Khandasutta(SN 56:13): who or what is the subject

The mind aspect of an individual human being is that which has/is the capacity to ‘let go/hold on’, ‘to know’, ‘to do’.

My way of seeing is that the living human being is constituted of mind, body and awareness. These three are the
trimodalities of consciousness (aliveness) which consciousness is appended by vis a vis. The human being is born of aggregate phenomena and has arisen relative due to causative factors.

“What is it that is conditioned to respond to a name?”
“What is it that enables ones finger to move or wiggle?”

What is the difference between the action of wiggling ones finger and contemplating wiggling ones finger? Both are enabled by mind, but one is an action and the other is a mental abstraction of the action. Discerning the suchness of mind, body and awareness is key. Words have a function and that is to make sense of experience as well as convey meaning to others which has been inferred into the word through the senses of the individual but often, to the one who does not understand the function of the cognitive process, can become a tangle, a maze, becoming lost in conceptual abstraction. This process is key in the development of reason, of rousing the contemplative mind, the mind of awakening which tends to the moment of learning.

It is in the similar way that one holds onto and let’s go of a physical object that one grasps & apprehends thoughts, mental abstractions, concepts, views and opinions. Often, out of natural ignorance, some come to be lost in thickets of views where they place concepts or ideas in substitute for the flow of unadulterated direct experience, life itself.

The one who sees the causes of suffering in relationship to their own unique situation is able to relinquish suffering born of understanding its cause in relation to ones unique life experience.

Ignorance, attachment and aversion always have some role to play which in turn give rise to other traits that give rise to strife, difficulty and stress.

Agency remains.

The sense of ‘I’, otherwise known as the sense of self, is the minds image that it makes of itself as a natural result of being aware of being aware of itself in relation to its existential predicament. The sense of ‘I’ isn’t all that a living being is and is a mental samskara, an image, born of mind. That which is making sense of itself is what one is and that is what calls itself ‘I’. This is also that which picks up glasses, let’s go of them, picks up a hot cup, let’s go because it is hot and responds to a name. The sense of self isn’t problematic either, more so, it is an attachment to a sense of self born of ignorance, of blindness and not knowing is nature, arising, function, as well as the fixed views, opinions, habits, rooted in ignorance, attachment and aversion that can give rise to problems/stress. One is more than an idea of a self but is that which the notion is born of. This is the blossoming of mindfulness.

One is ‘that which knows’.

Buddha: one who knows, one who is awake, one who understands,
Dhamma: the way things are, that which is actual, in regards to the particulars of the noble way.

Hi, if I’ve understood correctly? It’s the release or liberation of the mind or psyche from craving and it’s resultant misery.

Thank you.

Regarding:

“Katamañca, bhikkhave, dukkhanirodhaṃ ariyasaccaṃ? Yo tassāyeva taṇhāya asesavirāganirodho cāgo paṭinissaggo mutti anālayo. Idaṃ vuccati, bhikkhave, ‘dukkhanirodhaṃ ariyasaccaṃ.’

That would render the [logical subject] of “cāgo paṭinissaggo” with the object (this same craving) like this:

[the release from craving] is giving up [this same craving]
[the release from craving] is relinquishing [this same craving]

The verb in this situation is either transitive or intransitive. (I’m not declaring this to be absolutely true grammatically for Pali – I’m speaking very generically here.)

If we assume it’s transitive, then
[the release from craving] is performing the giving up [of this same craving]

That is, [the release from craving] is actually the doer. This seems logically implausible.

If we assume it’s intransitive, then we infer an equivalency statement:
[the release from craving] is [equivalent to one/you performing] the giving up [of this same craving]

This seems most plausible to me … the teaching would thus mean that I (or you) perform the giving up [of this same craving].

In effect, this is who or what is giving it up (and relinquishing it).

I have read helpful comments in this thread that effectively support the former – i.e, it’s a transitive verb statement. I haven’t seen any that support the latter. I’ve noticed some comments that appear (to me) to conflate the Buddha’s teaching on annata with a proper syntactic reading on the phrase in question. I admit I was taken aback by that – not expecting it.

So, my question remains as I’m not satisfied with a transitive verb here. But this is why I’ve asked and request continued elucidation on the nature of the syntax.

