It occurs to me that my remarks about your translation of the Netti, coming as they did mixed up with my onslaught on the Netti, may have appeared as rather unsympathetic. This, however, was not at all my intention: I had thought, rather, that a more or less outspoken comment on how your translation reads (quite apart from what it is a translation of) would be of value to you, and possibly something that you would not obtain elsewhere. You will have noted that I say explicitly that though I criticize certain things I cannot offer anything better in many cases. I am fully in agreement with you in your insistance upon not losing ontologically (and otherwise) significant words or roots, such as bhava and dhamma, and inevitably certain phrases are going to look a little odd in English. All that one can do in such cases is to suggest (if we can think of one) a more satisfactory and less cumbersome way of putting the translation, and also (though rather rarely) to suggest that an altogether different basic word would be more suitable. It so happens that I do now suggest a change of basic word, but I shall discuss this later. There comes, however, a point where one meets a phrase that is purely idiomatic, or seems to be, and it is then perhaps better to abandon any attempt at literal translation (which may be totally incomprehensible) and to use a short simple corresponding English "idiotismo". Do you, for example, translate diṭṭhe va dhamme aññā as "comprehension inseparable from the idea of being seen" or as "comprehension immediately/here and now"? If your rule (of preserving the word dhamma) obliges you to use the former translation, then I suggest that this is a point where the rule must be abandoned. I say this rather reluctantly; but if one is going to translate for anyone's benefit beyond one's own, then some allowance has to be made for the reader (and it may be necessary to abandon the rule at an earlier point than this—but it is a matter of opinion).
Quite apart, however, from cumbersomeness forced upon you by this rule, I complained, as you will remember, of surplusage in a more general way. You do not, I implied, run enough on your muscles. I find a tendency in your translations to be more explicit than the original text. There must, I admit, be enough in the finished translation to make grammatical sense; but you sometimes go some way beyond this, and close certain dialectics that, in particular, the Suttas leave open. For example, in the Netti translation you point out (very usefully) that the proper meaning of the phrase yathābhataṃ nikkhito evaṃ niraye is to be found in the 20th Sutta of the Itivuttaka, but your actual translation of the passage is most uneconomical and says more than the original. Literally this passage is "burdenwise placed, thus, in hell", which requires in translation no more than "as if carried so he is placed in hell". (The evaṃ, I take it, is either the counterpart of yathā or else refers to what precedes; and this translation will do in either case.) This particular instance is, no doubt, trivial; but what puzzled me rather is why you did not think of a shorter translation yourself. It now occurs to me that it may be a matter of temperament. Let me explain. I have noticed that masters of prose writing in English are very often very indifferent poets—Joyce is an outstanding example; his few poems, except for the title (Pomes Pennyeach) are very ordinary—and vice versa that good poets frequently write a most undistinguished prose (Eliot is rather like this, and Edith Sitwell is another). I am speaking here principally of rhythm (which involves, notably, the question of verbal economy); and in this matter I follow and agree with Fowler, that the test of rhythm is to read the passage aloud or aloud-to-oneself. If the passage can be read at sight, not only correctly, but easily and with pleasure, then it has rhythm; but if it is sticky and lifeless then it has none, though the grammar may be impeccable. Two words from chemistry seem to convey the distinction: rhytmic prose is crystalline, non-rhytmic prose is amorphous ("an amorphous grey powder"). I have actually read-aloud-to-myself three or more chapters of Gibbon and never stumbled once or felt at all fatigued, and I found the same thing, though to a lesser extent, in C.E. Montagne's "Disenchanment". (Ross Ashby has rhythm, Grey Walter has not; John Donne is at home in prose and verse—rather an exception, I think.) It seems to me that perhaps people generally, and not merely professional writers, fall into two classes, those who would express themselves in verse (if they were to write) and those who would express themselves in prose; and that when they are called upon to use the other medium they are not