Hi Ven, thanks for the convincing argument, and also thanks for taking to time to offer an alternative that actually reads as English!
In fact I think the argument could be made simpler, that the translations by Bodhi and myself are simply wrong, because of distributing the negative incorrectly. This becomes apparent in the third clause.
Bodhi: Is there both something else and nothing else?
Sujato: Do both something else and nothing else exist?
This places the positive/negative dichotomy on the “something else”. But that would be something like:
atthi aññaṁ ca kiñci naññaṁ ca kiñci
Whereas the Pali places the dichotomy on the verb, per your translation:
atthi ca natthi ca aññaṁ kiñci
does something else both still exist and no longer exist
And I agree, this also makes the parallels with the other relevant passages quite compelling. I’ll review them and change them accordingly. I could do with some help here, it’ll be tricky to get everything done, as such phrases are not always standardized!
And you would win that bet!
I recently had a chat on this exact point. It seems to be something that has gained traction in the idea-o-sphere? Anyway, Buddhaghosa in Vsm traces nirodha (in a rather passing way) to its root sense of “obstruction”. This has been used by some, notably Phra Payutto in his book on dependent origination in the 90s, to argue that nirodha in dependent origination means not that things “cease” but that they are “not an obstacle” or “are not a problem”.
The rhetoric this argument is leveraging, I think, is the notion that Buddhaghosa’s approach (which of course is the approach of the Mahavihara, not Buddhaghosa personally) has an annihilationist streak, but even then he doesn’t take nirodha to be annihilation.
This became the second of the Great Ajahn Brahm Controversies (after he dared suggest that not everything practiced in the Ajahn Chah tradition was found in the Vinaya). Payutto’s translator sent him the book, AB wrote a rebuttal of it, and was hauled up before Ajahn Sumedho and others at Wat Nanachat for a dressing-down, apparently for the crime of disagreeing with a senior monk in a private letter. Of course the issue was not what he said but the way he said it. Not coincidentally, however, it disproved Ajahn Sumedho’s own interpretation of dependent origination.
Anyway, monastic history aside, AB made the very good point that meaning derives from usage, not etymology, and that in the case of central doctrines like dependent origination it is usually possible to find a place where the meaning is definitively stated. He cited the Mahanidanasutta, where nirodha is replaced with:
Jāti ca hi, ānanda, nābhavissa sabbena sabbaṁ sabbathā sabbaṁ kassaci kimhici
Suppose there were totally and utterly no rebirth for anyone anywhere.
Which could hardly be more emphatic. The commentary to this passage says:
sabbākārena sabbā sabbena sabhāvena sabbā jāti nāma yadi na bhaveyya
(Rephrasing the original)
And later:
Jātinirodhāti jātivigamā, jātiabhāvāti attho
“cessation of rebirth” means “disappearance of rebirth, non-existence of rebirth”.
In the key definition in the commentary to SN 12.1, the commentary says:
Nirodho hotīti anuppādo hoti
“It ceases” means “it does not arise”.
There are any number of other passages that could be cited in support of this, but that should be enough. Nirodha means “cessation”, and the commentaries are perfectly well aware of this.