Dear Frank,

Up to some years back, I had been using "canker" for aasava. But as you
mentioned, it is a poetic term. A poetic term is best used in verses or
contexually as the occasion dictates.

I have chosen "influx" which is close to the etymology, of sense-data
glowing IN and flooding our sense-faculties, and so defiling our system
because we fail to see them as they are. "Effluent" I think comes from EX
(out) + fluent, meaning OUT flow. It is used sometimes in reference to
industrial waste and pollutant that flow OUT into the drainage system, etc.

Some scholars have used the term untranslated, that is, anglicized them,
which can be useful to a point here. However, if asava gets around long
enough like nirvana, dharma, karma, etc, we will get used to its meaning.

I'm often guided by the dictum "the word is not the thing." Terms and
translations are at best little key-holes or windows for us to open (with
the right key) or see through to envision true reality. As such, no
translation is perfect, and we need the direct knowledge of mindfulness of
that inner eye cultivating stillness and clarity.

We should get used to the idea that there is no one way of translating a
Pali word or term. While Pali is a classical language of early Buddhism,
which has more or less "frozen" and preserved the intended senses in some
way, English is a living and growing language.

Decades back ex-PTS President, Miss I B Horner wrote me in a letter saying
that ideally a new translation of the Pali texts should be done every 50
years or so.

We have just submitted the Sutta Discovery Volume 1 (SD 1) for printing. So
far 32 vols (MSS) have been completed, and we hope to publish 2-3 vols a
year. By 2030, we would have over 100 SD volumes covering the four NIkayas
published. We are going slow with this as the works are heavily annotated
and try to give a digest of available scholarship and Buddhist traditions.

Happy Lunar New Year & metta,

Piya Tan

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 8:21 AM, frank <fcckuan@...> wrote:

>
>
>
> http://www.palikanon.com/english/wtb/a/aasava.htm
> dictionary uses: cankers
>
> B.bodhi uses: taints
> thanissaro: fermentations (also effluents?)
>
> I prefer either canker or taint myself, probably canker because the
> meaning is very clear, that there is something undesirable festering
> within us.
> fermentations doesn't strike me the same way. I think of making beer, or
> the fermented foods like tempeh, sauerkraut, yogurt. It doesn't have a
> negative connotation, in fact the first impression is positive.
>
> effluents? I'm a fluent english speaker and I didn't know that word. Had
> to look that one up. Effluent? I thought it had something to do with
> language (as in fluency), or something to do with "affluence".
>
> I mean no disrespect, and I have a great deal of appreciation for the
> prolific number of english translations he made freely available, but
> sometimes Thanissaro's word translation choices completely confound me.
>
> Thoughts? Which translation do you guys think is best?
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>



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