Hello Jim, thanks very much for looking up and sharing this information, it's quite interesting, indeed. I'll give it some more thought.

Just quickly, though, "eso pañcakkhandhapabhedo ahampi na asmi" perhaps rather "This 'I' consisting of the five aggregates, I am not" (than 'does not exist', 'na atthi'), which would agree exactly with what we've been saying.

Thank you also Lennart and Bryan for your thoughts (the German examples were very useful, too) and further references. Lennart's interpretation seems to be very close to the one I was suggesting, which is encouraging.

respectfully, with metta
Khristos

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Anderson" <jimanderson.on@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Khristos and all,
>
> I thought I'd check a Pali commentary to see if there was any
> explanation for the difference of eta.m and eso in the formula and
> found something in an old .tiikaa (Ps-p.t I 286 (Be)) that seems to
> help clarify. From my search of the formula in the Suttantapi.taka,
> the first occurence is found at M I 40 in the Sallekhasutta. The
> a.t.thakathaa (Ps I 182-3) devotes about half a page to explaining the
> formula including an explanation similar to Nina's earlier
> explanation. I will focus primarily on the middle clause (nesohamasmi)
> of the formula because it is the easiest one to deal with.
>
> For "nesohamasmi", the a.t.thakathaa (Ps I 182) gives "ahampi eso na
> asmi" which doesn't explain, at least to me, the change from eta.m in
> the first clause to eso in the middle one. Now, the .tiikaa expands on
> this with the following comment:
>
> Ahampi eso na asmiiti eso pañcakkhandhapabhedo ahampi na asmi,
> ahanti so gahetabbo na hotiiti attho. (Ps-p.t I 286 (Be))
>
> I would translate "eso pañcakkhandhapabhedo ahampi na asmi," as "this
> I, too, consisting of the five aggregates does not exist,". For the
> last part, which is not so clear, I would suggest "the meaning is that
> this "I" is not to be grasped." or perhaps "the meaning of 'aha.m'
> is that it should not be grasped". So from these comments, one could
> translate "nesohamasmi" as "this I does not exist" which is quite
> different from saying "this I am not". For "eta.m" in the first
> clause, the same .tiikaa gives "eta.m khandhapa~ncaka.m".
>
> Best wishes,
> Jim
>