Beth

Hi,
I would take the feminine noun tanhā to be in the genitive/dative, (tassā as well) “of that very craving” not the object (accusative) of the nominative there (yo asesavirāganirodho “it is the remainder-less fading away and cessation” , etc)

(Yo asesavirāganirodho is referring back to ‘what is’ dukkhanirodham).

The verb is unstated , the copula is not required to be stated in this kind of construction.
(I’m not sure the copula -linking verb- can be considered transitive or intransitive. It seems neither)

In other suttas there is the phrase, tanhākkhaya virāga nirodha nibbāna : the destruction of craving (a genitive tappurisa compound), the fading away, the cessation, nibbana.

See Anguttara 4.34:

Yāvatā, bhikkhave, dhammā saṅkhatā vā asaṅkhatā vā, virāgo tesaṃ aggamakkhāyati, yadidaṃ madanimmadano pipāsavinayo ālaya­samug­ghāto vaṭṭupacchedo taṇhākkhayo virāgo nirodho nibbānaṃ.

Fading away (or dispassion?) is said to be the best of all things whether conditioned or unconditioned. That is, the quelling of vanity, the removing of thirst, the abolishing of clinging, the breaking of the round, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment. (Nibbāna).

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Hi, yes I think you are correct. Sorry my answer wasn’t very clear.

Here’s my amateurish glossing and translations of that particular passage:

Idaṁ kho pana, bhikkhave, dukkhanirodhaṁ ariyasaccaṁ—yo tassāyeva taṇhāya asesa­virāga­nirodho cāgo paṭinissaggo mutti anālayo.

Idaṁ this is; kho truly; pana again, bhikkhave Mendicants, dukkhanirodhaṁ subsidence of misery; ariyasaccaṁ noble truth — yo which is; tassāyeva just of that; taṇhāya of craving; asesa­virāga­nirodho the dispassionate subsidence without remainder; cāgo the renunciation; paṭinissaggo the relinquishment; mutti release; anālayo without the basis.

This is truly again Mendicants, the noble truth of misery subsidence – which is the dispassionate subsidence without remainder, the renunciation, the relinquishment, and the freedom without the basis just of that craving.

So yes it is the complete subsidence, renunciation, relinquishment and release or freedom of that craving and it basis or foundation, from the mind or psyche of the person who has seen craving for what it is and has developed dispassion towards it.

kind regards Ani

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In your particular case, difficulty about which you mentioned above, lies in inability to distinguish two aspects of ignorance, namely “I” I-making (ahaṅkāra), and self - ātta. Ātta or self in Dhamma is limited to the level of views, and is always associated with sakkayaditthi, personality view or embodiment view, depends on translation, each one has its own advantages.

And so, notion of ātta is removed immediately with the inside of the Four Noble Truths:

“This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence.31 But this one [with right view] does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’32 He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view. SN 12: 15

“I” is associated with asmimana, and so is totally removed only in arahat experience. In order words “I am” points out to the subject but merely asserts its being, while self is associated with more or less precise ideas of what or who “I am”.

And as you can see from MN 1 the task of abandoning ignorance on pre-reflexive level is visible only to to the sekha who is free from sakkayaditthi.

Nanavira Thera:

MAMA

Cakkhum, Etam mama, eso’ham asmi, eso me attā ti samanupassati. Cakkhum, N’etam mama, n’eso’ham asmi, n’eso me attā ti samanupassati. Majjhima xv,6 <M.iii,284>
‘This is mine; this am I; this is my self’—so he regards the eye. ‘Not, this is mine; not, this am I; not, this is my self’—so he regards the eye.

