I have a strong negative gut reaction to the translation of “Kāyiko ca rogo cetasiko ca rogo” as "“Mental and physical” (illness).
Clearly the Buddha wasn’t talking about mental illness in the way we use that term today in common usage or, as far as I know as a layperson, clinical usage. He’s talking about the “ill” untrained mind that produces suffering, and is subject to cure by training according to the Dhamma. I don’t think he’s talking about people with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.
Would a better choice be a more literal translation to “illness of the body and illness of the mind”?
My thinking is that “kāya” includes the physical matter of the brain, so imbalances of brain chemicals falls into kāyiko rogo.
If you see the original Pali, it says ‘cetasika’ roga.
cetasika is a taddhita (nominal-derivative) from the noun cetas, and means “of/about the cetas”, and cetas is a kṛt (verbal-derivative) noun derived from the Sanskrit verbal root √cit (with the uṇādi suffix being asun i.e. “-as”, the resulting meaning of cetas is “the faculty of cognition”. So cetasika-roga may more properly be translated as a kind of cognitive/emotive bias or cognitive misapprehension or subjective perspectives that we may have due to preconditioned perceptions/emotions.
Clinical disorders/abnormalities of the ‘mind’ (‘mind’ being in English less precisely semantically defined/demarcated than in Sanskrit/Pali) - arising due to physical abnormalities or imbalances of the brain or the neuropsychiatric systems, would fall under the category of ‘kāyika’ (belonging to the ‘kāya’, i.e. the physical body).
In a modern perspective, this would translate to psychological (cetasika) i.e. in need of Buddhist psychotherapy - vs psychiatric (included in disorders of the human body i.e. kāyika).
Early Buddhism may have started out as a tradition of psychotherapy but in the extant Pali canon is already well on the way to becoming a philosophy (with its own truth claims) and even a religion (claiming exclusive access to reality), and in commentarial Theravada discourse is a well established religion competing actively for attention versus other religious systems. My personal interest in early-Buddhism is mainly restricted to its pre-philosophical psychological and psychotherapist nature leaving behind its exclusivist philosophical and religious truth-claims which are just trappings of all organized philosophies/religions.
Well, who talks this way today? Perhaps it would be kind of Shakespearean or poetic, as would this arrangement:
When you say:
I agree. In a perfect world, I would classify most “mental illness” as brain disease.
The challenge is that certain types of brain disease are still referred to as mental illness in today’s society. It’s not the problem of the sutta translation – it’s the problem of 21st century usage of the term. Yes?
But it’s very hard to find any sentient beings in the world who can claim to be free of mental illness even for an hour, apart from those who have ended the defilements.
Skris, I appreciate diving into the etymology and grammar. That’s where I like to go first.
Still, at the end of the day ceta = thinking or the thinking mind. Hence, mental. Is it any more complicated than that ?
I’ve never really seen anything to that effect. Classical psychotherapy is largely a western modality for dis-ease related to guilt & shame complexes, the de-humanizing effects of colonization, industrialization & wealth/materialism, etc. – mostly western in origin. (Today it’s also a major support for people with chronic and terminal disease.)
Certainly the Buddha’s liberating medicine – the dhamma – is a support. But I’ve not seen the average person working their way through that stuff without some western-oriented therapy or similar modalities.
After some psychological and emotional integration work, I feel the dhamma is indispensable for deep, kamma-focused liberation. Unfortunately, too often I see novices (amongst the laypeople) putting the cart before the horse. Then, they lose steam because the dhamma doesn’t feel like the medicine they hoped for.
I am not trying to complicate, instead I am suggesting that pre-existing semantic and grammatical nuances should be understood properly and not be abandoned in the translation, as I have tried to explain above. The issue is - if we treat cetas, cittam, manas, mati, bodha, prajñā, buddhi, hṛdaya, cetanā, vijñāna, cintana, tarka, mata, saṅkalpa, etc as if they are all just “thinking mind”, most of early Buddhism will be misinterpreted. The problem is not one of complication but one of reduction of different Pāli/Sanskrit words into a single English word that is not sufficiently nuanced.
The ultimate distinction this particular sutta is trying to show is between volitionally produced distress and non-volitional distress.
I think this is a distinction without a difference. If you were to ask anyone outside of the Buddhist context what the difference was, I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could make one.
ETA: I don’t disagree with your main point. I just don’t think it’s easy to express this and not end up with a convoluted translation.
I think it’s quite profound to realize that our ordinary mental dis-ease and delusion is different in severity but not in kind from the grosser mental illnesses. Ordinary beings are subject to their moods. People with bipolar only more so. This can give us understanding and compassion for those suffering from (what ordinary people call) mental illnesses and can also serve to stimulate some saṃvega (a wholesome “negative gut reaction”) encouraging us to work hard to overcome our own harmful delusions.
Well, the translation is into 21st century English so it can’t ignore that usage. The meaning of “mental illness” as a phrase is not determined by the meaning of “mental” and “illness” taken separately. That’s why I suggested putting it together in a syntactically different way.
But the discussion has gone mostly above my level of linguistic understanding, so I’m spectating and trying to learn something.
Mental illness is stigmatized because it seems to range outside of the “normal” sway of society’s psyche, who are busy with working, suffering, helping, but also destroying the planet and killing animals.
But I think in truth everyone who is not on the Noble Eightfold Path fully, or practicing some level of altruistic austerity, having their mind and intention fully in the Right place–such as that of Enlightenment–has some symptoms of a broader mental illness of what it means to be human and not to know what to do with one’s own suffering.
In a broader sense, we can all be mentally ill from time to time, whether we suffer from a diagnosable form or not, because unless we’re fully Enlightened, this world will make our mind ill, in the sense of intention and character being flawed (something we don’t like to hear), and we may react in trying ways. So to strive for Enlightenment, and Enlightenment, is the cure for the mental disease of being unable to cope with this world. But take heart, the answer is within the Four Noble Truths, and walking the Noble Eightfold Path.
I think this is really important. It is about quantity and not quality in categorial terms. The path is a way to move towards the healthy/knowing/realizing endpoint (as opposed to the unhealthy/not-knowing/confused endpoint).
I don’t disagree that mental illness is unfortunately stigmatized, but that was not at all in the forefront of my thinking when I wrote the OP. I was more concerned that this translation could be used as support for someone with severe mental illness to be encouraged (on their own or from a teacher or community) to “stop the meds and just fix your mind with meditation, cuz that’s what the Buddha said.” Having been raised in a Christian tradition where a kind of faith-healing was encouraged, I have seen the damage that can be done.
I take plenty of meds because of my traumatic experiences… Stopping meds all at once is certainly a bad idea. Keep on keeping on with your mental health awareness, I’m all for it!