On one sentence of the Kaccāna Sutta

Thanks, that’s a very interesting read. I’d love to see such an approach more in our field. Sometimes it feels like there’s so few, doing such hard work, in such a large area, that we just want to keep our heads down and get on with it. Anyway, I hope that with my translation, the initial version will be seen as a rough draft, and over the years it can be refined by many hands and made into something beautiful.

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I’d be interested in any insights on the effect this change might have on the statements about notions of existence and nonexistence.

One of the points that Sylvester made, and I filled in in detail on DhammaWheel http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=26456#p380442 was that the Northern versions (SA 301, etc) had the passage Bhante Sujato has examined between the statements on the notions of existence and non-existence in the Pali SN 12.15.

With this re-ordering, and Bhante Sujato’s translation, it reads:

“This world, Kaccana, for the most part depends upon a duality—upon the notion of existence and the notion of nonexistence.

The world is for the most part shackled to approaching, grasping, and insisting. But if—when it comes to this approaching, grasping, mental commitment, insistence, and underlying tendency—you don’t approach, grasp, and commit to the notion of ‘my self’; and if you have no doubt or uncertainty that what arises is just suffering arising, and what ceases is just suffering ceasing, your knowledge regarding this is independent of others.

But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Given Bhante’s clarification that the passage he addresses is about stream entry, perhaps the meaning of the latter could be clarified. The SA 301 translation reads:

Why is this? One who rightly sees and knows, as it really is, the arising of the world, does not hold to the non-existence of the world. One who rightly sees and knows, as it really is, the cessation (passing away) of the world, does not hold to the existence of the world.

This seems to be in agreement with the interpretation of the notions of existence and non-existence in the commentary in terms of eternalism and annihilationism, but perhaps, given Bhante’s interpretation in terms of stream entry, it instead, or also, refers to understanding dependent origination.

Yes, i tried to avoid the philosophical issues, as they are less amenable to a confident solution!

i think the order you’ve put it in makes sense. Seeing the “arising and cessation” " as they are" (yathābhūta), these are unambiguous keywords indicating stream entry. In the Pali text we go from that, then back to a statement of the nature of the problem, then back to stream entry again with the statements on having “no doubt”. Even lacking the Northern texts it should be obvious this is mixed up.

Regarding the presence or absence of sabbam atthi, of this I am not so sure. It makes sense that the Sarvastivadins would remove it, but it would make equal sense that the Theravadins would add it. I’m not aware of any decisive arguments on either side.

The passage is certainly about eternalism/annihilationism, which is one of the aspects of wrong view that the stream enterer sees through. I’m not sure why this is problematic; sorry, but I couldn’t make out Sylvester’s argument on the Dhamma Wheel thread, I’m afraid. I’m not aware that Nagarjuna was disputing this. The whole point, it seems to me, of his argument is that any notion of “inherent existence” commits you to a hidden eternalism. If it exists “in and of itself” then it is not conditioned, and hence not impermanent. Thus the sabhava doctrine ends up with eternalism. Obviously the Kaccana Sutta doesn’t overtly address the notion of sabhava, it’s an inference. But it seems to me a perfectly reasonable one.

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This passage has been the subject of numerous discussions on Dhamma Wheel:

And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

Some hold that any interpretation of the Dhamma that admits the possibility of an objective reality of external objects is wrong view, because that would be “a notion of existence”. Personally, I don’t think that the Buddha cared about the issue of the reality (or not) of external objects such as rocks or planets, and such philosophical issues are simply not relevant.

Oh, okay, yes. Well, as I understand that was a controversy even within Nagarjuna’s followers. I heard a Tibetan lama speak on this once, and he said that the Buddha’s teachings concern what is knowable, and that is always a relation. It seemed reasonable to me.

