“The true Dhamma does not disappear all at once in the way a ship sinks. There are, Kassapa, five detrimental things that lead to the decay and disappearance of the true Dhamma. What are the five? Here the bhikkhus, the bhikkhunīs, the male lay followers, and the female lay followers dwell without reverence and deference towards the Teacher; they dwell without reverence and deference towards the Dhamma; they dwell without reverence and deference towards the Saṅgha; they dwell without reverence and deference towards the training; they dwell without reverence and deference towards concentration. These, Kassapa, are the five detrimental things that lead to the decay and disappearance of the true Dhamma.
Interesting that lack of deference towards samādhi is detrimental for the true Dhamma.
Why is that surprising? Samādhi is one of only 3 categories of higher training, is included in very important lists such as being one of the five spiritual faculties, five powers, 7 enlightenment factors, and eightfold path of the Noble Ones. As well as some other important lists I’m sure.
Actually, I suppose it is unusual to see reverence or deference towards samādhi, where it is usually just the triple gem, yea.
I am skeptical that the meanings were actually like “thought.” There seems to be an over-reliance on falling back to vague words like “thought,” rather than giving some accurate rendering of the Indic original. The final paragraph is likely in reference to the study by Cousins, linked to earlier.
In the paper linked to earlier, the author continues to exacerbate the problem in some respect by never defining “thought,” and jumping to the conclusion that “thought” can summarize all of it, not on the weight of evidence provided to the reader, but on the basis of his own private conclusions.
In fact, in the evidence he provides, the definitions in the Peṭakopadesa agree strongly with the Chinese translations, as do the explanations in the Milindapañha, and those in the Visuddhimagga. None of these sources present the terms as meaning something similar to “thought.”
In fact, if a simple word had to summarize all of it, it seems that “rumination,” “observation,” or “investigation” would be more accurate.
Since I don’t translate from Pali, I would rely mainly on the Chinese interpretations, which draw very clear distinctions between, say, sañña, saṅkhāra, and vipassana, so that they would not seem even slightly similar.
As for how translators knew the meanings in the first place, Buddhism was brought to China by Indian and Central Asian monks who had been formally trained at monasteries, and who were fluent in Sanskrit, etc. They worked with Central Asian interpreters, and Chinese monks, scholars, etc., to define the basic terminology. Or otherwise, some monks like Xuanzang actually went to India and lived there for many years, training at the monasteries themselves.
Neither is translated using the same characters, and they are not interpreted as having meanings similar to vitarka and vicāra. But even if they were, it would simply tell us that they were interpreted in the same way, which would also be useful.
But now I’m starting to worry about how these terms are understood in Pali, because the bizarre samatha-vipassana debacle has shown that there are some serious issues of interpretation for even very basic terms in Theravāda Buddhism.
有覺有觀 = With awareness, with observation. The term for vitarka 覺 means literally to become aware of something, to become conscious of something. It includes vision 見 in the character, which includes an eye 目. The term for vicāra 觀 means observation, or meditative observation. It again includes the character for seeing 見, which again includes an eye 目. The character used for vicāra is the same character used for vipassana. (Before anyone asks, in Chinese translation, vipassana is just translated as meditative observation.) Both characters are based on the concept of seeing or observing, not on thinking.
斷諸覺想 = Severs thoughts. This last character 想 is a common character for thought, and illustrates that thoughts are literally represented by images 相 in the mind 心.
These characters are still used in modern Chinese, so they are not very mysterious.
I don’t know, I’m still confused as to the meaning and usage of these terms, I can’t really make the translations you gave for vitarka work in the non-jhāna contexts.
Checking out the āgama parallels for the suttas cited earlier, they all used that vitarka character but none used that thought character (from cutting off thoughts) except for SA2.354
Okay, to see 覺 is not enough to know the original term was vitarka, because 覺 can mean other things too (and usually does). In can be a translation for Bodhi, for example, or appear in compounds, or as an adjective, or just mean awareness or something else.
To know right away, then, we would have to see it in some formula that we already know is about vitarka-vicāra. This appears in the dhyāna formula always as:
有覺有觀
This phrase appears in two contexts: dhyāna formulas, and for ānāpāna, in SA 802, SA 803, and SA 814 (overlooked SA 814 before).
