Why is the opposite of fame disgrace in the 8 worldly dhammas (or winds)

Discussion
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Gain and loss, fame and disgrace, blame and praise, pleasure and pain.

Lābho ca, alābho ca, yaso ca, ayaso ca, nindā ca, pasaṁsā ca, sukhañca, dukkhañca.

Both vens. Thanissaro and Sujato translate ayaso as disgrace and ven. Bodhi uses disrepute. Both supported by the PTS dictionary.

But isn’t logically the opposite of fame obscurity? Also, the meanings of disgrace or disrepute are somewhat covered by blame in the praise/blame couplet.

It seems more logical that you could be famous and praised or blamed as a separate event, or be unknown and be likewise praised or blamed.

Disgrace and disrepute also carry the connotation of having committed some kind of moral infringment, while obscurity doesn’t.

I would also add that most people generally aspire to being more well known, even in their small social circle, and being unknown is generally undesirable, so they are true opposites.

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To me it looks more like dukkha, or the pairs in the dhammpada, craving grasping Positive fame vs fearing the lose of, or gaining negative fame. If fame is defined as widely known, minus positive or negative connotations.

I could be(and likely am:) wrong.

V.

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Consider it from the other side. What would be the opposite of disgrace? :wink:

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Well, honour is the opposite of disgrace.

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There you go — that’s the sense of the word that’s meant with “fame”. :slight_smile:

It’s kind of a three way street; people either don’t know you, people know you positively, or people know you negatively.

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By most people, do you mean most weak, loud and insecure extrovert? To the introvert, being famous and well-known is actually close to hell on earth because they just want to be left alone.

Disgrace and disrepute also carry the connotation of having committed some kind of moral infringment, while obscurity doesn’t.

And as Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi recently stated in his Dhamma lecture that ayaso is non-fame, unknown, obscurity.

In my opinion, translating it as non-fame, unknown, obscurity would sound unnatural to the native English speakers since their mind are accustomed to duality/opposites.

And the whole of the Buddhist path is about morality and ethics. There are a lot of sutta that deal with how to gain fame in wholesome way OR why a certain unwholesome behaviour leads to non-fame, obscurity, etc. “Fame” in the framework of sutta is usually associated with “goodness”, “good name” after “good deeds”.

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I agree. I think “repute” / “disrepute” would be a closer pair to “yasa” / “ayasa”.

Really? That’s surprising to me. I wonder what suttas justify that reading? The Buddha was often saying how undesirable fame is and how comfortable obscurity / seclusion.

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In the Vinaya, we have this example of ayasaṁ where it clearly means disrepute not obscurity:

avaṇṇaṁ kattukāmo ayasaṁ kattukāmo maṅkukattukāmo evaṁ vadeti…

desiring to disparage him, desiring to give him a bad reputation, desiring to humiliate him—he says…

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Yes, really, Venerable. It’s AN8:5.

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The point is not that one side is good and the other side is bad, but rather that they blow us back and forth. Thinking of praise/blame, the Buddha gave many suttas about the dangers of praise. Similarly with gain and loss.

And whether yasa/ayasa is well known/unknown or fame/infamy in this sutta doesn’t really matter.

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Usually blame and praise is by wise people (such as elders, religious practitioners, sages, etc), while fame and infamy are described as a reputation that’s known to people far and wide. That’s the main difference between those two pairs.

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In Pali adding the negative prefix a- or an- to a word (as in ayaso) can result in any of eight or so semantic effects. But confining ourselves to the three commonest, these are:

Simple negation (paṭisedha), like the non- in non-human or the in- in inaccurate.

Privative (abhāva), like the an- in anaesthetic (“without sensation”) or the a- in amoral.

Oppositional (vipparīta), like the dis- in disapproval or the im- in immoral.

Translators who opt for renderings like “disgrace” are treating the a- as oppositional, while those who opt for “obscurity” (or any word denoting the mere absence of fame) would be treating it as privative.

Both options are philologically tenable and neither is any less “logical” than the other. To determine which is more likely the intended meaning one would need to look for contexts in which the word is used in a manner that unambiguously shows whether what’s indicated is infamy, disrepute and suchlike, or mere unknownness.

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Yes, exactly. Such as in the Vinaya quote I posted above.

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I think this is good evidence that ayaso is best left translated as disgrace or disrepute. But I am still uneasy with it not being quite opposite of fame. All the other couplets are exact opposites.