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Perhaps you could expand on “It makes sense that the Sarvastivadins would remove it…”

Sylvester’s argument was as follows:
http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=26456#p380455

… the loss of the "The All exists"and “The All does not exist” passages proved particularly acute for the Northern Buddhists, as their sutra became dislocated from the pre-Buddhist context. It does not help that SN 12.47 and SN 12.48 do not seem to have survived in the Agamas either. Even if echoes of the Upanisadic “sarvaṃ asti” survived in the memory of the Northern schools, it did not help that the Sarvastivadins adopted a similar-sounding but unrelated motif, which gave rise to so much spilled ink over the issue of svabhāva that detains Ven Nanananda today.

Let it be said - the Buddha was not in the least bit interested in the question of own-being or essence of dhammas.

If we accept the reordering of SN 12.15 above, then the Pali version would read:

… But for one who sees the origin of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of nonexistence in regard to the world. And for one who sees the cessation of the world as it really is with correct wisdom, there is no notion of existence in regard to the world.

‘All exists’: Kaccana, this is one extreme. ‘All does not exist’: this is the second extreme.

Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With ignorance as condition, volitional formations come to be; …

The Northern versions omit the bolded part. Admittedly, this is not a huge change but if it is omitted then the extremes are the notions of existence or non-existence, rather than “All exists/All does not exist”.

I agree it may be too obscure a point, and perhaps Sylvester could clarify.

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How could Sylvester possibly improve on your exposition. It’s crystal clear!

I checked Nagarjuna’s MMK 14.7 and it cites only that portion of the Katyayana dealing with existence and non-existence. There is no mention of the Sarvam Asti passage, suggesting the possibility that it had been lost by his time.

As for Bhante Sujato’s suggestion that the Sarvam Asti could have been inserted by the Theravadins in response to the Sarvastivadin’s “Sarvam Asti”, i think that is unlikely given SN 12.48. That sutta’s issue with Sarvam Asti etc seems to point backwards to the Upanisadic debate of existence (Sat) and non-existence (Asat) that it is unlikely to have been a reaction to the unrelated Sarvastivadin issue.

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What about the logical pair to a list that “in the darkness binds them”… a list of unbinding? Not sure if there are variations but I think it’s a stock phrase in the suttas; here’s an example from SN47.32:

ekanta­nibbidāya virāgāya nirodhāya upasamāya abhiññāya sambodhāya nibbānāya

[lead to] utter revulsion, to dispassion, to cessation, to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbāna.


Bhante, just wondering what category of list this might be?

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… the loss of the "The All exists"and “The All does not exist” passages proved particularly acute for the Northern Buddhists, as their sutra became dislocated from the pre-Buddhist context.

Maybe… possibly… but that’s really just one potential narrative. Also, all Buddhist traditions were somewhat disconnected from much older contexts. Sri Lanka too did not have the religious culture of northern India from the time of the Buddha.

There was also not one sūtra for “Northern Buddhists,” but instead many different textual lineages of the Āgamas throughout India and beyond. One of those textual lineages went to Sri Lanka and became Theravada Buddhism.

It does not help that SN 12.47 and SN 12.48 do not seem to have survived in the Agamas either.

There are hundreds of Pali suttas that are not found in Chinese, and vice versa. Texts in the nikāyas that are not in the āgamas were not simply “lost.” There are also many texts in the āgamas that have no parallels in the nikāyas. These collections varied to some extent.

Researchers have also found this variance reflected in the Gandhari texts, which are typically different from the Chinese versions and the Pali versions.

I hadn’t considered this, but I think you’re right. Certainly the terms “sabbam atthi” and so on have an Upanishadic flavor, and the fact that they are directly connected with a brahman reinforces that. (And, incidentally, gives a hint as the meaning of “lokayaita”.)

This being so, it’s likely that sabbam atthi wasn’t invented by the Theravadins, although it’s still possible it was inserted into the Kaccayana Sutta. Nevertheless, the point remains, as, so far as we know, there are three suttas with the phrase, and two of them have parallels, and in the third the parallel is not found. To me this shows that there’s clearly a sectarian bias at work.

