense that they were skeptical whether it applied even to Brahmanism, when they say “may I say, actually [nāma doesn’t mean ‘designation’]”.

I understood there to be three ideas presented:

  1. nāmarūpa means some sort of designation/recognition process (which they explain with these models that we don’t understand)
  2. nāmarūpa means external objects with intrinsic “names and forms”
  3. nāmarūpa means the "internal"being with its intrinsic “name and form”

I felt Olalde disregarded the first in general for both Brahmanism and Buddhism, and the second for the common factor of nāmarūpa of Buddhism also. Which leaves us with the third for 99% of instances of the word in the Pali canon.

I may oversimplify it or misunderstant the nuances. Either way, this is my own personal conclusion, whether it was Olalde’s or not. Because it aligns with what I’ve read elsewhere. For example, Olivelle’s introduction to his translations of the Early Upanishads (recommended) touch upon it too, saying: "The essence of a thing [or person] was expressed in its name and its visible appearance (nāmarūpa)”. He doesn’t speak about recognation at all, if I remember correctly. Neither do other scholars of those texts I’ve read, like Keith.

I think Olalde is siding with those more “traditional” interpretations like that of Olivelle (nr 2 & 3) and arguing against the interpretation they say arose in “the last decades” (nr 1).

In the last decades, however, nāmarūpa has attracted the attention of scholars of Buddhism who turn back to the “older” usage in order to elaborate alternative interpretations that aim to grasp the “original” meaning of the Buddhist term. […] They understand “name” as “designation” and neglect the fact that italso (or may I say actually) means “proper name;” in this manner they understand name as “naming” and assume that it always encompasses conceptualisation.

Now, it’s a bit scholarleze, but the quote marks around “original” and the “may I say actually” to me indicate that they don’t think this idea is actually more original and correct.


It also should be noted that the Buddha did not fully adopt the cultural concept of nāmarūpa. People thought their names were part of their selves, but the Buddha didn’t agree with that idea of course. Still, he used nāmarūpa pragmatically in most his teachings on dependent origination, where it refers to the being. This much is quite clear from passages where nāmarūpa is conceived in the womb. But at times he also criticized the idea that the name is a part of the self. Partly this is reflected in him redefining nāma to be feelings, perception, contact, and so forth. That is, he’s saying it’s not really what people thought it to be. Part of this is perhaps also the cryptic passage on nāmakāya and “designation contact” in DN15.

But some people have gone too far with these critiques of ideas of nāma, imo, and fall into this “designation” idea. (Like in the other thread where we met.) Others, like the Abhidhamma, miss the cultural idea entirely and partly therefore redifined nāma to be the four non-consciousness aggregates.

So you see, there’s multiple layers culturally and historically, and that makes nāmarūpa such a tricky term, and why it is difficult to translate. For example, if you translate “mind and body”, like some do, then it is pretty self-explanatory for the standard way it is used in Dependent Arising, but then you totally miss out on the critique of the concept of one’s name being part of one’s self.

So translators choose what to highlight. Or, out of desperation resort to literalism. :rofl:

And then there’s more tangentially connected ideas with speech and the divine power of sounds in Brahmanism. This is not my area of knowledge to explain. Olivelle I mentioned earlier is a good read. Not too much details, explains the gist.

Most important conclusion for Dependent Arisng, though, is Olalde’s note that it refers to the being with its name and body (or shape).

That is how I understand it. Let me know if you interpret the paper differently.

PS. Let’s not get started on rūpa :wink: Because that also has various nuances. If you imagine a color, for example, it is also called a rūpa, even if it exists only in the mind. This all has to do with the concept of material being different back then too, not being limited to atoms which were only discovered recently, in the scope of time. (Which, of course, also is challenged by more modern science.)

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Sorry, Ven., not going to let you get away with that: now we absolutely have to get into rūpa!

But, first…

Okay, I think I’m wrapping my head around this–to some extent. Neither of the two meanings of nāmarūpa we’ve been discussing are actually very difficult to grasp, it’s the middle, the overlap, how it can be that they overlap: that’s where the good stuff is. I think that’s why I’m so stuck on finding a translation that captures both meanings (and what I love about untranslated compounds).

But the real reason I was asking about the models (primarily, the triangular ones) was because I was wondering if we might find a way to squeeze the viññāṇa from DN 15 in there along with nāma and rūpa. It seems that Olalde wouldn’t, since she seems to reject the idea that nāma and rūpa have any place at all in that scheme, in any configuration. But, first, I have to finish reading the article (and re-reading that section). Maybe I’ll look up the original sources of the schemes and see if they offer up any more clarity.

Now, regarding rūpa, should I begin with some questions? or would you like to just go ahead and kick things off?

I finished the article, and I’m a little clearer now on what the author was saying in the beginning .

She sort of reversed her stance (in limited contexts), but didn’t fully explain why. Whereas she denies at the outset (by way of those triangles which I’m still not grasping) that the Saussurean concept of sign is at all compatible with the Buddhist nāmarūpa, and spends the bulk of the article citing Vedic texts which demonstrate that it doesn’t fit there either, she says in the penultimate paragraph that it can applied only to cases where “we are interested on [sic] processes of conceptualisation that take place in the subject[.]” But I don’t remember her giving any examples (Buddhist or Vedic) of it being used to describe subjectivity: everything was about the object, or relating to essential core principles of the individual.

But I’m wondering about DN 15: that’s certainly subjective.