was wondering about sabbamatthī, and translating it as “All exists” can’t sabbam also mean wholly or entirely? "All exists sounds like something that no-one believes, while wholly or entirely are sort of suggestive of “really” existing, which would make the statment a bit more comprehensible, sort of like “entirley existant” versus “entirley illusiary” rather than “everything (including unicorns) exists” vs "nothing (at all) exists)
Does this make any sense to anyone else or am i talking to myself again?
I find that I am talking to myself most of the time too. I don’t know if that puts in good company or not. I think I am an outlier here. I tend to interpret things experientially rather that doctrinally though I do look for confirmation.
I think our interpretations are skewed based on what suttas we take most seriously. I think that SN 12.15 is talking about attachments to the mental states of ordinary men to the world, sensual pleasure and proliferation (one extreme), and the ideal state of astetics utter rejection of the world, formless states (the other extreme). The middle being a state of forms, or more likely contact without proliferation (the Bahiya state). This is partly because inspired by my reading of Snp 4.2 and Snp 4.11.
I interpret SN 12.15 in light of Snp 4.2, Snp 4.3, and Ud 1.10. Partly because I do not have Bhante @sujato 's background in Pali and his vast knowledge of the history of Buddhism, but mostly because I believe that the state described to Bahiya is ‘the middle way’. Since the state described to Bahiya is experiential, the extremes would be too. It is possible I am making connections that were not intended, but the it does seem to make it all fit together better, at least IMHO.
In any event, thanks for bringing my attention to a facinating and thought provoking thread. I doubt I would have come across on my own.
The “All” can be translated as “whole”. According to Gonda it can carry the meaning of “health, perfect, complete” in the Vedas and early Upanishads and can refer to Brahman. Brahman is the complete, the healthy, the best as opposed to what is comprised of parts and so is incomplete, not health, not the best. So, we can read the All here as referring to Brahman/Atman. We could also read that in MN 74. Rather then than “All is not pleasing to me” it could be read as “the Atman is not pleasing to me”, meaning scepticism about the views of Atman at the time.
The mind at this point attains Deathlessness, although there is no sense of ‘I’ in the attainment. There is simply the realization, ‘There is this.’ From this point onward the mind experiences mental & physical phenomena with a sense of being dissociated from them. One simile for this state is that of a hide removed from the carcass of a cow: Even if the hide is then placed back on the cow, one cannot say that it is attached as before, because the connective tissues that once held the hide to the carcass — in other words, passion & desire — have all been cut (by the knife of discernment). The person who has attained the goal — called a Tathāgata in some contexts, an arahant in others — thus lives out the remainder of his/her life in the world, but independent of it
Cutting the tissue that connects the hide from a carcass cuts that which binds the two together.
Finally, with the fire simile, a fire is no longer bound to its fuel when it has gone out. The classification of out means that there is no fire to be seen in the vicinity of its fuel; this is regardless of what one might interpret the fire to be. Interestingly, even in English, when fire has been extinguished we don’t say it has ceased or no longer exists. We say it has gone out, as in away.
To treat the meaning of an idiomatic phrasal verb as if it were compositionally generated is just bad philology. As an idiomatic verb, the meaning of “to go out” can’t be inferred from its parts any more than the meaning of “to put up with something” or “to take after someone”.
In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit composed of a verb followed by a particle (examples: turn down, run into or sit up), sometimes combined with a preposition (examples: get together with, run out of or feed off of)…
Phrasal verbs ordinarily cannot be understood based upon the meanings of the individual parts alone but must be considered as a whole: the meaning is non-compositional and thus unpredictable. Phrasal verbs are differentiated from other classifications of multi-word verbs and free combinations by criteria based on idiomaticity, replacement by a single-word verb, wh-question formation and particle movement.
To quote my whole paragraph and simply address the second half of it is misleading. I will take it that you find no issue with the first couple of sentences.
Now, to you criticism of my final sentence. Idioms don’t come out of nowhere, they are developed over time.
For example:
To put up with something
It has been theorised that phrase to put up with something (i.e. tolerate something) might have come from an earlier phrase of put up (i.e. to take up one’s lodgings). The link being that if one puts up one’s lodgings one has to stay there even if it is unpleasant. Supposing this is true, we can then see the phrase put up may have developing from the act of someone putting up their bags at their chosen lodging.