Most likely the phrase was, as you say, originally a critique of Upanishadic ontology, but at a later date that became irrelevant, and it was perceived as ammunition for attacking the Sarvastivadins, so was quietly dropped from their recension.

It does bring up a few things. First, the phrase has its negative: sabbam natthi. What was that about? Could this be a reference to Yajnavalkya’s famous neti, neti?

And in the context of Buddhist tradition, there is of course the long term tendency for Buddhism to slip back into the eternalist ideas of the Upanishads. We see this today in the “original mind” school, of course. But the Sarvastivadins may easily be seen as one of the first steps in that direction. If a critique meant for the Upanishads was suppressed by the Sarvastivadins, is this an unconscious admission that their doctrine really was influenced by the Upanishads, or at least was leaning that way?

There’s an interesting idiom in SN 12.17, iti vadaṃ sassataṃ etaṃ pareti. It means something like “This doctrine leans towards (or “amounts to”) eternalism”. It’s this idea that forms of eternalism and so on might not be explicitly stated, but there are underlying assumptions that lead in that direction. This is the kind of connection, I think, that Nagarjuna was making between sabbam atthi and the svabhāva doctrine.

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I think here at least “northern” is just an overly vague way of saying “sarvastivadin”, since as it happens all the relevant texts we have are in fact from them (or related schools).

Yes, but it’s not a matter of simply assuming that if it is missing it must be sectarian bias. In this specific case, the vast majority of substantive suttas in the Samyutta do in fact have parallels. Most of the ones that are missing are articificial suttas (in repetition series and the like). To find the same idea in three suttas, and to have all of those passages missing in all the recensions of another school, when the passage in question specifically critiques the phrase that is the very name of that school; I could hardly imagine a more likely scenario for sectarian bias.

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My goodness, you’ve just discovered the first cogent argument in support of translating Nibbana as “unbinding”!

Well, it’s certainly progressive, as these items, or at least most of them, frequently feature in a progressive sense. At the same time, most, perhaps all, of the terms can be used as terms for Nibbana, so perhaps we should consider it as “progressive-identical”. In this way it’s similar to the list of defilements.

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Thanks Bhante.

Re your query on sarvaṃ nāsti, I think this and its counterpart sarvaṃ asti are tied to the issues of the source of the world being either what was existent (Sat) or non-existent (Asat) in the Chandogya U, 6.2.

By some perverse logic, even the non-existent is in some form/mode of “existence”, going by CU 3.19.

I think for a clearer differention of the Upanisadic sarvaṃ from the Sarvastivadin sarvaṃ , we can follow Olivelle’s suggestion to take up Gonda’s translation of the former as “the Whole”; this is a singular noun. On the other hand, the Sarvastivadin’s sarvaṃ meant “everything”, an indefinite plural pronoun.

The Upanisadic sarvaṃ also pops up in MN 1 and most of its Chinese parallels. Quite amazingly, the EA parallel seems to have translated sarvaṃ as 悉具足 , echoing Gonda’s suggestion.

AKA Indian logic?

:mindblown:

I’ve just been checking these CU references, so thanks for that. One curious detail I’ve noticed. In SN 12.48 we have a brahmin lokāyatika who asks “does all exist”, and the Buddha rather curiously says “this is the eldest lokāyata”. Then “all does not exist” is the “second lokāyatika”.

Now, in CU 6.2 we have:

sad eva somyedam agra āsīd ekam evādvitīyam | tad dhaika āhur asad evedam agra āsīd ekam evādvitīyam | tasmād asataḥ saj jāyata || ChUp_6,2.1 ||

‘In the beginning,’ my dear, 'there was that only which is, one only, without a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not, one only, without a second; and from that which is not, that which is was born.

kutas tu khalu somyaivaṃ syād iti hovāca | katham asataḥ saj jāyeta | sat tv eva somyedam agra āsīd ekam evādvitīyam || ChUp_6,2.2 ||

‘But how could it be thus, my dear?’ the father continued. 'How could that which is, be born of that which is not? No, my dear, only that which is, was in the beginning, one only, without a second.

