RICHARD: [...] because of what has taken place in the ‘Hardcore/ Pragmatic Dharma’ circles this last 2-3 years I have spent a very rewarding 5 and ½ months of this last year poring over the original Pali text, for eight-ten hours a day, finding out why the translators translate the way they do so as to be able to demonstrate, via this original text, that an actual freedom from the human condition is not even remotely the same.

For instance: the key Pali word dukkha – usually translated as ‘suffering’ or something similar – is a compound word (as in du + kha) where, etymologically, the du- prefix – an antithetic prefix, generally opposed to the su- prefix, such as in sukha – has connotations of ‘asunder, apart, away from’, and the kha syllable/ ending, which functions also as root, has the meaning ākāsa (pronounced a-cash-a).

Thus what the word dukkha denotes, fundamentally, is that abiding in the world of samsara is to be asunder, apart or away from kha (ākāsa).

And it is not for nothing that the first arupa samapatti is known in Pali as ākāsānañcāyatana ... which is also a compound word (ākāsa + ānañca + āyatana).

Incidentally, having lived that/been that which those Pali words amata and sambodhi properly refer to, night and day for eleven years, I also have intimate knowledge/ experiential understanding of the altered states of ‘being’ which Pali words such as viññāņānancāyatana, ākiñcaññāyatana, nevasaññānāsannāyatana, saññāvedayitanirodhasamāpatti, and so on, properly refer to, as well.

This is all such fun!

Regards, Richard.

To briefly explain, en passant, that last point: the vast majority of my on-line writings about Buddhism at that time – being mainly responses to queries and objections from non-Buddhist practitioners – were rather general; quite encyclopaedic in nature, in fact, and thus reflected the remarkably erroneous yet commonly-accepted English translations of key Buddhist words ... key words such as ‘mindful’/ ‘mindfulness’, for sati (instead of ‘rememorative’, ‘rememoration’); ‘heedless’/ ‘negligent’, for pamada (rather than ‘(worldly) intoxication’); ‘feeling’/ ‘sensation’, for vedāna (in lieu of ‘hedonic-tone’); ‘fabrications’/ ‘formations’, for saṅkhāra (instead of ‘(wilful) conations’); ‘defilements’/ ‘taints’/ ‘cankers’, for āsava (rather than ‘(worldly) intoxicants’); ‘sense’/ ‘perception’, for sāñña (in lieu of ‘agnise’, ‘agnition’); ‘suffering’/ ‘stress’/ ‘ill’, for dukkha (instead of ‘asunder, apart or away from ākāsa’); ‘space’/ ‘air’, for ākāsa (rather than ‘aether’, ‘etheric’, ‘ethereal’) and so on.

Specifically, it was whilst chatting about what both the Pāli word ākāsa (=the Greek aether; as in that hoary ‘luminiferous aether’ of pre-Einsteinian yore for instance) referred to, and how the first of the five arūpa samāpatti (aka anupubbavihara) – namely, akasanancayatana, in Pali, or the ‘boundless etheric plane, luminous/lustrous all throughout’ (as in ‘lit. shining forth’ according to the PTS Pāli-English Dictionary’s etymology of ākāsa) – served as the mystical *interface* betwixt the physical world (as in the Pāli rūpabhava, aka samsāra) and the metaphysical world (as in the Pali arūpabhava, aka arupavacara), that it all started to make sense for you.

As these pre-buddhistic altered states of consciousness (ASC’s) – and quite evidentially pre-buddhistic because the unenlightened/ unawakened Mr. Siddhattho Gotama learnt to attain to them from the Vedic śramaṇa/ religieux Mr. Alara Kalama and Mr. Uddaka Ramaputta – are intimately familiar to me (from those eleven years of spiritual enlightenment/ mystical awakenment between 1981 and 1992) it would be conducive to clarity in communication to point out what the ‘Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary, first published in 1899 by Oxford University Press, has to say (so that no-one need just take my word for it):

• [quote] ‘ākāsa, fr. kas (to be visible, appear; to shine, be brilliant, have an agreeable appearance; to shine brightly, to see clearly) = the subtle and etheric fluid supposed to fill and pervade the universe and to be the peculiar vehicle of life and sound; Brahma as identical with ether; (...) the sacred ether or Brahma in the interior part or soul of man’. [endquote].

And the ‘MacDonnell’ Sanskrit-English Dictionary says this:

• [quote] ‘ākāsa ether as the subtlest element’. [endquote].

Furthermore, and as I have observed before (in #10949), the key Pāli word dukkha is a compound word (as in du + kha) where, etymologically, the ‘du-’ prefix (an antithetic prefix, generally opposed to the ‘su-’ prefix, such as in sukha) has connotations of ‘asunder, apart, away from’, and the ‘-kha’ syllable/ ending, which functions also as root, has the meaning akasa (pronounced a-cash-a).

Thus what the word dukkha denotes, fundamentally, is that abiding in the world of samsāra is to be asunder, apart or away from kha (akasa).

Consequently, it is not for nothing that the first arūpa samāpatti – the religieux’/ mystics’ contemplative/ meditative interface betwixt the physical world and the metaphysical world – is known in Pāli as ākāsānañcāyatana (i.e., ākāsa + ānañca + āyatana) as that is the region/ sphere/ realm/ dimension/ world/ etcetera where dukkha ceases.

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