When to put up with something is traced back in this way, we get an idea that the person is being tolerant of something because it serves another goal that they’ve established prior. They have metaphorically put up their bags on this lodging/goal and do not want to move; and therefore must tolerate what is unpleasant.
To take after someone
This seems almost a literal shorting of to take a given appearance after someone has taken it first. But I would have to do more research to see if this is the case.
Often (likely always), idioms develop from metaphors, the shortening of a phrase or from a novel story (see here for examples). Sometimes idioms are built upon idioms to an extent that the final phrase may be far removed from its origins. However, many times links to a potential origin can be seen.
With the classification of fire as out (in English), we might be able to draw the conclusion that whoever came up with the phrase didn’t see the fire as ceasing, but rather as disappearing from perception. This could have implications for any similes, metaphors or idioms that an English speaker might create with reference to fire.
Since the observation was to do with the English language, as opposed to Pali, it was not intended to directly support the other parts of my previous comments.
But seeing as we are on the topic, it is important to consider how a person may have viewed various objects when trying to understand any similes or metaphors presented by the person about said object. This is what Ajahn Thanissaro looks to do in his book, The Mind Like Fire Unbound, where he looks into ideas about fire that people had at the time of the Buddha.
Au contraire, I’m afraid I take issue with both halves of your paragraph, and my objection to the second half applies no less to the first. The only difference is that the “out” in Pali is conveyed by the prefix ni- rather than by an adverb.
Not always. Sometimes they take very little time at all to enter the lexicon, e.g., “sealioning”, “Dutch reach”, “head-desking”.
From the point of view of synchronic meaning, however, it’s immaterial whether words like parinibbāyati, nibbuti and nibbāna had undergone a long, rich and complex semantic evolution prior to their use by the Buddha, or had simply been invented by him. All that matters is what meaning they bore for him and his listeners.
When I stated that the meaning of a verb like “to put up with” can’t be derived from its parts I was speaking of synchronic meaning. The conjectures that you’ve managed to discover with Google, interesting though they be, are diachronic and therefore beside the point.
Picture someone learning English as a second language. She already knows the meaning of “put”, “up” and “with”, and she knows that English infinitives are formed with “to”. Nevertheless, this knowledge will avail her nothing when she first meets “to put up with”. Unless it happens that her mother tongue also contains a verb meaning “to tolerate” that’s made of the same components, it’s highly improbable that she will succeed at guessing what it might mean.
Synchronic and diachronic axes
To consider a language synchronically is to study it “as a complete system at a given point in time,” a perspective he [Saussure] calls the AB axis. By contrast, a diachronic analysis considers the language “in its historical development” (the CD axis). Saussure argues that we should be concerned not only with the CD axis, which was the focus of attention in his day, but also with the AB axis because, he says, language is “a system of pure values which are determined by nothing except the momentary arrangements of its terms”.
To illustrate this, Saussure uses a chess metaphor. We could study the game diachronically (how the rules change through time) or synchronically (the actual rules). Saussure notes that a person joining the audience of a game already in progress requires no more information than the present layout of pieces on the board and who the next player is. There would be no additional benefit in knowing how the pieces had come to be arranged in this way.
It’s years since I read it, but as I recall it was a very unconvincing effort. It depended on the reader’s acceptance of two very large assumptions: (1) that it’s meaningful to speak of “an ancient Indian conception of fire” (i.e., a conception that all Indians are likely to have shared) and (2) that we can reliably determine what this conception was from the Vedas and Upanishads, i.e., a collection of hymnbooks/sacrifice manuals and the records of the speculative philosophy of certain forest-dwelling ascetics.
Okay, so let’s review what I said in the first half of my sentence:
Finally, with the fire simile, a fire is no longer bound to its fuel when it has gone out. The classification of out means that there is no fire to be seen in the vicinity of its fuel; this is regardless of what one might interpret the fire to be.
I will use a different word to out, to make my point clearer. The fire is extinguished. Prior to being extinguished, it is bound to the fuel. After being extinguished it is no longer bound to the fuel. This is a readily apparent fact and does not rely on a special classification of the word out. Now, we could argue about what ceases when the fire has gone out - is it the being, is it the illusion of a being, is it just the suffering etc. But regardless of what philosophical position one takes, the fire has gone out and therefore it is not bound - i.e. the fire is unbound. Even if you were to take an utterly nihilistic position on the interpretation of the fire smile, this would not change. Suppose someone is shackled in prison and could not be freed. They may ask you to ‘free’ them from the shackles by taking their life. Whether they wink out of existence or not, they are free from the shackles.