So the oldest theory of the origin of the world holds that there was existence, while the second theory holds there was non-existence. Coincidence?

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Obviously, I’m guilty of thinking that in SN 12.48 and SN 12.15, the Buddha was thinking precisely of the problem in CU 6.2.

What does Bhante think of the subsequent passage where “it” decides to become “many” (bahu?)? Any possible connection to the 4th lokāyata of puthutta?

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well, it would seem so, wouldn’t it?

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But the Pali word of the text is upaya, which seems to be quite distinct from upāya. In sutta usage, the former can mean “defilement”, whereas the latter means something like “means” or “strategy”.

Could it be that the list also exemplifies the waxing syllable principle? If we read cetaso adhiṭṭhānaṃ as a single concept (which it surely is), then we have a sequence of three phrases ranging from 6 to 8 syllables, all in increasing order.

As for your translation:

This is really good and clear. I actually think I understand it, which means I can argue with you.:smiling_imp: (There are certain benefits to obscure translations!)

I only have one minor query about this: would it read better if the “if” clause is taken to be completed by the ettāvatā clause? You would then have something along the following lines:

The world is for the most part shackled to approaching, grasping, and insisting. But if—when it comes to this approaching, grasping, mental commitment, insistence, and underlying tendency—you don’t approach, grasp, and commit to the notion of ‘my self’; and if you have no doubt or uncertainty that what arises is just suffering arising, and what ceases is just suffering ceasing, and your knowledge regarding this is independent of others, then, Kaccāna, you have right view.

Ettāvatā is a correlative that normally relates to the foregoing text, and this seems to be the case also here. It also seems natural to me to take “your knowledge regarding this is independent of others” to be part of what defines the streamenterer, rather than this being the outcome of not having sakkāyadiṭṭhi. I believe this is the normal way this is presented in the suttas.

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Oops, how embarrassing! But in my defence, the two are constantly mixed in the manuscripts. So I have plenty of companions in error. I have edited the essay to fix this, I don’t want to create further confusion.

It could indeed, well spotted. The Sanskrit doesn’t fit so well, though.

Shh! That’s meant to be a trade secret!

No: ettāvatā completes the initial question, “kittāvatā …”

I translate this as “how is right view defined?”

In itself, I would agree. And this seems supported by what I think is the only other passage with this phrase, at SN 12.50. However, this part of the translation was influenced by the sanskrit:

duḥkham idam utpadyamānam utpadyate | duḥkhaṃ nirudhyamānaṃ nirudhyate | atra cen na kāṅkṣati na vicikitsati | aparapratyayaṃ jñānam evāsya bhavati

However, the “if” here is absent from the Pali, and I included it in the translation merely by inference from the Sanskrit, justified by assuming that the “hidden” if in the first clause of the Pali was distributive. Maybe it’s better to leave it out:

The world is for the most part shackled to approaching, grasping, and insisting. But if—when it comes to this approaching, grasping, mental commitment, insistence, and underlying tendency—you don’t approach, grasp, and commit to the notion ‘my self’, you’ll have no doubt or uncertainty that what arises is just suffering arising, and what ceases is just suffering ceasing. Your knowledge in this matter is independent of others.

I think that’s better, what do you think?

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You’re right, ettāvatā relates to kittāvatā. I didn’t look at the whole text.

The problem, however, is that I still feel your suggestion is slightly artificial, in that it breaks up what to me seems like one long definition of the streamenterer. I wonder if my suggestion can still be defended. The clause that starts with tañcāyaṃ is the part that actually answers the question posed by Kittāvatā nu kho, bhante, sammādiṭṭhi hotī”ti? and as such it is still closely related to the ettāvatā concluding clause. The part before tañcāyaṃ is more like an introduction that sets the scene for the actual definition. To me the whole thing reads more naturally this way.

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