Question about a passage

[piotr]

Hi,

I have a question about a passage from Dvayatānupassanā-sutta (Snp 3.12), which puzzles me a bit. In Pāli it says:

Etamādinavaṃ ñatvā dukkhaṃ saṅkhārapaccayā,
Sabbasaṅkhārasamathā saññāya uparodhanā,
Evaṃ dukkhakkhayo hoti etaṃ ñatvā yathātathaṃ.

Does it indicate that at the point when dukkha is destroyed one of the saṅkhāras which are stilled is saññā?

[mikenz66]

Hi Piotr,

For the those of us whose knowledge of Pali is sketchy, but would like to follow the discussion, could I ask if this is the passage you are asking about?
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html

Any stress that comes into play is all from consciousness as a requisite condition.
With the cessation of consciousness, there is no stress coming into play.
Knowing this drawback — that stress comes from consciousness as a requisite condition — with the stilling of consciousness, the monk free from hunger is totally unbound.

Mike

[piotr]

Hi Mike,

Sorry that I forgot to add a translation. Here it is:

Knowing this drawback — that stress comes from fabrication as a requisite condition — with the tranquilizing of all fabrication, with the stopping of perception: that's how there is the ending of stress.
(trans. by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu)

[Sylvester]

Verse is extremely difficult to fathom.

Have you checked the metre? If it's irregular, that's a good sign that everything's intact; if it's regular, you might have to worry if prefixes/suffixes etc might have been dropped in service of metri causa. We studied one such verse in the Sn, where a "vi-" was dropped just to preserve the metre.

[Kare]

Hi,

I have a question about a passage from Dvayatānupassanā-sutta (Snp 3.12), which puzzles me a bit. In Pāli it says:

Etamādinavaṃ ñatvā dukkhaṃ saṅkhārapaccayā,
Sabbasaṅkhārasamathā saññāya uparodhanā,
Evaṃ dukkhakkhayo hoti etaṃ ñatvā yathātathaṃ.

Does it indicate that at the point when dukkha is destroyed one of the saṅkhāras which are stilled is saññā?

Not necessarily. In this context saññāya probably has nothing to do with saññā. I rather see it as a gerundive of the verb sañjānāti - to know, to perceive. If that is the case, saññāya here means 'having perceived, having known, having seen'.

If we also translate saṅkhāra as 'reaction' (which makes good sense in many contextes), the verse then may be translated as follows:

Once we understand this drawback - that suffering is a result of our reactions,
we see (saññāya) that it can be stopped (uparodhanā) by letting all reactions find peace (by stopping all reactions - Sabbasaṅkhārasamathā).
We then know, according to the facts, that this is how suffering can stop.

(I have changed the impersonal implied subject into the personal subject 'we' in order to make the sense clearer.)

[buddhis8]

the translation is difficult to understand -

" that stress comes from fabrication as a requisite condition"

is it trying to say that the fabrications of the mind are a condition of stress or the perception of fabrications are the condition of stress...

[acinteyyo]

Hi,

I have a question about a passage from Dvayatānupassanā-sutta (Snp 3.12), which puzzles me a bit. In Pāli it says:

Etamādinavaṃ ñatvā dukkhaṃ saṅkhārapaccayā,
Sabbasaṅkhārasamathā saññāya uparodhanā,
Evaṃ dukkhakkhayo hoti etaṃ ñatvā yathātathaṃ.

Does it indicate that at the point when dukkha is destroyed one of the saṅkhāras which are stilled is saññā?

Not necessarily. In this context saññāya probably has nothing to do with saññā. I rather see it as a gerundive of the verb sañjānāti - to know, to perceive. If that is the case, saññāya here means 'having perceived, having known, having seen'.

If we also translate saṅkhāra as 'reaction' (which makes good sense in many contextes), the verse then may be translated as follows:

Once we understand this drawback - that suffering is a result of our reactions,
we see (saññāya) that it can be stopped (uparodhanā) by letting all reactions find peace (by stopping all reactions - Sabbasaṅkhārasamathā).
We then know, according to the facts, that this is how suffering can stop.

(I have changed the impersonal implied subject into the personal subject 'we' in order to make the sense clearer.)