The elephant is actually referred to in the previous verse (nāgo). In the above quotation, Bhante Sujato translates adantaṃ as the wild beast. Referring, of course, to the elephant.
@johnk or @stephen What is the difference between damitaṃ and dantaṃ except they are just used interchangeably in the suttas?
I was confused with the flow of G&K’s paragraphs. While John’s answer key provides the complete section – AN suttas 1.306 through 1.309, G&K skips 1.307 (using SuttaCentral numbering).
Of course, I’m assuming we’re all model students , do the translations ourselves as best we can, and refer to the answer key only as needed.
With that in mind, G&K totally threw me off until I figured out what they left out. (I’m sure they had their reason, whatever it is.) Literally, this took me forever because I wasn’t familiar with these four suttas in advance and it seemed like something was missing that would help me figure out the meaning.
Yes, the meaning is the same. In actual fact, according to Cone, danta is the past participle of dammati (to tame), while damita is the past participle of the causative of this verb dameti (to cause to be tame). Essentially the same meaning though.
[Brand new students to Pāli: Ignore this discussion - we haven’t even talked about past participles and causatives yet. We’ll get to them both later in the course.]
John: Monks, I don’t perceive any single phenomenon that leads to such great misery as an
untamed, unguarded, unwatched, and unrestrained mind. Monks, an untamed, unguarded, unwatched, and unrestrained mind leads to great misery.
Me: Also, I don’t see any single thing else that is untrained, unguarded, unprotected, and unrestrained leads to such great harm as the mind does; the mind that is untrained, unguarded, unprotected, unrestrained leads to great harm.
I prefer a semicolon to a full stop in the paragraph above because the second clause, IMHO, has a close relation to the first clause as it, in fact, explains what kind of mind being talking about.
Re: Reading Passage #4, I got about 70% of the formula correct as the four scenarios progressed; however, I made these key translation errors which kept me from the other 30%:
trusted my knowledge not to look up janeti and confused it with jānāti – I just knew I had it right (um, no) …so I couldn’t piece together chandaṃ janeti
didn’t know that dhammānaṃ has a meaning of mental states in addition to its other meanings
Mis-typed the second scenario so that I repeated anuppādāya instead of typing pahānāya… yep that definitely made it confusing
OK, these formulas are more challenging than they appear .
The baus website G & K answer key is also very helpful as you can cover up the word by word translation while reading the Pali line by line. Many thanks to the authors of these answer keys.
No, not my work. And yes, this answer key on the BAUS site is very good. I don’t know for sure, but believe it was created by one of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s students of his class on G&K that he taught in 2014-2015. Each of the English translations are credited at the back of the document and many of them are from BB published and unpublished works. Since my answer key was created way back in 2005 when I was just a callow Pāli student, I’m sure this BAUS key is way more accurate.
@Dheerayupa, I think the clearest and most accurate translation of this section is by Bhikkhu Bodhi is in the BAUS solutions.
“Bhikkhus, I do not see even one other thing that, when untamed, unguarded, unprotected, and unrestrained, leads to such great harm as the mind. The mind, when untamed, unguarded, unprotected, and unrestrained, leads to great harm.”
The pi here is best translated as ‘even’, not ‘also’, as you have. And the evaṃ in front of all the adjectives (adantaṃ, etc.) conveys the sense that when the mind is thus unguarded and so on, that’s what leads to great harm. Your translation doesn’t quite capture that. Do you see?
@johnk Hi John, my husband has been hospitalized and I haven’t got the chance to work on homework. I will try my best to join the class. If not, will watch the recording later.
I must admit I’m feeling very lost as I’ve struggled through the book this week. It’s not necessarily the Pali that is tripping me up, but the really advanced English words for grammar. I find that labeling different cases/tenses as “nominative,” “accusative,” “vocative,” etc has little to no meaning to me no matter how many times I try to understand it. When I’ve gone to do the translations, I find that it is nearly impossible for me to decipher what a particular case/tense/etc is or how it should be translated.
