Dear Dhamma friends,

This message is about the meaning of san.khaara.
I have read in Nanavira's Notes on Dhamma, about sankhara. He wrote:

"the word sankhara, in all contexts, means 'something that something else depends upon', that is to say a determination (determinant)."

Do other people agree with this interpretation? Does this make sense to other people?

Further along Nanavira wrote:
"we can only stop regarding this as 'self' if we see that what this depends on is impermanent"

see the note on sankhara: <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/9366/sn-sankh.htm>

This next paragraph is some of my own thoughts. We can see that things in our experience depend upon other things. For instance, intentions depend upon consciousness, and consciousness depends upon intentions.. The body depends upon breath and food, speech depends upon thoughts. And of course, there are the links of paticcasamupada. I believe that greed, hate, and delusion depend upon the world. We might say a very greedy and hateful person is greatly determined by the world. (But why assume 'a person'?) It is said that Nibbana is the end of greed, hate, and delusion, the undetermined.


From,
Ben



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