Bhava doesn't mean 'becoming'

[Nibbanka]

Thank you for the interesting discussion

@Sunyo

Bodhi translated as “personal existence”. It means the existence of an individual, basically, not the existence of “identity”.

Sorry, that’s not true. In the Suttanipāta, Ven. Bodhi translates sakkāya as “personal entity”, not “personal existence”.

The Suttanipata

IMHO, “personal entity” isn’t too far from his previous choice, “identity”:

In the introduction to The Connected Discourses of the Buddha, which you mention, he wrote:

Sakkāya is a term for the five aggregates as a collective whole (III 159,10–13). The word is derived from sat + kāya, and literally means “the existing body,” the assemblage of existent phenomena that serve as the objective basis of clinging. Most translators render it “personality,” a practice I followed in MLDB (departing from Ven. Ñāṇamoli, who rendered it, too literally in my view, “embodiment”). But since, under the influence of modern psychology, the word “personality” has taken on connotations quite foreign to what is implied by sakkāya, I now translate it as “identity” (a suggestion made to me by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu). Sakkāya-diṭṭhi accordingly becomes “identity view,” the view of a self existing either behind or among the five aggregates.

Introduction - The Wisdom Experience

I think the confusion is brought about by the established English misinterpretation of the term “upādāna”. When Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi and other interpreters translate pañca upādānakkhandhā in the definition of ‘sakkāya’ in the Culavedalla Sutta (MN 44) as “five aggregates affected by clinging”, they necessarily come to the conclusion that this term means “the five aggregates as a collective whole”.

However, as you wrote, upādāna rather means “taking up”:

Upadana? Let go of clinging

(summary below) Hi Pali people, Upadana literally means ‘taking up’, but the default translation has become ‘clinging’. I think ‘clinging’ does not reflect the meaning very well, though, and think ‘taking up’ is much more accurate. Another translation being used is ‘grasping’, which may be a bit closer to ‘taking up’, but it still represents another idea than what I think upadana is really about. Here’s some examples of upadana and the verb upadiyati in “ordinary speech” first: AN1.315, men…

From Margaret Cone’s Pāli dictionary:

upādiyati, pr. 3 sg. [S. upādatte; BHS upādiyati], appropriates to oneself, takes as one’s own, adopts; lays hold of, grasps; uses; takes as material source, derives, evolves (from); …
– absol. … (b) upādāya [ts], 1. taking for oneself, taking as one’s own, adopting; making use of, having as material support or cause; being evolved or deriving (from, gen.);…
– pp (a) upādinna, upādiṇṇa, mfn., 1. taken hold of, taken for one’s own; grasped; used; …
– 2. evolved, derived, esp. evolved by the influence of previous kamma (usually explained by cts as meaning 1.); animate; …
– 3. evolved from, being the basis for derivation; ? …

upādāna, n. [S., BHS id.], 1. taking as one’s own, laying hold of, grasping;
– 2. material support or cause, fuel; – (it is often difficult to determine which meaning is intended; both reinforce each other: previous grasping produces fuel, which is itself then grasped); …

And when we translate the definition of sakkāya in the Culavedalla Sutta as “five taken up aggregates”, “five aggregates taken as one’s own” or “five appropriated aggregates”, the pieces of this puzzle fall in place, and we get a proper definition of sakkāya as self-identity - ‘things one identifies with’.