Bhante Sujato Pali Course 2023: Warder lesson 8

So I didn’t even need to use the PTS look up @stephen !!!

Thanks John so much. From now on it will be easy to check context.

Wow! You’re a real learner (and explorer)! :pray:

I wish our exercise would be in a context. It doesn’t mean that students have to translate the whole passage, but it would be easier for us if the question was like this:

Please translate the Pali sentence in this paragraph:

“There are these six drawbacks of habitually gambling. jayaṃ veraṃ pasavati. The loser mourns their money. There is immediate loss of wealth…”

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Related to @Luis 's request, would it be possible for those who have recorded the session to post them on the Cloud and share the links with us for internal use? I tried to type and take notes as fast as I could, but my typing speed can’t be compared to Bhante’s speaking speed! :grin: :laughing: :rofl:

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I couldn’t agree more. Thank you Bhante :drop_of_blood:@sujato.
Also, what a great group of people to be studying with. :wave:

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Since the end of this thread is nigh as the new one is soon to begin, my midnight mind suddenly goes back in time to when it had to learn a famous quote…

To learn or not to learn, that is the question:

Whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To loll, to laze;
No more; and by ‘laze’ to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To learn, to laze;

To laze: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For while lazing away, one knows not when dukkha may come…

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Bhante Sujato Pali Course 2023 Lesson 9

Basic Chapter 8 question. I don’t see it covered in this thread.
I’m sure it was discussed during class …
disvā = gerund for root dis (deseti).
But I thought root dis has been used in Warder (so far) for “to teach” whereas we’ve seen root dis (passati) for “to see”.
Without question, I’m confused by the pāli root for “to teach” as I can’t make the logical jump to passati
Confused! :thinking:

This goes back to the Sanskrit root ‘ dṛś (to see)

In Pali we have the special present indicative ‘passati’, but the root emerges in other forms like the absolutive disva/disvana and the aorist ‘addasā’.

See the PED entry for the hypothetical verb ‘dassati’.

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Thanks, Stephen. This mystery is now almost unravelled for me!

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Well taught, @Stephen. Now @BethL sees! :crazy_face:

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@Clarity during class I took this screenshot and it was meaningful to me at the time, but not any longer.

Screenshot 2023-09-19 at 8.35.55 pm

Would you mind telling me in what way vijānāti and pajānāti are like viññaṇaṃ?
Big thanks!

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They are all based on the root jña, ‘to know’.
Prefixed in various ways.

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I am not sure why you addressed me for your question but I only try to answer from my memory. Please forgive me for any clumsy mistake and save me from embarrassing myself. :flushed:

As memory telling me, at that time Ven. Sujato was in the middle of going through the whole vocabulary at the end of lesson 8 to reinforce the pronunciation and giving some interesting details of each word along the way. When he addressed the word viññaṇaṁ in the vocabulary list, I think he linked to certain notion around this word because there is at least a thread in the forum such as this one:

which people were trying to spin up other meaning/interpretation of this word. So, Ven. Sujato was preferring to focus instead on the context and this word got the meaning similar to vijānāti and pajānāti which are all pointing to the meaning “to know”. This part I only remember vaguely: He also mentioned something like pajānāti also pointing to as knowing completely while vijānāti is something like just merely aware of.

Ah it has been a few days so that’s what I can recall, again my apology for my futile attempt. :pleading_face:

I don’t know how to re-watch the zoom record, anyone knows how please kindly tell?

Or even better, you can ask Ven. Sujato himself to repeat for 100% certainty.

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I was reading AN10.2 when I noticed these phrases seem to have two verbs and I started wondering about the grammar :laughing::

When your mind is immersed in samādhi you need not make a wish:
Samāhitassa, bhikkhave, na cetanāya karaṇīyaṁ:
‘May I truly know and see!’
‘yathābhūtaṁ jānāmi passāmī’ti.
It’s only natural to truly know and see when your mind is immersed in samādhi.
Dhammatā esā, bhikkhave, yaṁ samāhito yathābhūtaṁ jānāti passati.
When you truly know and see you need not make a wish:
Yathābhūtaṁ, bhikkhave, jānato passato na cetanāya karaṇīyaṁ:
‘May I become disillusioned and dispassionate!’
‘nibbindāmi virajjāmī’ti.
It’s only natural to become disillusioned and dispassionate when you truly know and see.
Dhammatā esā, bhikkhave, yaṁ yathābhūtaṁ jānaṁ passaṁ nibbindati virajjati.
When you’re disillusioned and dispassionate you need not make a wish:
Nibbinnassa, bhikkhave, virattassa na cetanāya karaṇīyaṁ:

