YARVVI Chronicles: V&V, discussion is encouraged!

[mikenz66]

Hi Frank,

@frankk

Now if you understand V&V as VRJ (vism. redefintion of jhana, V&V, etc.), which in practical experience is the same as B.Sujato’s “placing the mind and keeping it connected”, then what I just said in the above paragraph doesn’t make sense (if you plug in B. Sujato’s V&V definition for thinking &evaluation).

Hi @frankk. The point I was making in the other thread:
YARVVI Chronicles: V&V, Vitakka = directed-thoughts, Vicāra=Evaluation (of said Vitakka) - #12 by mikenz66
isn’t actually too different from what you are saying. However one translates it, I think we agree that what the mind is doing in first jhana is more refined than the “thinking about stuff” that it’s doing beforehand.

So there has to be some sort of distinction in the translation, otherwise suttas such as MN19 would not make any sense at all.

As you say, Bhikkhu Bodhi has modified his translations as time passes. Here is his statement from the SN translation:

In MLDB I rendered vitakka and vicāra respectively as “applied thought” and “sustained thought.” In this translation they become “thought” and “examination.” The latter is surely closer to the actual meaning of vicāra. When vitakka is translated as “thought,” however, a word of caution is necessary. In common usage, vitakka corresponds so closely to our “thought” that no other rendering seems feasible; for example, in kāmavitakka, sensual thought, or its opposite, nekkhammavitakka, thought of renunciation. When, however, vitakka and vicāra occur as constituents of the first jhāna, they do not exercise the function of discursive thinking characteristic of ordinary consciousness. Here, rather, vitakka is the mental factor with the function of applying the mind to the object, and vicāra the factor with the function of examining the object nondiscursively in order to anchor the mind in the object.

So with that change, in MN19 we would go from the pre-jhana “thinking and considering” (about specific topics, such as kindness) to the more abstract first jhana “thought and examination” (which does not seem to be thinking about a specific topic, since none are mentioned in the sutta).

Now it is nice if translations preserve some of the aspects of the Pali, but there are many cases where that doesn’t happen (commonly one looses connections between nouns and verbs) so it’s not necessarily a strong argument that one needs to use the same words to translate what are actually different things.

Beyond the translation issue is the issue of “how different is the stuff the mind is doing pre-jhana and during jhana?” That is the more important question, and one that is not easy to answer outside of experience.

[I must say that I don’t understand the logic of splitting topics. It makes it much harder for me to follow, and to reply to posts in the other topic…]