properly at home in it and find it a labour. For my part, though I flatter myself that when I take the trouble to polish it, which, however, is only if it is intended for publication, I can write a prose that is not altogether dead (I can reread some of my past prose with a certain degree of pleasure, even though I may now disagree with what is said), yet I cannot put together two lines of the meanest doggerel and am lost in admiration of those who can (let alone of those who can write poetry). Now I find that in reading what you write, if it is verse I can "express my opinion only as praise" (where do you get the inspiration from to call the Netti a "comic hermeneutic grammar"?), whereas if it is prose I sometimes get a certain feeling of flatness, hard to analyze, but rather as if it had been written from a sense of duty, not with pleasure, and purely to convey information, not for its own sake (this doesn't at all apply to your letters, only to your formal prose). In the Vis. Mag., for example, almost every bit of verse (and there is a lot of it) rings the bell as a masterpiece of economy and style, but the prose—even allowing for the fact that the original is commentarial Pali—occasionally seems unnecessarily wordy. That this difference between us (if I have not simply imagined it) is temperamental and not a matter of difference in education—the mathematician tends to neglect his grammar—is to be seen in the fact that it was you who had to polish my translation of Evola1 to make it presentable: yet as a result of a very small deliberate effort to write rhytmical English (since Ordination) I find I can (so I think) write rhytmical English quite naturally if I exert myself and with a certain degree of pleasure—and I also find that I am totally incapable of writing (rhytmical) verse. On the whole, you come out of this better than I do; for whereas I should be quite satisfied if my prose were as good as your verse, you have no reason to alarm and despond yourself with the thought that your prose is no better than my verse. What the moral of all this is, I don't quite know, except perhaps that I am wrong to criticize you for using too many words in your prose when it may be that for you, in some way I do not altogether understand, they are not too many. "It is the nature of prose to have so many words; but verse, ah! that is different." Is this nonsense? What do you think?
You asked me in a recent letter what I understood by the word dhammā—whether, for example, I equated it with "phenomena". I gave you a rather indeterminate reply; but since then the matter has been receiving attention, particularly as a result of reading the Netti translation (whatever I may think of the Netti, to read your translation was by no means a waste of time), and I now have rather more to say about it—more, in fact, than I can say in this letter, though I can say something. But before doing so, let me, to avoid confusion and misunderstandings (I hope) say what I gather (from the Netti translation) are your views on this matter (please correct me if I am wrong). Taking the phrase manañca paṭicca dhamme ca as the basis, I think that you consider dhammā to be "ideas" in the sense of concepts (your translation of vayadhammo as "inseparable of the idea of dissolution" seems to indicate this) or images as opposed to the other five external āyatanas which are what Sartre would call "perceptions" (note here that in L'Imaginaire Sartre allows concepts without words or images, but he corrects this—rightly—in L'Être et le Néant [p. 601]). It may be (I don't know) that you even take dhammā, in this passage, as more or less equivalent to "thoughts". In any case, it seems that you make the following distinction: the first five external āyatanas are rūpa, and the sixth, dhammā, is nāma. I presume (it is a guess) that your argument runs like this: "In the āruppas there is no rūpa, only nāma; also (see Mahā Vedalla Sutta) the five indriyas (cakkhu...kāyo) have been abandoned, and there is only mano, and externally a neyyaṃ dhammaṃ; thus dhammā are necessarily nāma", and that you consider in addition to this that the function of naming things (this is A, that is B) is essentially a mental function, that first we perceive sensible objects with our five senses and then we set about identifying them (by naming them) with our mind (this may be the reason for your note in the Netti trs. that attā, which you say—not unjustly—is identification—though I should not agree that it is all identification—, only arises in connexion with nāma—I forget your exact wording). If this is your view (or approximately your view) and you are confident enough about it not to consider changing it, then what I have to say may not be of interest to you.
