Dear Nina,

Yes, "painful" is not good. I just could not think out an English adjective derived from "suffering". Curious - there is such a word in Bulgarian and Russian (maybe also in other Slavic languages), but it is used only as a grammatical term meaning "passive voice". Which remains me how twenty years ago a friend of mine have explained the Buddhist concept of dukkha as (metaphorically speaking) existence or being "in passive voice".

With metta,
Ardavarz

--- On Fri, 11/13/09, Nina van Gorkom <vangorko@...> wrote:

From: Nina van Gorkom <vangorko@...>
Subject: [Pali] Re: Q. Pali] Dhammacakkappavattanasutta, no 7.
To: Pali@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, November 13, 2009, 5:38 PM







 









Dear Ardavarz,

You remarks are useful.

-----------

Ardavarz:

> Maybe this is not so important, but I think it could be worth

> sharing. Sometimes ago I noticed that in this passage the word

> dukkha is agreed in gender, therefore it is rather adjective than

> substantive (as a substantive dukkha.m - "pain, suffering" is

> neuter), so maybe the literal translation would be "old age is

> painful, sickness is painful..." etc. which however does not change

> the meaning too much.

--------

N: Yes, I noticed this only recently when I rendered this word by

word. I had not seen it before. I mostly followed the translation by

John Kelly (a few exceptions). To be more precise it should be

painful, as you say. We are so used to hearing: it is dukkha, it is

suffering. Now, I do not like very much the word painful, actually I

feel that there is not any translation which is very satisfying to

render dukkha. I would prefer to leave it untranslated.

---------

> A: I also think that two terms piya and appiya are also neuter

> (although in plural the gender is not explicit) with more abstract

> and impersonal meaning - dear and not-dear things or rather

> pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Still I don't know what the

> commentaries say about this.

-------

N: I studied the words piya ruupa and sata ruupa as used in the

Vibhanga and the Yamaka. At first I thought that it only referred to

ruupa and then found out that it refers to naama as well. Any naama

or ruupa, except lokuttara dhammas.

See Vibhanga, Book of Analysis, The Truth of the Cause. They are all

enumerated.



I think here it refers to whatever is dear or not dear, including

persons or things. We have sorrow when we are separated from dear

persons or pleasant objects. It must include all kinds of objects.

------

Nina.



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