"covetousness and displeasure” is short for all five hinderances?

Q & A
1

It’s when a mendicant meditates by observing an aspect of the body—keen, aware, and mindful, rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world.
Idha, kandaraka, bhikkhu kāye kāyānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā, vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ;

I was listening to an MN 51 sutta study by Ajahn Brahm and he said that this phrase is short for all five of the hinderances. He elaborated that in Pali, often the first two of a list indicates the entire list. I’ve not heard this before. Is there a rule for this in Pali?

2

Yes, I also heard about this before.

For example, in many suttas concerning Dependent Origination, the Blessed One mentioned only two or three links, yet the Sangha understood that he was referring to the entire sequence.

Similarly, in 37 Aids to Enlightenment, if one mastered one core aspect, one mastered the development of the rest of the set.

I think it’s not a strict rule per se, but they are treated as stock passage/formula (peyyāla).

3

Piya Tan addresses this in his article on MN10:

image
image1401×451 55.7 KB

PDF Page 70.

4

Not just in Pāli, but across all Agamas (Sanskrit / Chinese). I remember working on a DO Sutra from Chinese and Sanskrit, and the same thing happened. It’s just part of the abbreviation conventions, it seems.

5

I really don’t think this is some abbreviation convention. It’s just how the Buddha talked and explained things. You have to go to the commentaries to get the interpretation that it’s a shorthand. A big part of the commentarial project, as I understand it, it trying to put everything into tidy boxes.

6

A new term to me: synecdoche! I’m aware of the concept and have seen it in the suttas, but this one wasn’t obvious to me. Thank you!

7

I must say this first of all, I really have high respect for all of you here and I don’t mean to implicit say anything rude or inappropriate beneath the words. I don’t mean anything inappropriate either to the venerables or commentaries either.

It’s just that in my understanding, I don’t think abhijjhādomanassaṁ is short term to refer to all the five hindrances. It’s not an abbreviation and it’s not either the way the Buddha used to talked and explained by referring to all five hindrances.

I know I sound different to you all so please go easy on me :face_holding_back_tears:

I won’t cling too much on this understanding either, the reason for that kind of understanding is because I think the Buddha was talking instead focusing on the mindfulness, not yet going to the samadhi part. We also have keen, aware and mindful which kind of overlapping other 3 hindrances too.

Anyway just have a good laugh if I turn out to be a fool after all.:grin:

With metta

8

I think that it makes perfect sense that abhijjhādomanassaṁ would be a synecdoche of all of the hinderances. Mindfulness is first in the awakening factors and is present in samadhi, but one cannot enter samadhi unless all five hinderances are absent.

9

What I am about to say is, first of all, off-topic, and second, not meant in any way to be offensive. Please accept my apologies in advance if it comes off that way.

Having witnessed many discussions here and in other circles, especially among Theravada practitioners, I am fascinated by how precise everything is expected to be and how much some things become an issue.

I will absolutely admit that it’s my Mahayana/Zen training showing here. :sweat_smile: When I look at the quote you posted, this is what happens in my mind: “Sure, we sit, putting aside thoughts of good and bad, greed, lust, chasing after things and goals, likes and dislikes… If one is caught up in mental activities, one can’t possibly observe anything with clarity… In fact, even when observing an aspect of the body, one can see through and past it… observing it as empty… and so on…”

This would be how I’d tackle this if someone asked me anything about this quote. And, should someone say to me this was short for the hindrances, I wouldn’t flinch for one moment before I said: “Well, yes .. it’s a circle, not a straight line… None of them exists on its own, so if one arises, the others are somehow involved”.

This pattern repeats over and over again, and I find it very interesting to realize how much, at least in my tradition, we rely solely on our experience of and insight into the dharma.

To clarify, I know many, many Zen folks who have never read anything from the suttas or Agamas, and who couldn’t mention what the Buddha directly taught about anything, unless it comes from a third party (an ancestor in the lineage, a teacher, etc.).

I am simply noting the positive and negative sides of these two different approaches.

Anyway, my apologies for disturbing the discussion.

10

:slight_smile: If @Adutiya is happy with the answers so far, I’ll indulge in this side track just a bit, because it’s an interesting observation I’ve seen as well.

It’s not just Theravadin / EBT students either, but especially so around these boards, since we’re (still, more or less) mostly focused on translations and scriptural studies, rather than an all-purpose dharma forum per se.

But I also observed that EBT students can be quite meticulous, to the danger of being obsessive perhaps. And likewise, Zen / Mahayana folk can be pretty agile on their feet, to the danger of flying off to incomprehension at times.

Personally I try to strike a gentle balance between the two! :smiley:

To give the aforementioned example from SA 296, you’ll see here Buddha shorthanding entire DO with just the first two links:

云何緣生法？謂無明、行。

There’s a few other examples. Now, whether this particular case is like this or not, it’d depend on how you interpret the context, of course.

12

This is not as straightforward as it may seem. In fact, I recently had a brief discussion with Ajahn Brahm about this very issue.

I reminded him that the purpose of satipaṭṭhāna is to bring the mind to samādhi, as we can see everywhere in the Nikāyas, for instance, in sammā-sati (= satipaṭṭhāna) leading to sammā-samādhi. This means that the purpose of satipaṭṭhāna is to prepare the mind for samādhi, the main part of which is to abandon any persisting defilements of the mind. Indeed, this is what we would expect from reading the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, which includes a substantial section on how to know and abandon the five hindrances, followed by a section on how to know and develop the seven factors of awakening.

