Hello! This is my first post. Hopefully I’m using the Forum’s best practices and posting in the right place. If not, please let me know.
I’m in a Pali sutta study program (in English) and right now we’re studying the Noble Eightfold Path. We touched on Right Action very quickly, mainly pointing to the precepts and then moving on. So I thought I’d read about it a bit and have been working my way through Bodhi’s The Noble Eightfold Path and Fronsdal’s Steps to Liberation. I’ve noticed that when they directly translate the suttas they tend to use the phrase “abstaining from harming/taking life” (or similar) but when they talk about this aspect of Right Action without directly translating something they use the phrase “abstaining from harming/taking sentient life” (or similar). At one point Bodhi gave the Pali (pāņī, satta, p 44) for the phrase “sentient being”. When I searched Sutta central for “pani satta” I did not get any results. When I can track down a sutta that has some sort of definition for right action, I see the word pāṇātipātā, which the Digital Pali Dictionary defines as “killing living beings; destruction of life”, i.e. no “sentience” there.
On a practice level, this doesn’t particularly matter to me. On a neurodiverse, want to understand exactly what is going on level, this is the sort of rabbit hole I deeply enjoy roaming around in. Can anyone tell me what’s going on? The only two things I can think of is that (1) I searched wrong or (2) that in the Pali suttas it is “living beings” but either the suttas in another language or the commentaries it makes it clear that “sentience” was implied?
Sentient beings isn’t in the Pali. Instead the Buddha talked about breathing beings. That said, the breath could mean less biology and more the “animating principle”, which could bring us back to sentient beings i.e. those which are capable of experiencing suffering.
Thank you so much! So if I’m understanding correctly, what you are saying is that “sentient” isn’t in the Pali. The Pali talks about breathing beings. And at some point, “breathing” beings became equated with “sentient” beings?
There is a history in India of seeing the breath as the life principle. In the Upanishads it’s equated with the Atman. We see this in other traditions too. For example, God breathed life into Adam. Once again, the breath here is the animating principle.
This really has nothing to do with scientific understanding. Just because we can now measure the exchange of gasses that plants do doesn’t change the definition of what kinds of beings are included in the prohibition against killing.