I said over time, not necessarily a long time. The point was that these idioms don’t spring up fully formed out of nowhere. There is a cause or several causes, with the effect being the idiom. This must happen over time, whether it be long or short. The idioms can be traced to their respective roots. Sealioning can be traced to a story. This story would have taken time to propagate to various people. More time would have been taken for some of those people to coin the term. Then some more time would have taken for the term to become accepted. No matter how rapid the evolution, evolution happened.
Yes. However the meaning to listeners doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If the Buddha redefined existing terms and clarified how his definition was different from others, then we can assume that the listeners took this new definition onboard. To the extent that the Buddha did not redefine terms, we would have to ask what those terms would have meant for people at the time. This requires not only knowledge of the word but also knowledge of cultural context.
A final point to consider is that even when the Buddha redefined existing terms, he did not pick these arbitrarily. For example Nibbana literally means to cool. We can assume that this original meaning had some utility, which is why the Buddha used the word Nibbana rather than a different word.
The synchronic meaning only comes into play when the phrase is used after the idiom has fully developed. Today, when we say to put out a fire we mean to extinguish it. Yet if we were to read a text from a time that the idiom hadn’t become mainstream then the diachronic aspects become important. For example, suppose we knew that several hundred years ago people thought that a fire hid from view when it was put out. If we read a text from back then, this would have to be taken into account, as the literal meaning of putting out a fire would be to make it go away.
But let’s assume that the idiom has been around forever and that even several hundred years ago to put out a fire meant to extinguish a fire. Still, the individual words become important.
To take your phrase to put up with. Yes, to put up with can’t be derived from its parts. But if the term is repurposed these parts can come into play.
For example, suppose I said they told me to put up with him so I put him up in the attic. This is me using the parts of the word to find a course of action where I side step the spirit of the instruction.
Similarly, in English one could repurpose the phrase put out the fire in the following way: Did you put the fire out? Yes, it’s on the neighbour’s property now.
As can be seen, the meaning need not be restricted to the standard idiomatic meaning when a word or phrase has been repurposed, as was often done by the Buddha.
A final note is that in the absence of other context, we only have the individual words in a phrase to decode its meaning. This makes it a logical place to start when trying to understand the phrase. Later on, with more context it is possible that the phrase may be found to be idiomatic. Even then, we must see how the phrase is used or repurposed before dismissing the utility of root words.
As shown above, we can’t just assume what meaning the words bore in a vacuum. Firstly, it must be determined what the standard word meant for the Buddha and his audience. Then it must be determined how the Buddha repurposed the word. Finally, it must be determined to what extent such a repurposing may have involved a creative use of language.
An example with the word nibbāna:
Suppose that nibbuti means both to cool and to cease to burn. We have to decide in what sense the meanings should be applied to the fire simile.
The Buddha has, in other suttas, described the all as burning, with the implication that burning is painful. To be consistent with this, the meaning of nibbuti would need to be in line with cooling the passions.
How about cease to burn? This might be interpreted in two ways. One is to say that the fire itself ceases or extinguishes, the other is to say that there is no burning sensation. Of the two, the latter is directly equivalent with the meaning of to cool. Therefore it makes sense to take this meaning. What happens to the fire as an object is secondary. All that matters is that there is no burning (i.e. experience of suffering).
Nonetheless, people try to understand the implications of the fire extinguishing for the self. In doing this, they look at the issue of existence and non-existence asymmetrically. Existence is taken to be an existence of eternal self but non-existence is not taken to be the non existence of an eternal self. Rather, non existence is taken to be the annihilation of an existing self. This is inconsistent with Buddha’s metaphor of the fire going in the cardinal directions. Each direction has its exact opposite and by breaking this symmetry, one breaks the Buddha’s metaphor.
There are two ways of maintaining this symmetry. When Vachagotta asks, after death, does the self exist or not exist, one could say:
1.1. Before death the self exists and after death it does not.
1.2. Before death the self does not exist and after death it does.
(note that both are exact reciprocals of each other in the same way that North and South or East and West are)
Or one could say:
2.1. Before death the self exists and after death it continues to exist
2.2. Before death the self does not exist and after death it will continue to not exist
(note again that both are exact reciprocals of each other)
Instead of deciding that the Buddha rejected both options from (1) or both options from (2), people decide that he rejected an option from each (i.e. 1.1 and 2.1). Then they posit that the Buddha offered 2.2 as the absolute reality, which leads to some absurd conclusions.
If we were to keep in line with the metaphor, the we would have to say that non-existence of a self before and after is just as untenable as existence of a self before and after. If this is done, then the self must be left undefined; incidentally the conclusion that Ajahn Thanissaro comes to.
On your first:
That it’s meaningful to speak of “an ancient Indian conception of fire” (i.e., a conception that all Indians are likely to have shared).
I recall a textual analysis of the suttas showing that about 75% of people who followed the Buddha were Brahmin or Warrior Class. So, not all Indians would have needed to have shared this concept of fire. If I remember correctly, the caste system of India as it is known today was not present back then, which means that a Brahmin was likely to be learned in the Vedic texts. It would have sufficed for a majority of Brahmins to share the concept. Since the Brahmins often taught the Warrior Class, it is not a leap to think that a majority of this class too would have been familiar with it.
On your second:
that we can reliably determine what this conception was from the Vedas and Upanishads, i.e., a collection of hymnbooks/sacrifice manuals and the records of the speculative philosophy of certain forest-dwelling ascetics.
Nothing about history is reliable. Every work of a scholar trying to reconstruct the past is a best guess. If you are ready to discard all evidence against your philosophical position on the grounds of uncertainty, then you must also be prepared to all discard evidence for your philosophical position on the same basis. Blind skepticism leads us nowhere.
Regardless, the historical argument provided by Ajahn Thanissaro was one of several and all of these need to be taken together when trying to evaluate the merits of the book. I find that a common theme is that people tend to straw-man opposing arguments by focusing on just one aspect they find disagreeable. No effort is taken to absorb the entirety of the argument or evaluate it pragmatically.
For instance in the present case, all I wanted to show was that there were several good rationale for using the word unbinding. But you went ahead and ignored the essence of these arguments to focus on something ancillary.
Just to mention for the sake of the topic & others, SN 22.53 seems to be about the above subject matter & can help understanding the meaning of “upaya”.
Since the Anapanasati section of the Patisambidhamagga, for “sabbakaya”, offers an explanation of “two kaya” (“nama & rupa”), it seems the meaning of “sabba” here for the Patisambidhamagga is “all”. I suppose I am saying “sabba” as “whole” seems mostly influenced by the later interpretations of Anapanasati.
kevala
(adj-adv.) expression of the concept of unity and totality: only, alone; whole, complete
“Sabbaṁ” in SN 12.15 may possibly refer to “The All” in SN 35.23. I mention this because, in my opinion, SN 12.15 is far more simple than most interpret. This is because, as referred to in the OP, SN 12.15 was repeated to the struggling Channa in SN 22.90, who had a breakthrough because of SN 12.15. I think the term “the world” in SN 12.15 simply has the meaning as found in SN 35.82 rather than the meaning as found in SN 12.44. Thus, “the world” is simply referring to the arising of sense experience/sense bases; similar to SN 35.23 & SN 35.82 (rather than to the arising of craving, becoming, aging-&-death, etc, per SN 12.44).
Yes, your considerations make sense & are logical . However, while no expert, I am struggling if the Pali accommodates your view.
The Pali seems to only contain 2 x 2 words:
Sabbaṁ atthī
Sabbaṁ natthī
Sabbaṁ, it seems, can only be:
in masculine declension, accusative case, however there is no verb in SN 12.15 required for the accusative case.
in feminine declension, accusative case, however there is no verb in SN 12.15 required for the accusative case.
in neuter declension, nominative case
Therefore, similar to SN 35.23, it seems “sabbaṁ” is a noun or the subject in nominative case.
In conclusion, unless there is another grammatical possibility, for you, “sabbaṁ” seems to have become an adjective, which seems not possible. If “sabba” was an adjective", I guess the Pali would be “sabba”; such as in: “sabbasattā: all beings” (in Snp 1.8) .
@CurlyCarl
From name and form springs contact and from contact springs proliferation and self. I believe here we are talking about the feeling of being ‘in the world’ which implies proliferation and self [Snp 4.11]. I think you mean the all (‘the world’ , it is the world whose existence and nonexistence we are talking about in the beginning of the sutta)includes not only name and form(contact), but everything else after including self. In the state described to Bahaya in Ud.1.10, there was no feeling of being ‘in that’. That would imply presumably stopping at contact where there is still no feeling of being ‘in that’, that is in the world.