I say all of this to ask: is this class the right place for me? The book that we’re using doesn’t seem to give me much that is usable to my non-expert knowledge of grammar. The De Silva is much more approachable, and I’m wondering if I should leave this class and focus on that book instead for now?
Hang in there, Monty, and give the class a couple more weeks before making any decisions about dropping out or not. Thnings might become a little clearer as we go on.
I’m sure there are some good websites out there for going over the basics of English grammar. Will have a look around later, but if anyone else knows of anything, please chime in.
Hi All, Just to chime in and say I am right there with Monty. Lesson 1.1, ok, and 2 I got the gist, but totally bogged down in 3, going in circles flipping back and forth to the glossary and grammar. Yep, my understanding of grammar in general is definitely a hindrance. But looking forward to class and see if I can pick up a bit more.
I struggled a lot when I first met Pali. Pali is like a woman (no sexist here). She is a mysterious woman from the ancient time and many men (people) tried to understand her and wrote a book about her from where they stood and understood.
Also, I’ve found @stephen’s online course on Pali Primer helps me a lot.
Last but not least, I have confidence in John’s dhamma practice that he will not frown on us when we look and sound stupid in class and ask lots of questions. After all, it’s hard to understand a woman.
Many years ago I went part way through this textbook. This is an example of a way of “explaining” a pali sentence. [I learnt it from source: http://buddhism.lib.ntu.edu.tw/BDLM/en/lesson/pali/lesson_pali3.htm ]
Nāhaṁ, bhikkhave, aññaṁ ekadhammam pi samanupassāmi yaṁ evaṁ adantaṁ aguttaṃ arakkhitaṃ asaṃvutaṃ mahato anatthāya saṁvattati yathayidaṁ, bhikkhave, cittaṁ. (Monks, I do not recognize a single thing other than the mind, which leads to such harm when untrained, unguarded, unprotected and unrestrained.)
This sentence consists of two syntactically separate clauses.
Nāhaṁ, bhikkhave, aññaṁ ekadhammam pi samanupassāmi…yathayidaṁ, bhikkhave, cittaṁ. (I do not recognize even a single thing but the mind, oh monks) (even any other single thing like this: the mind > a single thing other than the mind)
The subject is ahaṃ (I, personal pronoun 1st person nom.sg.). The verb is samanupassāmi (see, 1st person sg. present) modified by na (do not, ind.) and by pi (also or emphasis). There is a compound object aññaṁ ekadhammam …yathayidaṁ, cittaṁ (a single other thing like this: the mind) ekadhammaṃ (a single thing m.acc.sg. eka + dhamma -a stem) is modified by aññaṃ (other, m.acc.sg.). The adverb-relative pronoun yathayidaṃ (yathā, like, adv, idaṃ, this dem. pron. m.acc.sg) makes the comparison to cittaṃ (mind n.acc.sg)
There is a clause linked by the relative pronoun yaṃ to ekadhammaṃ
yaṁ evaṁ adantaṁ aguttaṃ arakkhitaṃ asaṃvutaṃ mahato anatthāya saṁvattati (which thus untrained, unguarded, unprotected, unrestrained, leads to great harm)
The subject is yaṁ (which, relative pronoun referring to ekadhammaṃ, n.nom.sg., stem ya) modified by adantaṃ, aguttaṃ, arakkhitaṃ asaṃvutaṃ (untrained, unguarded, unprotected, unrestrained, all n.nom.sg. -a stem). The verb is saṃvattati (leads to, 3rd person sg present). The sentence is modified by the adverb evaṃ (thus, so, in this way ind.). **It has the attribute anatthāya (harm, m. dat. sg. an+attha -a stem) modified by mahato (great, m. dat. sg. -ant stem). The vocative Bhikkhave (O monks, m. voc. pl. -u stem) and the clitic iti (“”, ind.) make the sentence a statement said to the monks.
Thanks for sharing, Matthew. I’m sure you are not the only one!
Unfortunately, we didn’t get time to go through #s 3 and 4 from the first set of exercises today, but they will be the first thing we tackle during our next lesson.
, do the translations ourselves as best we can, and refer to the answer key only as needed.
(um, no) …so I couldn’t piece together chandaṃ janeti
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