The phrase about severing thoughts appears as:
斷諸覺想
This phrase appears in SA 804.
sampajañña = 正知 correct knowing / correct awareness, etc.
sati = 念 recollect / reflect on / be mindful of sth, etc.
Not sure about the others. It’s difficult to track down ordinary terms sometimes, as the parallels are often phrased differently or organized differently in some ways.
I started a little concordance in the form of a table with Chinese, Pinyin, Pali, Sanskrit, and English, but tracking down terms is pretty tedious. I was actually doing it as a Sanzang table, so you can just pipe in any SA text, or all of it, and — if the terms are represented well — see the text in parallel in these different languages. It’s pretty neat, but it’s only really valid for the SA, and it only has about 100 terms. When applied to some text, it would give output like:
I think the article below will be an interesting read on the topic of how Patanjali Yoga Sutras could be read as a handbook on Buddhist meditation:
On the specific topic of the term issara meaning as well a teacher, the blog’s author says:
Besides the question whether issaro here could be read as merely refering to a meditation master (which fits perfectly in the discussion up to verse 27 where it starts to not fit any longer…is open for discussion
I have to admit, at first I was sceptical to interpret it that way, because remembering MN 1 it seemed more logical to assume issaro was foremost used to denote “the Lord” (i.e. your God).
But, using CST4 and searchinga around, I did find quite some nice references where esp. in the Theragatha issaro was simply used to imply “master”.
(…)
It all depends if you read verses 24-27 as implying “issaro” to mean ‘God’ or if you take it simply to refer to the meditation master from whom you learn meditation. If you do a search in the Tipitaka, you will see that at the time of the Buddha “issara” was in used to denote ones teacher (see Theragatha for instance).
Can anyone confirm if in the Theragatha the word issaro is used as synonym for master or teacher? (I could not find it)
While it clearly doesn’t mean “creator god” here, it also doesn’t mean “teacher”.
But I can’t say if it might mean “teacher” in the Yogasutra; like the original author, I’m skeptical. It sounds like secularist apologetics to me. It’s entirely normal for meditation practices to be dedicated to a God of some sort. Still, I haven’t investigated this case.
Tathā tu kassāmi yathāpi issaro,
Yaṃ labbhati tenapi hotu me alaṃ;
Na tāhaṃ kassāmi yathā atandito,
Biḷārabhastaṃva yathā sumadditaṃ.
I’ll act as a master does:
Let whatever I get be enough for me.
I’ll make you as supple,
As a good worker makes a cat-skin bag.
Tathā tu kassāmi yathāpi issaro,
Yaṃ labbhati tenapi hotu me alaṃ;
Viriyena taṃ mayha vasānayissaṃ,
Gajaṃva mattaṃ kusalaṅkusaggaho.
I’ll act as a master does:
Let whatever I get be enough for me.
I’ll control you with my energy,
As the trainer controls a rutting elephant with a hook.
At one time the keepers of a rose-apple grove … a timbarūsaka grove gave timbarūsaka fruit to some monks. The monks, thinking, “They have the authority to guard, but not to give” … “There is no offence when it is a gift from a guardian.”
Many religious titles are made in imitation of worldly titles. For example, in English we have “Lord” as a synonym for God, but historically the word “lord” refers to a wealthy landowner with dominion over others.
Some of these titles, though, were just ripped off from secular rulers who used them. “King of Kings, Lord of Lords,” for example, was used by rulers of large empires in the ancient Middle East. These rulers literally had dominion over other kings and lords.
By copying these titles, religious authors were describing spiritual sovereignty by making an analogy to the worldly sovereignty that people would have been more familiar with.
Our situation today is quite the opposite, in which “lord” typically is used in reference to God or some other deity, because modern societies tend not to have people who are actually lords.
It seems likely to me that many religious terms for “lord” or “master” were likely the same terms used for powerful and wealthy leaders of society. Hence, when we look up īśvara, we see “master, lord, prince, king, mistress, queen.” It tends to be translated as “lord,” and that can mean different things in different contexts.
In Yoga it is typical for īśvara to indicate a sovereign Lord to which one focuses his or her practice. In a Buddhist context, when used about the Buddha, it would probably mean “Lord” or “Sovereign” in a somewhat different sense, as in the Buddha having attained spiritual sovereignty, e.g., Supreme Master, Teacher of Devas and Humans, etc.
