Skeptical Buddhism

Are you asking about "when translating" or doing intros to translations? Or when, in conversation nowadays, you want to refer to the Indian subcontinent?

12/ Next post: bsky.app/profile/skep...

The broken circle of dependent arising, divided into three colorful sections has a magnifying glass focused on "craving"/*tanhā*, to indicate that's the focus of this thread.

37/ Craving, where it all begins is where it can end … #SB37of10K
… The Buddha has told us that it is with the arising of craving we get our earliest chance to break the chain of events leading to dukkha. Maybe that's why its the first of the very detailed links.

31/ Next time we'll talk about what happens in the next step's "clinging".

30/ Happens to me all the time when TV commercials show me food. Does the craving for more of the pleasant feelings brought on by sensual pleasure act in some ways to let you know you're alive?

29/ Then what? Craving arises in response to those feelings. Can we see that happening? From the structure we have so far, perhaps we can, as beginners, focus on craving for sensual pleasures: pay attention to the feelings, take note of cravings that arise.

28/ Our senses, driven by the earlier links, have been reaching out searching for confirmation that we exist, and our tendency is to create a self in that process. When the senses find what they're seeking, contact is made, feeling -- pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral -- arises.

27/ The other point about craving is that, as discussed in the last thread, it is with the arising of craving that we have our earliest opportunity to break the chain of events that is headed for dukkha.

26/ Anyway, in summary, the Buddha says when it comes to craving, we should be paying attention to the ways we crave sensual pleasures, and the ways we crave our own existence, a craving that can really only be satisfied by information coming in that tells us we exist.

25/ You probably won't be surprised that I have a theory on its meaning. What do you think? Do you want to hear it?

24/ But I think we have to be honest here: we don't actually *know* what *vibhava* meant to the people of the Buddha's time. I think we can safely assume it was such a familiar word, it didn't need explaining back then, though.

23/ But I don't find convincing evidence in the suttas for *vibhava* meaning a craving for extinction. Yes, dictionaries suggest that prefix can be expressing the opposite of the word it's attached to, or separation, or division.

22/ It gets translated most often as "craving for non-existence" and I understand why that is: because that prefix *vi-* stuck onto the mostly easy-to-understand *bhava* makes translation difficult.

21/ Anyway, on to *vibhavataṇhā*.

20/ What concerns me with this is that when I hear general discussions among Buddhists, of what we ought not to crave and cling to, it tends to be all about those externals. It seems to me we're missing the main point. Which is why I'm here, still talking.

19/ In what is very likely the earliest talk we have of the Buddha's on DA, the two separate levels of discussion were there in an entirely different form than the later, classical versions of DA. But both the early and later versions say the same thing and, as I see it, serve the same purpose.

18/ But the way the pattern of the language fell into two distinctly separated paralleling layers, one about the externals we crave (so basically, *kāma*) and the other about about internals (effectively, self-existence) told me I'd understood *kāma*'s place having an additional purpose correctly.

17/ It did, a little, support Leigh's point, so I'll give him that.

16/ When, after a discussion with Leigh Brasington on the meaning of DA (no surprise: we disagreed) he told me that the early DA-sutta "Quarrels and Disputes" would prove his point that it was about conditionality and interconnection, I decided to dissect it. And it blew me away.

15/ It serves the same purpose "nutriment" does in talks where it appears before his discussion of DA. We need to understand the principle of "feeding" something to keep it alive, and how "We are what we eat." What we feed our selves matters.

14/ Somewhat later, when I began to understand his use of "easy to see patterns" to provide a template to understand less easy to see patterns, suddenly it made sense for him to put *kāma* in first place.

13/ I developed a very tentative theory that the Buddha was doing sensual pleasures first because, yes, it's true, craving for and clinging to those are dukkha-leading. But that didn't seem to be the whole reason he'd put it first.

12/ Back when I first started trying to understand what the heck dependent arising was talking about, I kept looking at the appearance of *kāma* as the first item on three different lists, followed by totally different classes of things as also-rans on each, and asking myself why.

11/ Before I explain why I'm not so sure about the third item, *vibhavataṇhā* being translated as craving for non-existence, I want to consider the pair we have: *kāma* and *bhava*.

10/ So if, after *kāmataṇhā*'s "craving for sensual pleasures" the second thing he is pointing out is *bhavataṇhā* "craving for existence" I'm going to enthusiastically agree.

9/ That different set of rituals is what is being described here in the middle section of DA. He's providing, in fine detail, what we need to pay attention to to see ourselves performing those rituals and creating selves in us.

8/ Both words mean both "craving for existence" causing us to need to know we have a self and to therefore create one, and the rituals that did that for the Vedic people. My thesis overall is that, in DA, the Buddha was using the mythos, meaning, and rituals to point to a different set of rituals.

7/ Back in thread #SB31of10k I provided evidence from the Buddha's own discussion in SN 12.64 that *taṇhā* (craving) and *saṅkhārā* are interchangeable words.

6/ I am fully behind "craving for existence" for *bhavataṇhā*.

5/ The other two items in the three-part definition are *bhavataṇhā* and *vibhavataṇhā* which generally get translated as craving for existence, and craving for non-existence.