What an excellent observation!
1 Like
Bhante, can you please explain where do dreams fit into the Dependent Origination framework?
They are mental formations or constructs, but not intentional choices. There is a consciousness dependent on them, but not the same as during a wakeful state when we can make ethical choices.
Thank you.
2 Likes
Common dreams are lumped together with impermanent, unsatisfactory things:
AN5.76:15.2: ‘Reverend, the Buddha says that sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks. With the simile of a skeleton … a lump of meat … a grass torch … a pit of glowing coals …
a dream …
borrowed goods … fruit on a tree … a butcher’s knife and chopping block … a staking sword … a snake’s head, the Buddha says that sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks.
However, the prophetic Great Dreams might be of interest.
3 Likes
Yes, I don’t know really. The Suttas and Vinaya don’t say much about them. I would think of dreams as primarily to do with saññā, the processing of information and experience through symbols and images. Any intention in a dream is residual, and the Vinaya specifically excludes moral culpability for acts committed in a dream.
7 Likes
I believe it’s important to remember that dreams are just a conditioned process, and not some ‘window’ into anything but our conditioned existence. So they can be useful in a mundane sense, but are not transcendental in nature. Just my opinion 
5 Likes
Thank you Bhante,
Now I still have more questions regarding the term sankhara and its translation. So would you please consider my comments and reply to questions ?
RE: DN 16 – Buddha’s last words and sankhara
‘‘handa dāni, bhikkhave, āmantayāmi vo,
vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādethā’’ti
Bhikkhu Sujato::
“Come now, mendicants, I say to you all: Conditions fall apart. Persist with diligence.”
Maurice Walshe:
“Now monks I declare to you: All conditioned things are of nature to decay – strive on untiringly.”
Dana:
As far as I understand Pali, sankhara is a compound term, based on 2 roots sam- + kar-. The English term constructs seem to fit it quite well. Constructs, compounds, formations, conditioned things, are all common terms used in Science, and they all imply impermanence.
The scriptures define the Nibbana as extinction of craving, unconditioned , uncreate, beyond birth-death, timeless, an unconditioned element or state (Nibbana-Dhatu). Without it, freedom from rebirth would not be possible (Ud 8.3). Also the Nibbana is a condition, or a prerequisite, to arising of the Supreme Compassion and the Buddha-Dhamma (Vin. Mahakhadako, Story about Brahma Request).
Hence Nibbana is both a condition and an unconditioned state. So, I find your translation of sankhara somewhat confusing and limited.
Q1: Why have you replaced the earlier translation ‘conditioned things’, by just one word ‘conditions’? Have you considered using the term constructs?
RE: Dependent Origination and sankharas
“Avijjāpaccayā saṅkhārā;
saṅkhārapaccayā viññāṇaṃ;
viññāṇapaccayā nāmarūpaṃ;…”
Bhikkhu Sujato (SN 12.1)
“Ignorance is a condition for choices. Choices are a condition for consciousness. Consciousness is a condition for name and form….”
Bhikkhu Bodhi (SN 12.1)
“With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; with volitional formations as condition, consciousness; with consciousness as condition, name-and-form; …”
Bhikkhu Anandajoti (Udana 1)
“…because of ignorance there are volitional processes, because of volitional processes: consciousness, because of consciousness: mind and body,…”
Dana:
According to the Scriptures, the Buddha reviewed thousands of His lifetimes, so his review would have included developmental sequences too. When we examine animals and babies, conscious choice is something that emerges later in the species and individual development. Automatic actions and instincts seem to drive the developmental process first.
Q2: Can you please explain, why you translated the sankharas in the D.O. differently to the sankharas in the Buddha’s last words?
RE: Citta and sankharas
“They meditate observing the mind as liable to originate, as liable to vanish, and as liable to both originate and vanish.”
Dana:
Q3: Where is the mind, Citta, in the Dependent Origination context, which factors?
Thank you.
2 Likes
Hi Dana,
Most translators use different words in different contexts.
Here is a list of terms that Bhikkhu Bodhi and Bhikkhu Sujato use in their translations:
And here is the entry for saṅkhāra:
Bhikkhu Bodhi: (1) volitional activity; (2) formation; (3) strenuous exertion [7:16, 7:55]; (4) conditioned phenomenon
Bhikkhu Sujato: (1) choice; (2) condition; (3) active [effort]
1 Like
Well, in suttas Buddha says “cetana is kamma”.
For me, as a non-native English speaker, “choices” in place of sankhara is hard to reconcile, so I always do I mental substitution when reading. “See choices - read sankharas”. To me, sankhara is what constructs the context. Perhaps I’m influenced by Ven. Nanananda’s “Nibbana - The Mind Stilled”. There he explains that the word itself is related to actors doing make-up and decorations for a show, and he translates “sankhara” as “preparation”, as in “setting stage”. Nanamoli (not the one mentioned here, but another one) talks about sankharas as about things that relate to appropriation (making something “self”) and as a result construction of everything else.
But I like translation of “kamma” as “deed”, that’s pretty neat. 
1 Like
In an essay on sankhara, Bikkhu Bodhi says this about how he translates sankhara:
"I myself use “formations” and “volitional formations,” aware this choice is as defective as any other."
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_43.html
In Food for the Heart, Ajahn Cha seems to translate sankhara as volitional activity. I assume this translation is a translation from Ajahn Cha’s Thai. However, volitional activity seems like a good translation because it applies to all volitions including mental reactions, loose intentions, all the way up through pre-meditated choices and is, thus, more inclusive than other options. Volitional activity also seems less academic than volitional formations.
That said, I also appreciate Bhante Sujato’s efforts to translate sankhara in the simplest way he saw possible as “choices”. It just seems like sankhara might apply to volitions that aren’t necessarily choices.
For example, if I smell a pizza, the desire to eat it may arise, which I think is a sankhara. However, I may “choose” to not act on this desire; so, it seems it wouldn’t be proper to call that initial desire/sankhara a choice in this context.
But, as Bikkhu Bodhi acknowledges in his essay, it’s seemingly impossible to come up with a perfect translation for sankhara in English. So, maybe it’s just a matter of preference. And for me, at this time, my preferred translation of sankhara is volitional activity.
with metta,
3 Likes
It might be useful to look at the role of Sanna as related to Sankhara and the interplay between them
4 Likes
Thanks. And here is Bhikkhu Bodhi’s introduction to the SN translation:
https://dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?t=23352#p335218
[Note that the link to Wisdom Publications no longer works, unless you pay for it…]
2 Likes