Thanks Nina and Yong Peng for the material on the etymology of Dhamma.

Reading it, arise few questions.



1. There are some references on dhamma implying absence of an entity
or living soul, without a soul.

Soul here is the translation of which pali term?

I always get confused when reading the word soul, heaven, hell etc in
Buddhist texts, as this words have a very established meaning in our western
culture through Christianity.

2. dhamma causes one to reach heaven. For we westerners reading this
sentence naturally comes the idea that dhamma leads to a kind of heaven as
Jesus taught about.

I thought dhamma leads to liberation, to enlightment, not to heaven. What
would be the pali term for this heaven which dhamma leads.



3. There is Dhamma meaning gu.na, and the translation for gu.na was
virtue or merit.
Is that really virtue or merit? In the Indian culture we have gu.na
indicating "qualities", as in the three gu.nas.

I have seen translations with virtue meaning Kusala, merit meaning punna,
and qualities meaning gu.na.

Afterwards I we see the translation "punna" for virtue, in the passage The
Saddaniti explains dhamma as pu~n~na, virtue:

Following we read: dhamma means merit (or kusala), gu.na.

It seems that there a similarity between these terms, as sometimes guna
means virtue, merit, and virtue was used too for punna, and merit was used
too for kusala.
What are the distinctions between Kusala, punna and guna?



As this questions arise in a first read, I apologize for any mistakes.

With sure will read more times, and maybe more questions will arise.

Thanks a lot, with regards.

Gabriel





From: Pali@yahoogroups.com [mailto:Pali@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Ong
Yong Peng
Sent: 29 July 2007 16:56
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Pali] Re: Meaning of Dhamma



Dear Nina, Gabriel and friends,

the article (or clip) is now available here:
http://www.tipitaka.net/pali/scope/dhamma

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com <mailto:Pali%40yahoogroups.com> , Ong Yong Peng
wrote:

yes, I will definitely inform the group once the editing and checking
is completed.

> Yong Peng will tell us and give the link. It is the site of our Pali

list.





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