Dear Piya Tan,

Thanks very much for PDF file of your article and annotaded translation on
the Cula Sunna Sutta.
I was reading an article by Alex Wayman where he mention this passage of the
sutta as follows:

Of the passage that you translate as:
" there is only this nonemptiness,namely, the oneness [unity]27 dependent on
the community of monks."

He translates as:
"There is only this measure of embrasure: the singleness depending upon the
idea of the congregation of monks."

He explain his rendition:
"In subsequent paragraphs of the scripture, other items are substituded for
the congregation of monks; thus: 'forest', 'earth', 'infinite', 'space', and
so on. It should be explained why the rendition 'embrasure' was adopted for
the Pali (and Sanskrit) term daratha. Pali reference works claim that the
term means 'trouble', 'disturbance', or 'distress' - renditions that clearly
do not apply to the present scripture. The More-Willians Sanskrit-English
Dictionary provides for the term daratha the meanings 'cave', and 'taking'
flight' from Ujjvaladatta's commentary on the Unadi-sutras. If we put the
two senses together: the one taking flight would like a kind of 'cave' to
hide in: so 'cave' can be interpreted as 'making a cave'. I found for this
notion the term 'embrasure', which as a verb means 'to widen an opening',
and which as a noun was used in a military sense, e.g., widening a hole in a
rampart so that the sides flare outwards, enabling a cannon placed therein
to be able to swing in various directions. For application to the present
scripture, we must remove the cannon and imagine going through this opening
to a 'forest' or to 'infinite space' and so on. The way this is taken as a
cave is to imagine the empty space outside the opening as a sort of
'mountain' and that the sides which flare outwards continue and create a
cave in this 'mountain'. It is this cave which is understood to be void of
this or that, and to be non-void of this or that. Thus, this early sutta
takes the term sunna (void, s. Sunya) in its etymological sense. See Surya
Kanta, A Grammatical Dictionary of Sanskrit (Vedic), p. 250, associating
sunya with the verb "su", or "swell". This agrees with our rendition
'embrasure' for the word daratha. The 'swelling' is productive of a cave, a
kind of opening that affords an opportunity for what the sutta calls
'abundance'."

I understand the translation "disturbance" or "non-emptiness" very different
from his rendition as "embrasure" for the word "daratha".
He seems to try to find out the etymology of the word and apply it in the
context of the sutra, relating it with the concept of "sunna"

What do you think about his translation and explanation?
Metta,
Gabriel




-----Original Message-----
From: Piya Tan [mailto:dharmafarer@...]
Sent: 25 April 2008 13:33
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Gabriel Jaeger
Subject: Re: [Pali] non-emptiness

Dear Gabriel,

Those interesting issues you mentioned are some highlights of the Cula
Sunnata Sutta.
You will find a clarification or discussion of them in the attached
translation.

Thanissaro's style needs some familiarity, but he can be helpful.

With metta,

Piya Tan

On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 12:41 AM, Gabriel Jaeger <lotsawanet@...>
wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear dhamma-friends,
>
> Studing the Cula-suññata Sutta - The Lesser Discourse on Emptiness,
> Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu I was wondering the
> páli term for his rendition of non-emptiness in the following
> passage:
>
> Just as this palace of Migara's mother is empty of elephants, cattle,
> & mares, empty of gold & silver, empty of assemblies of women & men,
> and there is only this non-emptiness — the singleness based on the
> community of monks;
>
> http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.121.than.html
>
> Does it would be "asunna"?
>
> I was reading an article that mention the pali word for this
> respective passage as "daratha", and it was translated as "embrasure".
> The full passage was translated as:
>
> " There is only this measure of embrasure: the singleness depending
> upon the idea of the congregation of monks"
>
> Thanks for any help or suggestion.
>
> All the best,
>
> Gabriel
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

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