'Kāya' and 'body' in context

Essays
5

Hi Gabriel.

Kāya appears:

In Bṛhaddevatā.

In Shulba sutra of Kātyāyana.
Again, in that śrautasūtra, kāya means the upper (part of the) body (of men); and that latter meaning appears also in the Mahābhārata.

Kāya also appears as:

Akāya: bodiless, incorporeal.
in Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā (YV)

Mahākāya: large bodied, of great stature, tall.
in Mahābhārata
Note: Mahābhārata should be checked to see if this is early or late.

Nikāya: body.
in Śvetāśvataropaniṣad

Vṛttakāya: a round body.
in Suśruta

Etc.
Metta
Suci

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Thanks for these quotes, yet I take it as established that the Mahābhārata is post-buddhist. Just to quote Hiltebeitel

The epics (and particularly the MBh) make numerous concealed and knowing references to the heterodoxies and subsume the heterodox movements, including Buddhism, vaguely under the rubric of nāstikya, heresy… The Mahābhārata, and probably both epics, would thus have likely been composed (or produced) … between 150 B.C. and the year Zero.
A. Hiltebeitel, Reading the Fifth Veda. Studies on the Mahābhārata, 2011, p.11

For the Bṛhaddevatā I find anything between 400 BC and 11th century CE
For the Shulba sutra 600 BCE - 200 CE
The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is in the catalog of early upanishads, but only for the Brhadaranyaka and the Chandogya there is a broad scholarly consensus to be pre-buddhist. Next would be Taittiriya, Aitareya and Kausitaki.

Personally from my studies and the vocabulary and themes involved I came to see the Atharvaveda and the BU as the main literary influences, and the Rgveda for a general vocabulary background. The Chandogya seems to have been transmitted in a different region, it doesn’t pop up often in common themes and vocabulary.

Of course a lot is possible, but I like to be on the safe side and include only the books that are rather safely pre-buddhist.

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I hope you didn’t misunderstand me. The texts surely prefer kaya for the anatomical body. My strong guess is that originally the Buddha was using much more of sarira than we see in the suttas. That he used kaya only in specific contexts when he wanted to anatta-fy the body as you nicely say.

I can imagine the broad use of kaya-as-body in any context towards the end of his ministry, especially if he more and more dealt with dhamma-exposed bhikkhus. But I doubt it actually. He must have still met new people, brahmins, laymen all the time. They wouldn’t have understood kaya. They’d be like ‘he?’. That’s why I place the broad and general use of kaya to a later generation, where educated monks were mainly speaking doctrine among each other. They of course knew kaya-as-body and didn’t need an explanation.

I work with assumptions that don’t need to be followed of course…

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Are you kidding?
I see atharvaveda (if ever to be considered a veda,) as representing a very primitive stage of thought. It’s just a book of spells and incantations appealing to the demon world, and pullulates with notions about witchcraft current among the lower grades of the population.
Gee whiz, I have read Veda (and practiced [“lived”] it); but I would not touch that one with a ten foot pole.
As far as Buddhism is concerned, there is no mention of a fourth veda.

For the rest of the literature, I call on Wynne to decide. No less.

MBh between 150 B.C. and the year Zero !?!? - Holly cow!

Suci.

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I don’t know why you’re so outraged. We consider different sources and come to different conclusions. From my research I often came across words that are used in a similar way as in the Ar-veda. So with ‘literary influence’ I meant ‘vocabulary pool’, not much more.
If you have good scholarly work about dating the Mbh please quote it with reference. Thanks

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It’s almost right, but not quite. Please take a look at this discussion where we collected the references to the vedas in the suttas: External references in the Tipitaka: The Vedas

Maybe you’re interested to continue that discussion there or create a new one re. upanishads, Mhb and suttas? It’s more general in nature and has not much to do with kaya, body etc.

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I would not go on that slippery slope.

Trayo vedā etaiva vāg evargvedaḥ mano yajurvedaḥ prāṇaḥ sāmavedaḥ [BU.]
There are three Vedas: Ṛgveda is word, Yajurveda is spirit and Sāmaveda is breath.

Suci.

Note: Also, veda means knowledge in general. Not every knowledge is Veda.

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[quote=“Gabriel, post:1, topic:4216”]
The ‘body’ is one of the main objects of attachments… This range resonates with khandha…[/quote]
As a single khandha, the word ‘rupa’ is used for the physical body.

For a collection of ‘khandha’, the word ‘kaya’ seems to be used, such as in the term ‘sakkaya diṭṭhi’.

[quote=“Gabriel, post:1, topic:4216”]
ust as though there were a bag with an opening at both ends full of many sorts of grain… so too, a bhikkhu reviews this same body as full of many kinds of impurity…[/quote]
But is this referring to the physical body that has ‘impurity’ or both the mind & body?

This might be a conventional term for the physical body. ‘Rupa’ seems to have a different meaning (refer to SN 22.79), as does ‘kaya’.

Excellent distinction, which raises the question about what kāyassa bhedā really means. Thank you. Eternally grateful. :slight_smile:

Kaya can refer to the collection of aggregrates, such as in the term ‘sakkaya’.

Maybe he was not referring to the physical body.

As I previously mentioned, ‘rupa’ may also refer to fragmentation.

It seems more likely ‘kaya’ refers to the ‘fragmentation’ of the five aggregates.

For example, SN 12.19 starts with:

Avijjā­nīvara­ṇassa, bhikkhave, bālassa taṇhāya sampayuttassa evamayaṃ kāyo samudāgato. Iti ayañceva kāyo bahiddhā ca nāmarūpaṃ, itthetaṃ dvayaṃ, dvayaṃ paṭicca phasso saḷevāyatanāni, yehi phuṭṭho bālo sukhadukkhaṃ paṭi­saṃve­dayati etesaṃ vā aññatarena.

Bhikkhus, for the fool, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving, this body has thereby originated. So there is this body and external name-and-form: thus this dyad. Dependent on the dyad there is contact. There are just six sense bases, contacted through which—or through a certain one among them—the fool experiences pleasure and pain.

My view is ‘kayo’ here refers to the five aggregates since obviously the physical body alone cannot give rise to contact of external bodies & minds (nama-rupa).

:seedling:

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13

Knowing the geographical importance of the Kanva rescension, it would be good to delve a bit further into that shakha.
What the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa, and the Īśāvāsya Upaniṣad have to say about kāya?

“This ritual done now is that which the gods did then, at inception.”
Satapatha Brahmana

THE COSMIC MAN:
Late Vedic depicts the creation of the world (cosmos) as the sacrifice of an anthropomorphous being.
The dismembered body constituted the ordered cosmos.
This man is Prajāpati, or Ka, in the Brāhmaṇas. The early Vedic disunited: Puruṣa, becomes the reunited to be: Prajāpati.
Puruṣa being the disunification (विद्रु vidru ) - Prajāpati being the reunification (संभू saṃbhū).
In the Brāhmaṇas, the primordial sacrifice of Prajapati is duplicated through the sacrificer’s own executions; through symbolic identifications and rituals. Each major sacrifice is the reenactment of the prototypal sacrifice.

In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, the word of the dead enters the fire (agni); the breath into the air (vata); the eye into the sun (Aditya); the mind into the moon (candra); the ear into the quarters (dis). The dead person reunites with Ka, that is the teleological Prājapati.

Prajāpati (Ka) is also the creator. He propagates progeny. It is not Puruṣa, the “Man,” anymore. It is Prājapati, the “Lord of Creatures.”

The cosmos is mutually related to the body of the cosmic man. The configuration of the cosmos is that of a man.
Prajapati presents the epitome of a man. A man as a whole.
Man and cosmos are likened on both the “outer” plane of existence (physical body - cosmos’ spheres) and the “inner” plane of existence (mind and senses - animate components of the cosmos).
The mortal and the immortal.
“At inception, Prajapati was both mortal and immortal; his vital air (prana) was immortal and his body (sarira) was mortal.”
After his creation, Prājapati’s prana left sarira - Prājapati was cut off from the cosmos - and Prājapati (Ka,) became the typical example of a man.

The rituals in BU are just the way to recover the original state of unity.

The mind has a special place in that construct. It partakes in all physical experience - however it has the faculty to experience the physical experience independently.
The chief priest, for instance, partakes plainly to the sacrifice; yet doing nothing. The physical part being done by the lower priests. “Thinking” the sacrifice done by others is sacrificing by itself; at a higher level.
The higher priest gains an “unlimited” world; whereas the other priests win only one world each.

Note that the Brahmanic representation of Prajapati is such, that the upper half of the body is immortal, and the lower half mortal.
This also appears in the Shulba sutra of Kātyāyana - (and also in the Mahābhārata). The word kāya (as body,) is well defined in the latter two.

Kāya also means: “relating or devoted to the god Ka”. God or man, at this point?
How does Ka, the dismembered anthropomorphous being, appear in that Brāhmaṇa - and how might this concept be attached to the Buddhist concept of body?