According to PTS Dictionary:

In the nom. & acc. sg. both forms yaso & yasa(ŋ) occur; in cpds. the form yasa˚ is the usual; yaso as masc. is found at Sn 438] glory, fame, repute, success, high position. On term as used with ref. to the brahmin see Fick, Sociale Gliederung 128, 129 — The prevailing idea of Dhammapāla is that yaso consists of a great retinue, & company of servants, followers etc.

While it seems clear that the main reading of yaso is indeed fame, maybe for this particular context repute works better. Then it would be an easy to parse repute/disrepute couplet.

Another idea is to translate as honour/dishonour, which are very closely related idiomatically. I get this idea from the lābhasakkārasiloko compound, which is translated by ven. Sujato as:

possessions, honor, and popularity,

and Bhikkhu Bodhi as

gain, honour and praise.

So, both have taken Sakkāra to mean honour and in Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation, gain, honour and praise cover three of the four couplets. Also, the sequence of the 8 worldy dhammas as

Lābho ca, alābho ca, yaso ca, ayaso ca, nindā ca

and SN 17 list of

lābha sakkāra siloko match up in meaning, just using different terms.

Some years ago I read Will Storr’s book Status Game and it made a deep impact on me of how deep human need for status is. I suddenly saw both my own and everyone else’ motivation for status revealed everywhere I went. And it was right there in the suttas all along.

"Possessions, honor, and popularity are grim, bitter, and harsh. They’re an obstacle to reaching the supreme sanctuary from the yoke.

So you should train like this: 'We will give up arisen possessions, honor, and popularity, and we won’t let them occupy our minds. 'That’s how you should train."

This is obvious even in Buddhist or other spiritual communities, such as when people talk about meditation or how much they’ve studied, there’s usually an immediate jostling for position.

I also want to add that if we use honour/dishonour for yaso/ayaso, the whole list of 8 worldy dhammas obtains a nice symmetry:

Gain/loss, honour/dishonour - these four are about one’s possessions (and thus on a longer timeframe than the present), either material or social.

Blame/praise, pleasure/pain - these four are about our feelings in the present moment, either social (again) or physical/emotional.

I also vaguely understand that in the ancient world, honour was significantly more important than today. Indeed, people lived and died by their honour and in Medieval Europe I think it reached an extreme with hundreds of years of a duelling tradition. Does anyone know if honour had such a significance in Ancient India of Buddha’s time?

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Yes, I encounter this consistently in my mind. Rigid adherence to dichotomies. If the mind is snagged by allure or recoils, the more delineated the concepts seem to be and the more energy the mind has to pack out a skewed perception of a concept(s)

I am a native English speaker and have German as a second language, which is a direct and very specific language. German as a language seems to require strong and specific delineations in order to support its capacity for precision… so this mind is very much conditioned the way of opposites/dichotomies

I would say that some classic literature really can show nuance wonderfully in regards to opposites, dualities, dichotomies. I am not a literature buff, however, the beginning of Dickens ‘A tale of two cities’ comes to mind; It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The genius of Dickens immediately stimulates curiosity with this seeming juxtaposition. Dickens invites us to his writing implicitly stating that the lines could be blurred somewhere amidst the best of times and the worst of times.

Buddha’s teachings as far as I can tell both include nuance in this domain, and provide direction of practice which supports the opening up of rigid perceptions and opinions. A wonderful opportunity i think this discussion of fame and disrepute to investigate around the edges of these, I think vast concepts, perhaps with the use of the enlightenment factors. Leading onwards, inviting investigation.

Thankyou for your contribution to the conversation. I am very interested to hear a perspective regarding alternatives to rigid dualism/dichotomies which exist in other languages from someone who may have not been conditioned by this aspect of the English language to the degree I have.

Sahdu!

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Hi Scott,

Thank you for your thoughtful response regarding duality and opposite.

In my original language and cultural conditioning, there is a certain degree of duality as well. However, I don’t think our emphasis is on two things opposing each other. Rather, we see two things working together in harmony and balance, much like the Yin and Yang symbol. :yin_yang:

So, the focus is on harmony and interdependent, complementary opposites, rather than a rigid duality like good versus evil.

Personally, I think the ancient Indian system of logic, Tetralemma, is a wonderful way to see the world. When I become aware of this Tetralemma “conditioning” thanks to Bhante and Sutta, life is not as restricted and more expansive, hopefully this will direct the mind toward transcending the mundane duality.

PS: It could be a disaster if the German adopt the Tetralemma system in making machine or car brake.

Or Schrödinger’s cat. The cat is dead, the cat is alive, the cat is both alive and dead, the cat is not dead nor alive. We have a Purrinibbana cat.

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Me too. No “buts” needed :blush:

Yes. I think this is the closer match to “fame” in the sense of popularity in Pāli :blush: