Question about 2 Noble truth in SN56.11 Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

What about the part about the path:

‘This is the noble truth of the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering.’ Such was the vision that arose in me … ‘This noble truth of the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering should be developed.’ Such was the vision that arose in me … ‘This noble truth of the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering has been developed.’ Such was the vision, knowledge, wisdom, realization, and light that arose in me regarding teachings not learned before from another.

IMO, if we don’t insist on being overly literal (at least in my view), the point is that the practice has been developed, not the truth of ‘what the path is’ (thought you cannot really separate the truth of developing the path on your own and knowing ‘what it is’).

In the same vein, IMO, ‘abandoning the second noble truth’ means giving up the craving that leads to rebirth.

Or take:

‘This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering.’ Such was the vision that arose in me …
‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering should be realized.’ Such was the vision that arose in me … ‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering has been realized.’ Such was the vision that arose in me …

My view is that, when the Buddha is saying ‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering has been realized’ he’s saying he’s made an end of suffering personally.

I think it would be odd to read this as the Buddha realizing an abstract truth, without any application to his main project of making an end of suffering.

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A note from Ṭhānissaro’s translation of SN 56.11:

  1. Another argument for the lateness of the expression “noble truth” is that a truth—meaning an accurate statement about a body of facts—is not something that should be abandoned. In this case, only the craving is to be abandoned, not the truth about craving. However, in Vedic Sanskrit—as in modern colloquial English—a “truth” can mean both a fact and an accurate statement about a fact. In this case, the “truth” is the fact, not the statement about the fact. The fact of craving is to be abandoned, not the statement about it. Thus the expression is not necessarily late.
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Literally you could translate: “the origin of suffering, which is a noble truth (or ‘a truth seen the noble ones’), should be abandoned”.

It creates some awkward phrases if you do this throughout the suttas, though, which is probably why most translators don’t do it. But I think Ñanamoli or one of the Ñana-somethings had a translation like this.

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I wish someone would more clearly define the problem. As a non-native English speaker the English translation doesn’t sound very odd to me. For me a truth or more specifically a Noble truth is something to be realised. Unless one is declaring stream entry on this forum whatever understanding we have now is not the truth. Hopefully at some opportune moment, truly investigating the cause of suffering within oneself the realisation would arise! (ie craving). In other words craving is the truth that is realised.

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The problem is that there are suttas in which it is said that the second noble truth “should be abandoned”. Then there’s a spectrum of competing opinions on what to make of this.

At one end of the spectrum stands Mrs. Rhys Davids, who thinks that the word ariyasacca was inserted by mistake and simply shouldn’t be there. It’s craving that needs to be abandoned, not the truth about craving.

At the other end stands Ñāṇananda who thinks the text is just fine and that the Buddha is saying exactly what (in English) he seems to be saying. (A similar position but in a rather dumbed-down form is also taken by Ajahn Sumedho in his booklet on the four noble truths).

To quote from one of Ñāṇananda’s admirers:

In addition the Buddha says of the second Truth:

“this Holy Truth of the arisal of suffering must be given up (tam kho panidam dukkha-samudayam ariya-saccam pahatabban, Skt. tat khalu duhkha-samudayam arya-satyam abhijñaya prahatavyam).” SA, 379, 103c19, SN, V, 422 (56, 11, 10), Sanghabhedavastu, I, 135, Mahavastu, III, 333.

He says what he says, and means it. After one has realized the four Holy Truths […] they are gone for good, period, end of discussion, all of them and not just the second one. But Mrs. C.A.F. Rhys-Davids, in n. 1 appended to Woodward’s translation of the Kindred Sayings, V, 358 says: "But we must omit ariyasaccam; otherwise the text would mean “the Ariyan truth about the arising of Ill is to be put away.” (See J. J. Jones, tr., Mahavastu, London: Pali Text Society, 1956, III, 326, n. 1).

Mrs. Rhys-Davids, no shrinking violet when it comes to expounding and defending her attachment to the self (attā), shrinks back from the unholy thought that a Holy Truth can and should be put away! Heaven forbid! Is there anything holy anymore? Her pious attachment is quite moving.

The Four Noble Truths, like all Buddhist teachings, are meant to be self-abandoning in their success. When their job is done, they’re forsaken, and not cleaved. When they’re true (i.e., successful), they’re through.

Tang Huyen

The position taken by most careful Pali scholars falls in between the two extremes described above and has been presented in this thread by the venerables Sujāto and Sunyo, Piotr and in the link posted by Dana.

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That’s the way I read it. It’s a case of, “Oh, that sentence is odd, but you probably meant this.” Each of the four truths gets an appropriate verb … known, abandoned, realized, and developed. It’s the object of each truth that’s the subject, I would say.

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Could it be an ambiguity that exists in English that does not exist in Pali?

E.g.

It’s a truth that poverty causes crime,
we should make that truth go away.

IMO, in English it’s ambiguous whether these two sentences mean I want to do something to make it so that poverty does not cause crime, or whether I just want to hide that truth, i.e. I don’t want people to know it.

I don’t know the grammatical terms, but there is ambiguity whether the second sentence is saying truth (as in the knowledge about something) should go away or that poverty causes crime (as in a feature of the world) should go away.

The same sentences are less ambiguous in my native language, where the second interpretation is less likely.

So it could be that Pali simply doesn’t have that ambiguity; i.e. Pali speakers would understand those sentences as ‘poverty causes crime’ should be made to go away.

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I can’t speak to how it reads in Pali since I’m not a fluent Pali reader, but in Chinese it’s a similar case. The verb comes at the end, and so you can read it’s subject as a whole compound “the noble truth of suffering’s origin” or you can think, “Hmm, maybe it’s just the origin of suffering that’s abandoned.”

It’s a funny case because it’s only that verb that makes the problem. It doesn’t sound bad to say that the noble truth of suffering is known or that the noble truth of suffering’s cessation is realized. So it’s actually the verb itself that creates the grammatical problem contextually. Language is a marvelous thing to me, sometimes. People spend so much time arguing about words in isolation of other words, but it’s when you string them together that the fireworks happen.

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So I’m getting the feeling that there is no consensual understanding on the matter. That there hasn’t been for quite some time.

As such, we just do the best we can to extract a meaning that fits within the context of our overall understanding of the Buddhas message.

But what I am (painfully) comming to appreciate is that there is nothing that one should get attached to, including statements about truth. They are all tools :hammer_and_wrench:

Thankyou everyone for participating in this very illuminating thread :slight_smile:

May we all be free from suffering and free from delusion and free from attachment :pray:

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and leaves?
https://suttacentral.net/sn56.31/en/bodhi
:slightly_smiling_face: :pray:

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By the way, this translation of mine assumes a slight irregularity in the grammar, namely that samudaya in the compound dukkhasamudayam becomes neuter, while it is normally masculine (and thus the compound would end in -o). Some Thai manuscripts actually have it end in -o, and this is how we usually chant it too. But sometimes words change gender, especially in compounds. So regardless whether it’s neuter or masculine, the translation I suggested still works. A bit awkward grammatically, but not too much so, I think.

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