Dhammanando wrote: ↑Thu Nov 15, 2018 2:19 pm
Coëmgenu wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:30 pm
Zom wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 7:59 pm
As far as I understood, Commy just says that it is a dying person, that's it .)
It doesn't really make sense, if that's just it.
Why not?
Coëmgenu wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:30 pmThere has to be more material.
Otherwise there is an antarabhāva. And we know that no such thing exists in Theravāda.
Some years ago I looked up all the commentarial and sub-commentarial discussions of the gandhabba to see what ābhidhammikas identified it with when giving a
paramattha exposition of the concept. Given the Classical Theravāda’s rejection of the
antarābhava I was anticipating that it would be equated with either the cutting-off consciousness or rebirth-linking consciousness.
What I found, however, is that none of the accounts of the gandhabba in the Atthakathās and Ṭīkās ever take the step of identifying it with
anything abhidhammic. The three glosses of the term (
tatrūpagasatto, gantabbo and
uppajjanakasatto) all belong just as much in the sphere of conventional truth as the term gandhabba itself.
By the way, note the correct spelling of the Pali for “intermediate state”:
antarābhava. Your spelling,
antarabhāva, would mean either ‘insideness’ or else would be the second person singular imperative of
antarabhāveti, the causative form of
antarabhavati, “to disappear”.
Thank you, Venerable. It appears that Sanskritists might have incorrectly Sanskritizatized the word, then. Antarabhāva appears in a lot of Sanskrit literature.
Abhidharmakośabhāṣya for instance spells it "antarābhāva" :
kim idānīṃ tatparīkṣā eva teṣām antarābhāva āsan kuto vā tadā tebhyo gatā iti vaktavyam
The fault is mine for freely intermixing Pāli with Sanskrit, in addition to a possible error by aforementioned Sanskritists.
Dhammanando wrote: ↑Thu Nov 15, 2018 2:19 pm
Coëmgenu wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:30 pm
Zom wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 7:59 pm
As far as I understood, Commy just says that it is a dying person, that's it .)
It doesn't really make sense, if that's just it.
Why not?
If the gandhabba isn't an intermediate being, or intermediate state of being, what else would it be?
Hence my comment about virtual particles.
A photon, for instance, is not a particle. It has no mass. But it is referred to as a particle for the sake of convenience of language when referred to it and dealing with it in general.
It seems it's just something mysterious, then?
I am interested in what you mean by "The three glosses of the term (
tatrūpagasatto, gantabbo and
uppajjanakasatto) all belong just as much in the sphere of conventional truth as the term gandhabba itself." Do you mean to say that a gandhabba is conventional in the way that a "being" is conventional?
Even that seems odd to me, because that seems to imply a conventional intermediate state, but not an ultimate intermediate state, whatever that would mean. It is an absurd proposal, so obviously I am not interpreting correctly.