In light of this, it does not make sense to think that all defilements need to be abandoned prior to satipaṭṭhāna practice. When I pointed this out to Ajahn Brahm, he clarified that he understands vineyya loke abhijjhā-domanassaṁ, “rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world”, to refer only to fairly coarse manifestations of the five hindrances, not to their refined presence as one approaches samādhi in meditation. This is an important refinement in understanding.

13

Thank you @Adutiya for this very helpful inquiry. And the supporting thread! Especially thanks to Ajahn Brahm for taking time to clarify and let us peek into the organic, ongoing discussions between the venerable experts!

14

Thank you so much, Bhante, for your input and guidance!

I’m trying to align what you said into the context of the sutta and make sure I understand this correctly.

“And in this mendicant Saṅgha there are trainee mendicants who are consistently ethical, living consistently, alert, living alertly. They meditate with their minds firmly established in the four kinds of mindfulness meditation.”

Does this paragraph mean that they meditate with their minds already firmly established in the four kinds of mindfulness? I ask because the early part of the sutta seems to indicate that they are meditating already rid of “covetousness and displeasure”:

“It’s when a mendicant meditates by observing an aspect of the body—keen, aware, and mindful, rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world. They meditate observing an aspect of feelings—keen, aware, and mindful, rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world. They meditate observing an aspect of the mind—keen, aware, and mindful, rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world. They meditate observing an aspect of principles—keen, aware, and mindful, rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world.”

So when I read what you wrote, I understand you saying that they are meditating with course manifestations of the five hinderances, not samadhi meditation:

Then, later in this sutta, after Pessa left, the Buddha goes into more detail describing how a mendicant goes about training to overcome the hinderances and reach samadhi. Starting with ordaining, sila, contentment, sense restraint, situational awareness, then meditating giving up the five hinderances and going into samadhi.

“They give up these five hindrances, corruptions of the heart that weaken wisdom. Then, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, they enter and remain in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.”

The earlier part of the sutta uses the phrase “rid of covetousness and displeasure"and the latter part of the sutta uses the phrase"quite secluded from the five hinderances.” Is the difference that “rid of” is course and “quite secluded from is” fine? Does that change the usage of the term abhijjhādomanassaṁ?

Thank you!

15

This is just a comment on the translation of these two terms (abhijjhā and domanassa). In his early work (for example, in the Majjhima Nikāya translation) Bhikkhu Bodhi translated them as “covetousness” and “grief.” More recently, though, he has changed to “longing” and “dejection.” My own sense, from the contexts in which these terms are used, is that they refer to two polar opposites in one’s relationship to the world: “avaricious longing,” on the one hand, and “downhearted disinterest” on the other. In other words, they refer to being over-engaged (wanting to grab any possible kind of pleasure) vs. under-engaged (being depressed and detached) with respect to things in the world. To some extent these map onto the first two of the five hindrances (which I like to translate as “passion” and “aversion”), but they also have additional nuances of their own.

16

Thanks to the OP who posted this query, and to all of those who have sent replies. This is a very interesting topic! It’s certainly true that there are many abbreviations in Pāli suttas (usually framed as “a … pe … z” in most cases, with the first and last items mentioned, rather than just the first and second). But what’s interesting about this one is that abhijjhā is only rarely listed as the first of the five hindrances (usually it’s kāmacchanda), and—so far as I’ve been able to determine—domanassa is never included as one of the five. So this appears to be not a standard canonical abbreviation, but rather a case where the commentator (Buddhaghosa) was struggling to align the unusual compound of abhijjhādomanassa with categories that were already established in Buddhist discourse. I would be very interested to hear what others have to say about this.

17

My opinion (which admittedly is not worth much) is that this is exactly what is going on. I think attempts to explain it as a type of canonnical abbreviation is misguided.

I have always understood the peyyāla technique to be something done when the suttas were written down. Does anyone actually believe that the Buddha was saying pe all the time?

Welcome to the forum! Glad to have you here.

18

Yes, that seems to be the implication.

Right. “Rid of covetousness and displeasure for the world” represents the Pali phrase vineyya loke abhijjhā-domanassaṁ, which is an absolutive, indicating an action that has been completed, “having removed desire and aversion for the world.”

Yes. The mind is already quite pure, to the extent that you have sufficient mindfulness to be able to do breath meditation. That meditation then leads you on to the full abandonment of all defilements, at which point you enter samādhi proper, that is , the jhānas.

The removal of the five hindrances is here essentially equivalent to sammāsati, that is, satipaṭṭhāna or breath meditation. You may have noticed that immediately before the abandoning of the five hindrances MN 51 speaks of seclusion, which is a common indication in the Suttas that we are dealing with meditation, specifically satipaṭthāna.

Again, yes. “Rid of desire and aversion for the world” refers only to the coarser aspects of the five hindrances. "Quite secluded from the five hindrances” refers to the overcoming of all defilements. Meditation is what engenders the move from one to the other.

The phrase abhijjhādomanassa is also found in the sense restraint formula. Here the purpose is to avoid these defilements through restraint of the senses, that is, not reacting to sense input with either desire or displeasure/aversion. This then leads naturally to the satipaṭṭhāna formula where these have been given up.

Hmmm … :thinking: Does this answer bear any relationship to your question? :slightly_smiling_face:

19

Yes, this seems reasonable. Using pe saves a lot of palm leaves!

20

Venerable, couldn’t vineyya also be read as an optative?