In the first place, I can by no means allow the distinction between the objects of the first five senses as rūpa and that of mind as nāma, because it is in contradiction with a number of Suttas (e.g. Mahā Hatthipadopama) where all five khandhas arise with each of the six kinds of contact (cakkhusamphassa etc.), and thus nāma is not confined to the sixth āyatana nor rūpa to the first five. In addition the āruppa argument (which I have fathered on you above), though logically valid, is a misapplication of logic; and I cannot accept nāma, which is clearly defined in the Suttas as vedanā...manasikāra, as at all on the same level as naming in the sense of deciding what things are (What is this? It is a bhikkhu. Is it really a bhikkhu? No, it is really a cow, but it looks like a bhikkhu. Are you certain? Not really.). In the second place I do not allow that dhammā is equivalent to thoughts, for the good reason that thoughts do not continue beyond first jhāna, whereas dhammā do. In the third place I do not even allow that dhammā is equivalent to concepts or images, though the reasons for this cannot be set out briefly.a (Wherefore my projected treatise on mind.) [A neyyaṃ dhammaṃ, though possibly translatable as an "inferred dhamma" is probably better as an "abstract dhamma", since "inference" is too close to logic, which implies thought.] Certainly, thoughts, concepts, and images, are all dhammas, but none of them gives the meaning of dhamma.
Up to recently I advocated the use of the word "idea" as a translation of dhamma, and this for the two reasons, first that the obkect of the mind is clearly an idea (= concept or image), and second that dhamma is the essence or nature or whatness of a thing as opposed to saṅkhāra which is its determinateness (and adequately translated as "determination"), and the Platonic Idea was precisely the essence of a thing (though conceived as possessing a separate kind of existence in another world). So long as these two reasons reinforced each other, the word "idea" seemed to be the ideal translation of dhamma; but now that I find that to translate manañca dhamme ca as "mind and ideas" is a mistake, if by "idea" we understand "concept" (which of course we do), this translation has to go, provided anything better can be found. What is needed is a word that conveys essence (though "essence" won't do, being far too esoteric), does not convey concept to the exclusion of anything else (as "idea" does), and is sufficiently general and versatile to be used in widely different contexts. I think there is such a word, though it is rather unexpected: MATTER. Provided that all "matter" in the sense of substance or what Dr. Johnson picked is "form" (rūpa) the word can be used exclusively in its other sense of "what is the matter?", "the mater in hand", "it is a matter of six-pence", "material (= relevant or essential) evidence". Let us try a few examples. Manasikārasamudayā dhammānam samudayo "with the origination of attention matters originate" (cf. "I shall give the matter my attention" which brings the matter into being); manañca paṭicca dhamme ca "dependent upon mind and upon matters..."; yaṃ kiñci samudayadhammaṃ sabbaṃ taṃ nirodhadhammanti "all/everything whatsoever that is an originating matter is a ceasing matter" or, not so good, "everything/all whatsoever that is a matter of origination is a matter of cessation"; Buddha dhamma saṅgha "the Enlightened One, the Matter (the True Matter), the Community"; dhammānupassanā "contemplation of matters"; catunnaṃ bhikkhave dhammānaṃ natthi koci pāṭibhogo "in four matters, monks, there is no surety"; diṭṭhe va dhamme aññā "comprehension as an immediate matter"; diṭṭhasutamutaviññātabbesu dhammesu "in matters to be seen, heard, sensed and/or cognized..."; and so on—all of them passable, and some of them good (note in particular "an originating matter" as opposed to "inseparable from the idea of origination"). "Matter" has the advantage, amongst others, over "things" that "thing" will really do for either saṅkhāra or dhamma ("all things are impermanent; all things are not-self") and will therefore not do for either, whereas "matter" lays much more stress upon content than upon structure ("all determinations are impermanent; all matters are not-self"). Another point is this. In manañca dhamme ca, dhammā are, precisely, "phenomena" of any kind at all. But a phenomenon is made up of three parts, viññāṇa (its presence), nāma (its quality or descriptionb—blue, pleasant, etc.) and rūpa (its resistance or independence), and these cannot properly be called phenomena, since they are pre-phenomenal (they are negatives within phenomena). They are, however, called dhammā (cf. Mahā Vedalla Sutta), and it is clear that dhamma has an even wider meaning than that in manañca dhamme ca, namely anything at all that is different from (though not necessarily separable from) anything else (viññāṇa is not separable from vedanā and saññā, though it is different from them). The word "matter" can cope: consciousness (cognition) can perfectly intelligibly be called a matter even though it is not a complete object or phenomenon. I offer you the word both as an improvement in sense over "idea" (though you may not agree)—"matter" closes fewer dialectics than "idea", which is only a disadvantage if you are certain that "idea" is exactly right; it does not deny that dhamma may mean "idea", but only that it must do so—and as a handier word in translation (which I think can hardly be denied).