Satapatha Brāhmaṇa: 2:5:2:13 Then follows a cake on one potsherd for Ka (Prajāpati); for by that cake on one potsherd to Ka Prajāpati indeed bestowed happiness (ka) on the creatures, and so does he (the sacrificer) now bestow happiness on the creatures by that one-cup cake: this is why there is a cake on one potsherd for Ka. Atha kāya ekakapālaḥ puroḍāśo bhavati | kaṃ vai prajāpatiḥ prajābhyaḥ kāyenaikakapālena puroḍāśenākuruta kamvevaiṣa etatprajābhyaḥ kāyenaikakapālena puroḍāśena kurute tasmātkāya ekakapālaḥ puroḍāśo bhavati.

13.5.3.[2]
kāyasya vapāyāṃ hutāyām tadanvitarā juhuyuriti ha smāha inānyathādevatam
prīṇātīti śailāliḥ prajāpatirvai kaḥ prajāpatimu vā anu sarve
devāstadevainānyathādevatam prīṇātīti
13:5:3:33. ‘When the omentum of the (victim) sacred to Ka has been offered, they should thereupon offer the others,’ said Sailāli; ‘for, doubtless, Ka is Prajāpati, and behind Prajāpati are all the gods: it is in this way he gratifies them deity after deity.’

Note that Kāya, as _"relating or devoted to the god Ka"_ (ṚgVeda - Śukla Yajurveda [Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā] - Krishna Yajurveda [Taittirīya saṃhitā]) [u]and[/u] the _"body"_ (Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā - Katyayana Śrautasutra [Śukla YV] - Śvetāśvatara U.) - have the same ideograph, namely काय (Devanagari) and ![](upload://kvAtBkl2wvLe2vtfeLqQaY4XScX.png (Brahmi). -------- What does the pre or post Buddhist, Isha Upaniṣad - but definitely around the time of Buddha - has to say?

The Pure Self pervades all. It is bright and is not bound by a body. There are no wounds in it; no veins run in it. It is pure. Sin cannot come near it. It is a seer. It knows all. It is above all and is self-begotten. This Principle duly allots to the eternal creators their various duties.
Sa paryagācchukramakāyamavraṇamasnāviraṃ śuddhamapāpaviddham kavirmanīṣī paribhūḥ svayambhūryāthātathyato’rthān vyadadhācchāśvatībhyaḥ samābhyaḥ

Good day.
Suci

(It’s shusi, not sushi).

14

Here are a few possibilities that apply to śarīra → kāya

Catachresis - a need for a term and the lexical gap is filled by applying a trope to an already existing word, such as in the metaphorical sense of Engl. wing as an a) organ, b) subordinate part of a building.

Polysemy - the existing meaning of a word (kāya-as-collection) acquires a new meaning (kāya-as-body), so that the word becomes polysemous with the two senses/readings (as we can see in the compounds where kāya retains its meaning-as-collection).

Reductive meaning change - Of two meanings one meaning dies out. śarīra was the pre-Buddhist broad designation for body in many contexts and in time was degraded to only mean the pure materiality of a corpse.

Speaker-induced vs. hearer-induced meaning change - clearly using kāya-as-body was induced by the Buddha because of its contribution to his anattā doctrine, and thus was speaker-induced. What we often struggle with in the ebt-studies is the hearer-induced change of the commentaries and the abhidhamma, e.g. in vipassanā.

Source: Peter Koch, Meaning change and semantic shifts, in: Päivi Juvonen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, The Lexical Typology of Semantic Shifts (2016).

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15

Splendid!

What also interests me is how the Vedic sense of Atman = body, shifts into kaaya acquiring the sense of “self” as in DN 9.

Edit - comparing DN 9 to its parallel DA 28, if you look at the section containing Citta’s chat with the Buddha, the Chinese has what in DN 9 is taken as the “acquisition of self” in this -

“Suppose, Citta, they were to ask you: ‘Whatever your past acquisition of a self: Is that alone your true acquisition of self, while the future & present ones are null & void? Whatever your future acquisition of a self: Is that alone your true acquisition of a self, while the past & present ones are null & void? Whatever your present acquisition of a self: Is that alone your true acquisition of a self, while the past & future ones are null & void?’ Thus asked, how would you answer?”

“ … Thus asked, lord, I would answer: ‘Whatever my past acquisition of a self: on that occasion, that alone was my true acquisition of a self, while future & present ones were null & void. Whatever my future acquisition of a self: on that occasion, that alone will be my true acquisition of a self, while the past & present ones will be null & void. Whatever my present acquisition of a self: on that occasion, that alone is my true acquisition of a self, while the past & future ones are null & void.

is rendered as 身 (body).

