Sujato Bhante is off the hook!
Thank you for that. I don’t read Pali, alas.
That translation is Horner’s. Nothing noted in her introduction to third MN volume about 109.
The PTS translation that I can find online (pirated?) does show the “external” bit, but it’s not there in the published volume I bought (in about 1982).
Grateful for Horner’s translation, nevertheless.
A post was split to a new topic: Translating anusaya
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Translating anusaya
I can’t speak for translating anusaya because I’m not a translator. 
But when I think of “underlying tendency” and “subconscious”, I think these are different.
I understand the concept of the “subconscious” to be the operating system so to speak that is constantly running in the background, outside of our normal awareness. I see this as more akin to the 5 khandas.
I understand the “underlying tendencies” in Early Buddhism to be the “seeds ready to sprout when the conditions are right” as you put it. These can lie dormant for any length of time until specific conditions arise and when there is contact with a sense field (atayana).
I have to say that your description of how you have come to understand all of this is the primary reason I (sometimes force myself to) interact with the public on this forum as a translator. I want to know what readers think about translations and how they understand the subject as well. As a translator, I consider myself as an interpreter who sits between two groups of people: A group of people who are long ago passed away who lived in ancient times and a group of people who are alive today. As an interpreter, my role is not only to understand the speaker who lived long ago so that I can render their language, but I also need to check that my audience is understanding what I am saying, too. Even when it is another translator that they are reading, it’s still important to see what readers are thinking and how they are understanding what they read.
I must admit that I have not thought of the expression saviññāṇake kāye as an attainment of some kind. Rather, I think it is an alternate way of saying nāmarūpa or listing out the five aggregates, which are ways of saying “this mortal being consisting of both physical and mental things.” The reason I come to that conclusion is that this “conscious body” is what is subject to views of being an eternal self in some form, and the Buddha explicitly mentions the five aggregates when he discusses it.
In the Samyukta Agama, the question in MN 109 occurs in different contexts. And, oddly enough, the question was always asked by Rahula, which was answered by the Buddha in these various ways.
The first context is the five aggregates (SA 23 and SA 24), and MN 109 reproduces some of that material found in both SN and SA. Then it occurs again in the context of the six senses (SA 198 and SA 199), where the six senses are treated in same way as the five aggregates. That was as far as I have seen so far.
Just now, I decided to search for the question in SA to see if there is more context, it turns out that there is. In SA 465, the six elements (earth, water, fire, wind, space, and consciousness) are treated in the same way as the aggregates and the six senses. All three (aggregates, senses, and elements) are ways to analyze the mortal existence into categories that are physical and mental.
But it wouldn’t be right to me to say that these categories only describe the conscious body, they also must be describing all the external signs, too. So, these aggregates, senses, and elements encompass both ourselves and the world that we experience.
This holistic way of thinking of our existence becomes the context in SA 466, SA 467, and SA 468.
In SA 466, the Buddha tells Rahula that if he stops contacts that generate the three feelings, then they will stop and pass away. This will have the same effect of stopping the anusaya of conceit. So, here, the experience of the world with our body is interrupted, apparently, in order to bring a halt to feelings that we attach to. This probably does involve something like attaining complete equanimity, such as what is described as the fourth jhana.
In SA 467, the Buddha tells Rahula to contemplate pleasant feelings with the idea that they create suffering, painful feelings with the idea that they create sharp thorns, and neutral feelings with the idea that they are impermanent. This is another way to become detached from feelings in general.
In SA 468, the Buddha tells Rahula to abandon pleasant feelings and the tendency of greed, painful feelings and the tendency of dislike, and neutral feelings and the tendency of delusion. So, here, more of the anusayas have been brought into the explanation.
So, that is the reason I take “conscious body” to be another way of referring to the mortal existence. I would assume most of the sutras I’ve noted above have parallels in SN, but I haven’t checked to see if there are any major differences.
But after reading your reasoning and how you have tied various things together, I can see how Horner’s rendering it as “consciousness-informed body” could lead to these connections. It makes sense when considered outside of this larger context.
It doesn’t help either, that Horner did not seem aware that the anusaya of conceit is one of a set of anusayas, usually seven. She kind of glosses over the word, which is actually very important to understand the passage. So, that context is lost as well.
Right. I wasn’t being very clear. The subconscious mind as we think of it today is a general thing, whereas the anusayas are specific behaviors or reactions that happen under the right conditions. As I said, I don’t think early Buddhists had a concept like the subconscious mind, so they came up with this idea of defilements that “sleep” in our minds until they wake up and activate.
Question for you, then: When Gautama speaks of the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing, or the cessation of feeling and perceiving, is he not then speaking of the cessation of “choices, volitions, acts of will” in inbreathing and outbreathing or feeling and perceiving?
We have:
And what are choices? There are three kinds of choices. Choices by way of body, speech, and mind. These are called choices.
(SN 12.2, tr. Bhante Sujato)
You note:
Saṅkhāra is used in several ways in early Buddhism. Perhaps the most general sense is “potencies”, as in energies or phenomena potent to create more energies or phenomena. In dependent origination and the five aggregates (SN 22.56:10.1) it means morally potent deeds performed by way of body, speech, and mind, so I translate as “choices”. This is not to be confused with the meditative stilling of active physical, verbal, and mental “processes” (SN 41.6:1.7).
Have to say that I trust only the sermons in the first four Nikayas ascribed to Gautama. I wonder if there’s a sermon by Gautama in the first four Nikayas, that talks about the principal cessations the way that Venerable Kāmabhū does in SN 41.6.