A party visited the other day with a woman who asked if it was true that my mother died of sorrow. This, I suppose, is the Ven. Narada Thera's doing. It is either false—I was told she died of a heart attack --, or else a ridiculous understatement—I am prepared to believe she died of despair, perhaps not unmixed with fury. But to say that she died of sorrow is to throw the whole affair into an absurdly artificial and romantic light. The Ven. Thera has his own ideas about women, which he would not have altered even if he had met my mother, which he did not.
The new cistern has stopped leaking, I am glad to say. No doubt it has sealed itself with the impurities suspended in the escaping water. The weather is bright but rather damp (no decent rain however). The SW wind started punctually on the 19th (my notes on the Ceylon weather says it starts about the 20th) and has been blowing ever since.
As I was removing one of my two large māpilas—"large" in the sense of "fat", not "long", since they are no longer than the thin ones—the brown one—I met the Vedamahatthaya2, who said it was a nāga-māpila and very poisonous indeed. This incident is remarkable only for the fact that it is the first time I have heard any Sinhala admit that a māpila does anything else than drink your blood. The Vedamahatthaya, however, is a bit of an impressionist, he likes a broad canvas with bold general effects, and the details don't matter very much. There is a cock junglefowl who will now come up and eat in my presence, about three or four yards away. I think it is a bird who has known me since its chickhood as a source of food. It looks just like a farmyard rooster, though perhaps a little less smug. First year about a dozen frogs in the roof; last year fifty; this year so far none at all, but perhaps they will come later.
About identification. Perhaps I should make it clear that I regard attā as identification in the sense that I cannot entertain the idea of my self without at the same time identifying it in some way with some object (or matter in the sense of dhamma). But I do not at all regard the question of an object's identity (or self-identity if you prefer) as involving attā in the Sutta sense. If I say "that bhikkhu is really a cow" I am simply making an inference to the future: "When we get closer we shall see that what now appears to be a bhikkhu will appear to be a cow". This sort of identification need have nothing to do with taṇhā at all, and can perfectly well be made by an arahat, and indeed must be, in all his practical teleological dealings (such as obtaining food). Any interpretation of a sign as indicating something else is an identification, and can be expressed in terms of the word "self"—a thing's self being what it really is, i.e. what it is a sign of, what it indicates—though there is no need to do so. And such an interpretation or identification can well be mistaken, even if made by an arahat. The attā of attavāda is something quite different. The "self" of an object is the identity of what is not given in the first place—first we must conceive "I am" and only then can we decide what I am, and the result is eso me attāti. The root of the trouble is not in the identification but in the conception. For the puthujjana there is "this is" and there is "I am"; for the arahat there is only "this is": the puthujjana identifies both "this" and "I"; the arahat identifies only "this". Do I make myself clear? And do you agree or not?
__________
[a] One reason, though not the principal, is that there is no Sutta passage where dhamma requires this interpretation.
[b] Which precedes any question of identification (i.e. what it really is), just as conception (maññanā—"mine") precedes self-identification ("it is my self", "it belongs to my self").
[1] Evola: The Doctrine of Awakening.
[2] Vedamahatthaya: Ayurvedic doctor.
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