Plus, in the discussion of the different “acquisitions of self”, the Chinese has the same 身 applied to the different types of “acquisition of self” including 有想無想處天身 (neither percipient nor non-percipient divine body).

While some scholars treat the DN/DA collections as late, it strikes me as singularly odd that for a late collection, the vocabulary is unusually early.

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Very interesting! So do I understand correctly that the Chinese here takes the pali ‘atta’ as ‘body’ like some of the upanishads do?

I think there are many good reasons to see the DN as a late collection as a corpus. But that doesn’t tell us what the parts of the collection are made of. It seems like a hotchpotch really. Some of the wording strikes as old - like here atta-as-body.

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I’m not aware of any other way to read this.

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1) re Gabriel 2017-02-03 19:45:37 UTC #7
“… I place the broad and general use of kaya to a later generation, where
educated monks were mainly speaking doctrine among each other…”

Reading this concretized a suspicion that had been creeping-in while reading so far, namely that the whole idea of having “actual” words from the Buddha is something of a stretch. We have layer upon layer of later reports, spanning hundreds of years… Also made explicit later in the mention of “Speaker-induced vs. hearer-induced meaning change”.

2) re frankk 2017-02-03 17:29:55 UTC #4
Thumbs-up on that style of translation – literal with various parenthetical filling in pieces of grammatical (and semantic?) reference to help make the sense clear in English.

3) The title-topic here also brought to mind the great (Anapanasati) debate: “whole-body of the breath” vs “breath in the whole body”. And also a sub-debate recently here in the “Vitakka vicāra (Jhana-factors)” thread here, where the issue of a translation relating to “kāmā” went on and on for a while. Both these issues relate to the teachings of Thanissaro B, who I use as a main source for practice training. So a meta-issue that I will shoe-horn in here is the relationship between pariyatti and patipatti forms of endeavor. That is to say, at times the philological (pariyatti) issues appear less substantial from the practical (patipatti) viewpoint. Case in point, whereas TB may be technically incorrect translating as “sensuality” rather then “sensual objects” (or whatever it was), the distinction is less than crucial for the practitioner, and his instructions, by and large, are quite skillful guides to nitty-gritty practice.

While, admittedly, SuttaCentral could be said to focus on the pariyatti aspects, and the whole p_ariyatti/patipatti/pativedha_ idea may be more commentarial, has this perspective ever been discussed in this forum? Or are questions relating the philology et al to practice not proper here?

(edit 20160213:16:49 to add transition from 2) to 3) that got mushed 1st time around.)

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I brought up this question before. Check the thread linked below. Make sure to cast a vote!

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[quote=“cjmacie, post:18, topic:4216”]
The title-topic here also brought to mind the great (Anapanasati) debate: “whole-body of the breath” vs “breath in the whole body”.[/quote]

The Pali is ‘sabba kaya’, which literally is ‘all bodies’ rather than the ‘whole body’. The word ‘sabbe’ means ‘all’ rather than ‘whole’ (‘kevala’).

kevala
adjective
lonely; unmixed; whole; entire

kevala
(adj-adv.) expression of the concept of unity and totality: only, alone; whole, complete; adv altogether or only

‘All bodies’ is supported my MN 118, which states:

Kāyesu kāyaññatarāhaṃ, bhikkhave, evaṃ vadāmi yadidaṃ—assāsapassāsāassāsa

I say that this is a certain body among the bodies, namely, in-breathing and out-breathing.

This statement from MN 118 clearly shows the word ‘kaya’ does not exclusively refer to the physical body since the breathing is also called a ‘kaya’.

Similarly, the term ‘nāmakāyassa’ is found in DN 15 in:

It was said: ‘With mentality-materiality as condition there is contact.’ How that is so, Ānanda, should be understood in this way: If those qualities, traits, signs, and indicators through which there is a description of the mental body (nāmakāyassa) were all absent, would designation-contact be discerned in the material body?”

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re: gnlaera 2017-02-13 14:40:39 UTC #19
“cjmacie:
Or are questions relating the philology et al to practice not proper here?
I brought up this question before. …”

My reference to practice is meant more specifically to idea of using phenomenological evidence in conjunction with philological evidence, i.e. as additional means of evaluation. The various alternative philological hypotheses at times would seen to correlate with alternative experiential possibilities.

