Re: vibhūta in AN 11.10

Dear Khristos, Bryan, Most Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi,

I too was impressed with Neumann's interpretation of vibhavataṇhā  as
> craving for well-being; it did have a certain "feeling of rightness" about
> it, as Khristos said, as for years I have wondered about the third craving
> - also translated as for "non-existence" -  which does not seem very
> prevalent in mankind, while craving for well-being/wealth/riches, etc.,  is
> omnipresent. Even more importantly, this is the normal Vedic and Sanskrit
> usage of the word.
>
> Ven. Bodhi's argument is however, quite convincing, and my own check for
> usages of vibhavatanhā in Newmann's sense, did not yield any results.
>

I think Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi's line of evidence is so clear that it is really
hard to go with Neumann (and as far as I know, nobody ever did). After all
he did study a lot of Sanskrit before Pali and was probably slightly
influenced to read it in a certain way (also given the fact that it was
quite pioneering to translate Pali in the 1890s)

However, the list of 3 cravings can still be read in a "climactic triad"
which he was so adamant about as a more natural language-inherent way to
stack lists of concepts. I agree with him, but see it the other way round:


    - sensual craving (kāmataṇhā) being the most obvious (apparent) type of
    craving
    - next comes craving for existence (bhavataṇhā) something harder to see
    or overcome
    - and finally comes EVEN the craving for non-existence, something even
    harder to see and thus forming a very subtle (last) obstacle.


Someone on the the path to Nibbāna is in the process of removing craving in
its entirety and this list makes sure you don't overlook any type of ever
refined craving along the path.

This fits nicely with the description of the first noble truth, where we
can see the Buddha start with very obvious facts of suffering (death,
sickness) progresses towards a deeper more psychological realm (separation
from loved ones...) which is harder to see and finally ends with a
crescendo saying that all forms of suffering can, in summary, be traced
back to the five groups of grasping - which is very hard to understand for
an ordinary person, something extremely subtle, but because it sits at the
end of this line of progressively more refined ways of looking at
suffering, it "makes sense".

So this way Neumann's observation about 'climactic triads" in Indian
languages and the more probable appearance of vibhava in a negative sense
get settled but it still does not explain the interesting relationship
between Sanskrit/commentarial sources of seeing vibhava/vibhūta as
well-being and maybe a few Pali places where that could be the case as well.

Hope I did not go off topic too much with throwing Neumann into the
discussion.

with lot's of metta & a great amount of muditā,

Lennart


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