Re: vibhūta in AN 11.10

Dear Bryan, and all,

I'm afraid that I did not express myself clearly enough in my previous post
(and I think that this lack of clarity may have led both you and Ven. Bodhi
to misinterpret the argument I tried to present there).

What I *actually *intended was that the positive reading for *vibhava *felt
'right' to me ONLY in the case of the triadic definition of *taṇhā *in
terms of *kāmataṇhā*, *bhavataṇhā*, *vibhavataṇhā*.

I did NOT reverse my position on the negative meaning of
*vi-bhū*derivatives in the suttas in most (perhaps even all?) other
instances.

In other words, I did NOT intend to endorse that part of Neumann's thesis
(if that is what he intended) that *vibhava *only has a negative sense if
it occurs in a direct oppositional pair with *bhava*.

After all, I myself had already presented to you examples from the suttas
in which it is (I think unambiguously) the case that *vi-bhū* derivatives,
including the term *vibhava *itself, standing alone, clearly must have a
negative sense.

To make things clear, let me say that I am only prepared to hypothesise a
MODIFIED version of Neumann's thesis: namely, that ONLY in the triadic
definition of the second noble truth, *kāmataṇhā*, *bhavataṇhā*, *vibhavataṇhā,
*does *vibhava *have its positive sense. I will call this the Modified
Neumann Hypothesis (MNH).

This would entail, however, that *both *the positive *and *negative senses
occur in the suttas, but ONLY in this particular distribution!

I wonder what you would make of this implication of the MNH?

I apologise for not making my intended meaning 'crystal clear'.  But if you
were to read my previous argument again with this clarification in mind,
I'm sure it would read very differently to you.

Moreover, given this clarification of my perspective, I don't need to
respond to Ven. Bodhi's arguments supporting the negative reading of *vibhava
*and other *vi-bhū *derivations in contexts OTHER than the singular case of
*vibhavataṇhā*.

But I do continue to be deeply interested in testing the MNH, and I have
been making as close and careful an inquiry as I can, into the Suttanta
Piṭaka texts with the intention of testing this hypothesis.

So far, the results are certainly interesting.  I cannot say that I have
yet found a clearly decisive, conclusive piece of evidence to decide in
favour of *either *the MNH *or *the received reading (i.e., of *vibhavataṇhā
*as 'craving for non-existence').  Rather, I have found that it is possible
to argue fairly cogently for either interpretation, relying on textual
evidence plus very careful and parsimonious interpretation of that evidence.

Moreover, at this point, I actually feel that the argument in favour of the
MNH is slightly stronger than that in favour of the received reading. That
is, I have found that quite strong counter-arguments can be made in favour
of the MNH, against those that Ven. Bodhi has presented in favour of the
received reading.

I would like to post the results of the inquiry, once suitably fomulated,
so that others with different perspectives and knowledge-bases could
further test the arguments for and against the hypothesis; but only if
doing so does not offend anyone.

With metta,
Khristos



On 19 October 2012 01:17, Bryan Levman <bryan.levman@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
>
>
> Dear Khristos, Lennart, Ven. Bodhi and all,
>
> 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.
> Certainly there are lots of usages of the verb vi  + bhū plus derivatives
> in the positive sense, in the earliest Pāli writings, but nothing with the
> noun vibhava in the Neumann sense that I can find. In fact, in the Sabhiya
> sutta of the Sutta nipāta, which according to Norman is one of the earliest
> suttas -  predating the Second Council (383 BC), we find
>
> vibhavañca bhavañca vippahāya,
> vusitavā khīṇapunabbhavo sa bhikkhu.
>
> which Norman translates as "...having abandoned both non-existence and
> existence, has lived his life, whose renewed existence is destroyed, he is
> a 'bhikkhu'."
>
> I suppose it could be translated in Neumann's sense, ".. having abandoned
> wealth (power, might, fortune, property, etc.) and existence..." but that
> does not intuitively strike me as correct.
>
> If anyone finds a nominal usage of vibhava in the Newmann sense, please
> share it with the group,
>
> Metta,
>
> Bryan
>
> __,_._,
>


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