But I have also explained the progressive cessation of activities. For someone who has attained the first absorption, speech has ceased. For someone who has attained the second absorption, the placing of the mind and keeping it connected have ceased. For someone who has attained the third absorption, rapture has ceased. For someone who has attained the fourth absorption, breathing has ceased. For someone who has attained the dimension of infinite space, the perception of form has ceased. For someone who has attained the dimension of infinite consciousness, the perception of the dimension of infinite space has ceased. For someone who has attained the dimension of nothingness, the perception of the dimension of infinite consciousness has ceased. For someone who has attained the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, the perception of the dimension of nothingness has ceased. For someone who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling have ceased.
(SN 36.11, tr. Bhante Sujato)
I see your note:
“Activities” (saṅkhārā) are the conditioned phenomena that are active, being both produced by and productive of other conditions. Here they are the “processes” that are stilled in the course of meditation.
You are taking that from SN 41.6?
What of:
That which we will…, and that which we intend to do and that wherewithal we are occupied:–this becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being there, there comes to be a station of consciousness. Consciousness being stationed and growing, rebirth of renewed existance takes place in the future, and here from birth, decay, and death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow, and despair come to pass. Such is the uprising of this mass of ill.
Even if we do not will, or intend to do, and yet are occupied with something, this too becomes an object for the persistance of consciousness… whence birth… takes place.
But if we neither will, nor intend to do, nor are occupied about something, there is no becoming of an object for the persistance of consciousness. The object being absent, there comes to be no station of consciousness. Consciousness not being stationed and growing, no rebirth of renewed existence takes place in the future, and herefrom birth, decay-and-death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow and despair cease. Such is the ceasing of this entire mass of ill.
(SN 12.38; tr. Pali Text Society SN vol. II p 45)
It’s difficult to quote your rendition of the above, without the notes–hope you’ll excuse me.
That would indicate that the concern in the concentrations is the surrender of will, intent, and deliberation, not the stilling of inbreathing and outbreathing or feeling and perceiving, no?
“saviññāṇake kāye”, looks like this is “this conscious body” in Bhante Sujato’s translation of SN 18.21, and “this body with consciousness” in Bhikkyu Bodhi’s translation of the same passage.
If we accept that “the concern in the concentrations is the surrender of will, intent, and deliberation”, as I wrote previously, then a means is required to distinguish between inbreathing and outbreathing unconscious of the activity of the body and inbreathing and outbreathing with consciousness of the body. “This conscious body” has an odd ring for me in that regard, “this body with consciousness” is fairly clear, and “consciousness-informed body” is clear to me.
Gautama described the fourth jhana as follows:
Again, a (person), putting away ease… enters and abides in the fourth musing; seated, (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind. …
(AN 5.28, tr. Pali Text Society vol. III pp 18-19)
Critical here is “one-pointedness”, and the extension of a lack of will, intent, or deliberation “so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” with that purity. No matter at what particle “one-pointedness of mind” takes place, there is no will, intent, or deliberation toward action of the “consciousness-informed” body.
I wrote previously in reply to Erika O’Donnell:
If you sit, I’m sure you will come to a moment when only extending a lack of any intention to act no matter where consciousness takes place will be your only refuge.
From AN 10.72:
In-and-out breathing is a thorn to the fourth jhāna.
(tr. Bhante Sujato)
If you find that to be the case, you can take refuge.
I would ask, is there also such a thing as “consciousness-informed feeling and perceiving”?
Perception and feeling are a thorn to the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling.
(AN 10.72, tr. Bhante Sujato
Well, it might just be you’re looking at it too roundabout way, perhaps? 
I would attempt to translate something close to this, informed with Bhante’s comparative work with BU:
“Knowing and seeing in what way do I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit cease to occur with regard to this sentient being and, externally, with regard to all signs?”
Not a fully philological translation (I think Bhante Sujato’s translation is closer, though strictly speaking “Body of Consciousness-endowment” seems the most strict gloss to me) but I think it’s simply trying to say “This person” simply.
So, the dialectic of this passage seems to be something like:
this embodied centre here / whatever appears as other or outward
This Inside / Outside distinction is quite visible in the Chinese Agamas:
While an attempt at a holistic reading with the suttas is admirable, it shouldn’t be done at the expense of actually ignoring the sutta itself, as the Buddha answers not with pointing towards Jhanas in this particular instance, but rather says that one should contemplate all khandas as “not-self”.
Notably the emphasis in the answer:
ajjhattaṁ vā bahiddhā vā
whether inner or outer
Seems to repeat the maxim of the question, that is “This internal sentient being and every external sign around”.
So, I don’t think it’s a matter of “intentionality” or not, in this particular case. On the contrast, this sutta seems to point a very deliberately intentional contemplation to the question asked to the Buddha.
As to external signs, how about this:
Sitting shikantaza is the place itself, and things. …When you sit, the cushion sits with you. If you wear glasses, the glasses sit with you. Clothing sits with you. House sits with you. People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don’t take the sitting posture!
(“Aspects of Sitting Meditation”, “Shikantaza”; Kobun Chino Otogawa;
On Zazen — Jikoji Zen Center)
I do not fundamentally disagree that non-dualism of object-subject duality is a part of Buddhism.
As the specific query of the monk here, who seems to be saying something like “How can I give up (conceit, etc) with regards to everything, internal or external?”
And the reply seems to be “Internal, external, this or that all of that is not-self — this is how you give up conceit.”
So it might kind of end up in that “Cushion sits in Shikantaza” kinda way. And for translation purposes, the query’s terminology would have to be something like “This sentinence here, those signs over there.” I think.
Just a friendly note to remind you that the conversation has veered away from the original topic. Feel free to open a new topic if you want to branch off into a different discussion.
I’m going to write an essay on the subject of “this conscious body” and post it on the forum - we can continue the discussion there. It’s something I haven’t thought too much about, but now I see there are quite a few EBTs that feature it.