This feeling of ‘not being in that’, is the alternative to both ‘being in that’ (All exists) which is to say including self, and the feeling of nothing at all (All does not exist), that is formlessness, which excludes both name and form and contact. ‘Not being in that’, that is contact without proliferation and self, is the middle way. It is the state of the living Buddha.
To summarize:
All exist - name and form, contact, proliferation, and self
The middle way, some exist - name and form, contact
This is an interesting perspective and probably sums it up pretty well.
• (the) Whole/All exists = this manifest is all inherently existent / sát and the goal is merging with the manifest energy that is the world and that gives birth to it, or becoming an immortal deity / in an immortal state of existence within the created world (this makes sense with the Buddha deeming it the oldest cosmology, in that it may be less mystical and simply operate on the idea that the created world is manifest and existent, and the goal is heaven or continual cycling through it, etc., as opposed to it all being ultimately deceptive of the Absolute).
• (the) Whole/All does not exist = the manifest world is ultimately born of the unmanifest ásat, and thus the goal is merging with that outside of the All (which, for Buddhists, amounts to profound formless states)
The Middle Way is seeing that the manifest world is conditioned and that there is no Absolute / unmanifest out of which the manifest is born, nor is the manifest ultimately existent and eternal in a kind of shifting mass of existence/brahman. The world is simply phenomenological experience which, with ignorance, will be, and without it, will be transcended (via the highest bliss—cessation, not formlessness).
Note: this is where I sometimes see later ideas of ‘emptiness’ ironically come to be near the same as ‘all exists.’ I’ve heard people describe emptiness as being like clay: inherently formless and out of which all is manifest, a kind of endless potential without any inherent shape itself. But this exact simile exists in the Upanisads (CU iirc), and it really just amounts to the Whole being inherently existent as some form of brahman which manifests itself as diversity, and with which we can merge (emptiness is seen as equivalent to the nibbānadhātu). The ‘All’ ends up existing, but as some kind of unity or some kind of inherent plurality shaped of emptiness (which the Buddha also discusses in this context and rejects).
Thanks. Possibly you never clearly understood what I posted. I posted in SN 22.90, there was a monk named Channa who was struggling to understand impermanence & not-self. SN 22.90 says:
…the senior mendicants said to Venerable Channa:
“Reverend Channa, form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness are impermanent. Form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness are not-self. All conditions are impermanent. All things are not-self.”
Then Venerable Channa thought, “I too think in this way. … And yet my mind isn’t eager, confident, settled, and decided about the stilling of all activities, the letting go of all attachments, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment. Anxiety and grasping arise. And the mind reverts to thinking: ‘So then who exactly is my self?’ But that doesn’t happen for someone who sees the teaching. Who can teach me the Dhamma so that I can see the teaching?”
Therefore, as I suggested, it seems, in its introductory teaching about the arising & cessation of the world, SN 12.15 / SN 22.90 cannot refer to the entirety of Dependent Origination as “the world” because Channa was still immersed in self-views.
No. I clearly said “the world” in SN 12.15, unlike in SN 12.44, does not include “everything else after including self”; because this would be too difficult for Channa to understand. Channa still viewed a self therefore if Channa had penetrative comprehension of Dependent Origination this would have occurred during the final part of the Sutta; after it says: “The Tathagata teaches Dhamma from the Middle…”
It seems impossible that Channa would have viewed the term “arising of the world” to mean “arising of self-view” and viewed the term “cessation of the world” to mean “cessation of self-view”.
The above general principle may be related to SN 12.15 & SN 22.90, which is why I emphasised “the world” meaning “the arising & passing of the sense spheres or contact” per SN 35.82. Imo, it was from comprehending the arising & passing of the sphere spheres that Channa came to have an insight into the ending of self-view.
But you posted the opposite. You posted “the world” means “the arising of self-view” therefore Channa primarily comprehended the arising & ceasing of self-view when “self-view” was not even mentioned at the start of the sutta and only mentioned in the middle of the sutta.
The Bahiya Sutta seems about internally relinquishing self-view where SN 12.15 is about common worldly everyday views of the external world.
I doubt the term “natthita” in SN 12.15 refers to formlessness. The word “natthi” (such as in SN 44.10) generally refers to a contradictory belief that something that is viewed to inherently exist no longer/does not exist. Otherwise, it is the view that everything is an illusion. In other words, it does not view experience in terms of elements (dhatu), aggregates (khandha), etc.