If N’etam mama is translated ‘This is not mine’ the implication is that something other than this is mine, which must be avoided. These three views (of which the sotāpanna is free) correspond to three degrees or levels of appropriation. Etam mama is the most fundamental, a rationalization (or at least a conceptual elaboration) of the situation described in the Mūlapariyāyasutta (Majjhima i,1 <M.i,1-6>) and in the Salāyatana Samyutta iii,8 <S.iv,22-3>. Eso’ham asmi is a rationalization of asmimāna. Eso me attā is a rationalization of attavāda—it is full-blown sakkāyaditthi. Though the sotāpanna is free of these views, he is not yet free of the maññanā of the Mūlapariyāyasutta (which is fundamental in all bhava) or of asmimāna, but he cannot be said to have attavāda.[a] See DHAMMA [d] & PHASSA. The sotāpanna (and the other two sekhā), in whom asmimāna is still present, know and see for themselves that notions of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ are deceptions. So they say N’etam mama, n’eso’ham asmi, n’eso me attā ti. The arahat is quite free from asmimāna, and, not having any trace of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, does not even say N’etam mama, n’eso’ham asmi, n’eso me attā ti.

Footnotes:

[a] The Mūlapariyāyasutta is as follows. (i) The puthujjana ‘perceives X as X; perceiving X as X, he conceives X, he conceives In X, he conceives From X, he conceives “X is mine”; he delights in X…’. (ii) The sekha ‘recognizes X as X; recognizing X as X, he should not conceive X, he should not conceive In X, he should not conceive From X, he should not conceive “X is mine”; he should not delight in X…’. (iii) The arahat ‘recognizes X as X; recognizing X as X, he does not conceive X, he does not conceive In X, he does not conceive From X, he does not conceive “X is mine”; he does not delight in X…’. This tetrad of maññanā, of ‘conceivings’, represents four progressive levels of explicitness in the basic structure of appropriation. The first, ‘he conceives X’, is so subtle that the appropriation is simply implicit in the verb. Taking advantage of an extension of meaning (not, however, found in the Pali maññati), we can re-state ‘he conceives X’ as ‘X conceives’, and then understand this as ‘X is pregnant’—pregnant, that is to say, with subjectivity. And, just as when a woman first conceives she has nothing to show for it, so at this most implicit level we can still only say ‘X’; but as the pregnancy advances, and it begins to be noticeable, we are obliged to say ‘In X’; then the third stage of the pregnancy, when we begin to suspect that a separation is eventually going to take place, can be described as ‘From X’; and the fourth stage, when the infant’s head makes a public appearance and the separation is on the point of becoming definite, is the explicit ‘X is mine (me, not mama)’. This separation is first actually realized in asmimāna, where I, as subject, am opposed to X, as object; and when the subject eventually grows up he becomes the ‘self’ of attavāda, face to face with the ‘world’ in which he exists. (In spite of the simile, what is described here is a single graded structure all implicated in the present, and not a development taking place in time. When there is attavāda, the rest of this edifice lies beneath it: thus attavāda requires asmimāna (and the rest), but there can be asmimāna without attavāda.) Note that it is only the sekha who has the ethical imperative ‘should not’: the puthujjana, not ‘recognizing X as X’ (he perceives X as X, but not as impermanent), does not see for himself that he should not conceive X; while the arahat, though ‘recognizing X as X’, no longer conceives X.

Is this related to the Pali grammar and syntax of the 3rd noble truth?

Hi
I hope this finds you in good health and peace of mind.
I understand the Four Noble Truths this way:

  1. Life with clinging is suffering (as per the summary sentence at the end, not Life is Suffering, which glosses over the summary sentence and focusses more on the preceding info)
  2. The cause is ignorance (including that there are wholesome and unwholesome desires and it is only the unwholesome ones that are to be given up)
  3. To end the result, one must end the cause. To end suffering (clinging) one must end ignorance.
  4. The path is taught in more than 50 ways in the Pali texts. Narrowly focussing on one would be dangerous and could easily lead to fundamentalism.
    best wishes
    Joe

It simply means: I let go of, or give up of self-attachment, which is craving, desire, for the cessation of dukkha.

For this, one needs to see: anicca, dukkha, anatta (or anicca, dukkha, sunna, anatta); e.g. in SN and SA suttas (p. 53):
Pages 53-4 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (158.9 KB)

Yes. Recognising what is calling itself ‘I’ as compared to the mental samskara is the bodhi process/reason process happening. No difficulty here because I see this matter clearly.

That is where the work is done. One learns to realise that the map isn’t the territory but still sees the utility of the map having distinguished the two. One is the territory the map aims to charter. Awakened individuals still use the ‘I’ term in conversation but are no longer ensnarred by the unhelpful aspects of self-identity.