If it is too much grammar for where we are at, then never mind, I was just suddenly curious.
Thank you :pray:t6:

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Hi @Acala. Yes, there is definitely more advanced grammar in this passage than we are up to at the moment. Here’s a short answer.
The first two forms of the verb pairs used here should be familiar to you:
jānāmi passāmi (1st pers sg present tense) - I know, I see.
jānāti passāti (3rd pers sg present tense) - one knows, one sees.
The final pair jānato passato are datives (not covered yet) of present participle forms of the same two verbs. They can be translated along the lines of ‘for one knowing, for one seeing’.

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Oh dear! Because I has a brain slip and thought that you asked the question! Confused c and k. :upside_down_face:

Stephen provided the answer I was after and you have provided the context. What a phenomenal memory you have! Thanks so much. :pray:

They’re two different roots that happen to have the same form in Pali.

  • √dis (= Sanskrit √dṛś) is used for the passive sense of “sees”, eg. dissati “is seen”
  • √dis (= Sanskrit √diś) is deseti, desanā with the ultimate meaning of “teach, teaching”. (This root is the same as disā “direction” (of the compass) with the ultimate sense of “point out”).

Checking the Sanskrit roots is handy in such cases, as they often differentiate words that appear the same in Pali. This is not foolproof, however!

You can find them under the grammar tab in DPD.

That’s pretty good! Just to clarify from the original question:

Multiple words are formed from the root ñā “to know” by adding prefixes, and these typically appear in both verb and noun form.

The prefixes usually, but not always, indicate a different meaning.

  • ñāṇa / jānāti = “know”
  • saññā / sañjānāti = “perceive”
  • viññāṇa / vijānāti = “cognize”
  • paññā / pajānāti = “understand”

And the verbs and nouns with the same prefix usually, but not always, have the same meaning.

The reason for mentioning this is that people usually learn these words via technical contexts (like the aggregates, DP, etc.) where they have fixed technical meanings. But in other contexts they are treated more flexibly.

For example, while paññā normally means “wisdom” (in the faculties, powers, etc.) in the sense of “understanding the Dhamma” the verb form is also in anapana:

Dīghaṁ vā assasanto ‘dīghaṁ assasāmī’ti pajānāti
Breathing long, one knows “I am breathing long”.

Here pajānāti means a clear, reflective awareness rather than insight into the four noble truths. We could use jānāti just as well.

In Snp 1.6 there is another example. The Buddha lists “downfalls” and the audience says:

Iti hetaṁ vijānāma
So we understand this.

In this case pajānāma might be expected.

I don’t think we ever find the noun form viññāṇa used this sense of “understanding”. It’s probably true to say that the nouns are used in more technical senses, while the verbs are more flexible.

This ambiguity is older than the Buddha. In the crucial passage by Yajnavalkya on the self as infinite consciousness, the passage is repeated once with viññāṇa and once with paññā.

Anyway, the main point I was trying to make is just to be aware that these words are used with a degree of flexibility outside technical contexts.

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Dear Bhante, thank you! Your entire answer thread is supremely helpful. Regarding my √dis confusion, Stephen’s response was very useful and inspired me to search both (slightly different/tricky) Sanskrit roots in DPD. Your answer fully explains it now. :smiley_cat:

Such an interesting response. :pray:
My apologies if I don’t make it tomorrow evening.

I just read the article in your link. Very detailed. Thank you very much.

Question:

  1. If we parse the phrase (or mutually understood as a sentence) Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsaṃbuddhassa, it would be:

Indeclinable ‘Namo’ + 1 dative pronoun + 3 dative nouns. All these dative nouns act as appositions (= referring to the same person) to the dative pronoun

???

  1. the literal translation is:

My respect to him, to the Blessed One (=the Buddha), to the Worthy One (the one who has permanently removed greed hatred and delusion which are the causes for rebirth), and to The Buddha, the perfectly self-enlightened one.

???

  1. And the content translation is:

My respect to the Buddha, who has permanently removed greed hatred and delusion and perfectly self-enlightened

???