No. SN 12.15 seems to clearly say the word translated as “existence” (“atthita”) is a wrong view. SN 12.5 says: “‘Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence and non-existence… when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence regarding the world”. Therefore, it seems the middle-way cannot mean “some existence” (“some atthita”).
There are the following words in SN 12.15:
atthita = existence
natthita = non-existence; denial; nihilism
samudaya = arising
nirodha = cessation
‘atthita’ does not mean ‘samudaya’. When ‘samudaya’ occurs this does not mean ‘atthita’ occurs
‘natthita’ does not mean ‘nirodha’. When ‘nirodha’ occurs this does not mean ‘natthita’ occurs
SN 12.15 seems to simply say “the world” & notions about “the world”:
arise (samudaya) & pass (nirodha) due to the arising & passing sense contact (start of SN 12.15)
arise & pass due to self-views (middle of SN 12.15)
arise & pass due to twelve conditions of dependent origination (end of SN 12.15)
SN 12.15 does not seem to say the existence (atthita) & non-existence (natthita) of the world arises & passes.
We may have to agree to disagree, but let me clarify my logic further.
The translation of SN12.15 by Bhante @sujato says this
To avoid the extremes of all exist and all do not exist, some exist.
My understanding is that there is no punctuation in Pali. Perhaps, the above quote should read:
This is more intelligible.
Right view is the middle way. It is necessary to use the concept of dependent arising to show and explain the sequence of states that can actually arise and cease, but the point is to motivate the set of states that do exist or do not exist within awareness.
The internal world’s existence or non-existence is within consciousness and it is there that it can arise and cease.
All exist - name and form, contact, proliferation, and self (this is the state of the ordinary person)
All does not exist, formlessness (this is the idea state of the astetic)
To avoid the extreme some exist - name and form, contact
This last group is the state of mind described to Bahiya by the Buddha. If this isn’t the whole point of the sutta, it is an amazing coincidence.
My impression is the quote above is the closing sentence pertaining to the following:
“Sir, they speak of this thing called ‘right view (sammādiṭṭhi)’. How is right view defined?”
“Kaccāna, this world mostly relies on the dual notions of existence (atthita) and non-existence (natthita).
But when you truly see the origin (samudaya) of the world withright understanding (sammappaññā), you won’t have the notion of non-existence (natthitā) regarding the world. And when you truly see the cessation (nirodha) of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence (atthitā) regarding the world.
The world is for the most part shackled by attraction, grasping, and insisting.
But if—when it comes to this attraction, grasping, mental fixation, insistence, and underlying tendency—you don’t get attracted, 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 about this is independent of others.
This is how right view is defined.
SN 12.15
To summarize, the above seems to say:
This unenlightened world with wrong view mostly relies on the dual notions of existence (atthita) and non-existence (natthita)
This unenlightened world with wrong view is for the most part shackled by attraction, grasping, and insisting
Therefore, the dual notions of existence (atthita) and non-existence (natthita) are attraction, grasping and insisting.
But SN 12.15 says: “And when you truly see the cessation of the world with right understanding, you won’t have the notion of existence regarding the world”.
In Dhamma, name and form, contact, proliferation, self, etc, is called “arising” (“samudaya”) rather than “existence” (“atthita”).
Mmm… but Dependent Arising includes formlessness as a type of becoming/existence (bhava) therefore it seems formlessness is also a type of “arising”. SN 12.2 says:
And what is continued existence?
Katamo ca, bhikkhave, bhavo?
There are these three states of existence.
Tayome, bhikkhave, bhavā—
Existence in the sensual realm, the realm of luminous form, and the formless realm.
kāmabhavo, rūpabhavo, arūpabhavo.
This is called continued existence.
Ayaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, bhavo.
I think of the wordier top portion of the sutta as the explanation and the more concise middle as the definition, but perhaps you are correct that the top is the definition, but I would say the concise middle is the summary.
In other words,
is the long way to say
and
is the long way to say
and
is the long way to say
or you can make the short version immediately above to be just another way to say the long version and keep Bhante @sujato punctuation by making it
Either way there are to extremes and an alternative way to avoid them.
With regard to the arising and ceasing with right understanding part, I think that is to say we usually transition from one extreme to the other creating the appearance of a binary. This is the dual notions that we are actually wrong about. We miss the alternative to the binary
I think I am an outlier here. I tend to interpret things experientially rather that doctrinally though I do look for confirmation.
. However, while no expert, I am struggling if the Pali accommodates your view.