For instance, the “body-kaya of the whole breath” vs the “whole body-kaya breathing” (to paraphrase). My “teacher” Thanissaro B. insists it should be the latter, but my “teacher” U. Jagara insists it can be the former – both referring to in-vivo experience as well as the semantic possibilities. And in my own experience I can re-create both versions, albeit in different frames-of-reference (modes of meditation). On the one hand, with pursuing jhana using the PaAuk method (U. Jagara has spent the last two decades at that monastery), the mind becomes so intensely focused (starting with the breath sensations as the nostrils/upper lip) that the breath becomes
the entirety of “physical” scope of awareness, so to speak the whole of bodily awareness at the moment; and after absorption the mind becomes so sharp that insight naturally follows. On the other hand, using Thanissaro’s (Ajahn Lee’s, actually) infusing the entire organism with breath awareness, and then with “qi and blood” awareness (using the Chinese medical equivalents for what Lee calls the breath through the nerves and vessels), and finally the “still-points” of the breath (these three levels actually closely correspond to the classical Chinese jing-qi-shen levels). Then the meditation (of Thanissaro’s sort) I find to resemble Mahasi’s vipassana-khanikha-samadhi – matching every arising phenomenon with concentrated penetrating knowledge.

The point being that alternative philological interpretations might be also verifiable phenomenologically, or perhaps in some cases, dis-proven or at least rendered less likely. Minus some kind of rubber-meets-the-road evaluation along these lines the philology risks degrading into “mere” scholasticism – abhidhamma in the pejorative
sense used at times by those who haven’t bothered to understand it.

More examples have some to mind (in following various discussions), and might be worth starting a separate thread here – unless this runs against the grain of SuttaCentral conventions.

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Hi @cjmacie
This is exactly the kind of topics I (optimistically) assumed would be the focus of such new category/channel I asked whether we could have set up here.

However, if you follow the conversation in the thread linked, people called the attention that the chances are that it will become a huge mess like the existing practice-focused forums (as well linked in the thread /topic in question).

That in turn would overload further our already overloaded moderation/peacemaking-focused human resources - potentially moving them away from more important SuttaCentral development and maintenance workstreams.

All that said, I think it is really worth you consider to set up a new topic with exactly what you posted above. Let’s see what happens! :slight_smile:

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Hi @Deeele. On that point, are you (or anyone else) able to please clarify for me the correct phraseology for the line in the Metta Sutta:
Sabbasattā bhavantu sukhitattā
Or is it:
Sabbesattā bhavantu sukhitattā
Or are both ways acceptable?
With metta
Stu

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Having now, belatedly, read the previous thread “Should we have a ‘Practice Corner’ category?” (thanks for the reference), I note that random discussion of personal practice was not what I meant here. Rather the potential value of comparative analysis of philology and phenomenology (in practice).

(from that thread)
sujato 2017-01-15 09:23:39 UTC #12
“If someone says, “what does this Pali word mean”, I have one answer (maybe a long one, but still!). But if their question is, “My mind became still in meditation, what to do next?” there’s a million different answers, and I have no idea which is going to work.”

The subtlety lies in the fact that the “meaning” of the Pali word is often the expression of, or reference to an experiential phenomenon (e.g. a citta), or something about the quality of such (e.g. a cetasika), among many other possible aspects, but all somehow related to lived experiencing. And it might be possible to discuss in this direction, without being merely “subjective”.

AnagarikaMichael 2017-01-15 13:45:28 UTC #20
“Another issue that arises … when these kinds of forums exist, it is often people with degrees of pathology that seem attracted to these forums.”

This a the decisive issue, and, IMO, why “practice discussion”, per se, doesn’t suit SuttaCentral. Even with explicit focus on, say, “Sutta texts”, or “Theravada”, etc., pathological behavior shows-up regularly when a forum becomes “popular”. Has something to do with the nature of the “world-wide-web” (as distinct from “the internet” per se) and its interaction with (“defiled”) human nature.

Through another popular forum, I was introduced to the book “Saints and Psychopaths”, by one Bill Hamilton (available on-line), which was well worth reading. It offers insights into types of behavior that has proven valuable in understanding much of what comes out on dhamma/dharma-related forums, and being able to recognize tell-tale patterns early-on.

gnlaera 2017-02-14 07:24:55 UTC #22
“…the chances are that it [a “practice” thread] will become a huge mess…
…I think it is worth you trying to set up a new topic with exactly what you posted above. Let’s see what happens!”

My inclination is now would rather to study and experiment with ways of introducing phenomenological perspective into specific (philological) discussions where possibly relevant. It is a matter of bouncing pariyatti and patipatti off each other, but needs to be implemented in a way that minimizes, or at least critically reduces (in the sense of phenomenological “reduction”) the more treacherous “personal/subjective”
dimension.

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