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A useful fiction (or, a red herring?) The first Sanskrit-English
dictionaries were ad-libbed by (Christian) amateur philologists at the turn
of the 18th century. Rhys-Davids et al. composed the first Pali
dictionaries some 50 years later. Most Sanskrit and Pali words given
generally acceptable English equivalents and were translated. Not so the
Buddhist key word ‘nirvana’ (Pali: nibbana). Note: no one knows what language the Buddha spoke. Not a single
statement has been transmitted in the language he used. Moreover, since
(almost) all discourses attributed to the Buddha (actually, the Tathagata;
the epithet Buddha was never used by the Sakyamuni to describe himself) begin
with the words, “Thus I have heard, ...”, all such discourses are hearsay,
gossip, i.e. (religious) fable. Who the hearers were and, later on, the
individuals who wrote the discourses down in either Sanskrit or Pali (and who
would probably have been Brahmins), is unknown. Literary archaeology has
shown that ‘original’ discourses were still being composed (or ‘found’,
specifically in Tibet) more than 1000 years after the Buddha’s death,
obviously fakes. There are
three reasons why the word ‘nirvana’ is not
translated. 1.
1.
The word ‘nirvana’ is a metaphor (Understanding
metaphor). Translating
a metaphor (i.e. a verbal analogy or example) in order to arrive at an
actual, that is to say, literal meaning or factual description, results in
nonsense. e.g.: ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ is hardly an accurate or
meaningful description of rainfall. Having a ‘splitting headache’ does not
mean that the head is about to split. ‘Blowing out’ or ‘No blow’, i.e. ‘nirvana’ is not really what happens when an
individual dies or eliminates (i.e. burns out) an unpleasantness producing
function. In his 45year wanderings
as an itinerant beggar (to wit, as a morality (+ some metaphysical wisdom)
busker), the Buddha did not once produce either a literal definition or a
precise factual description of the metaphor ‘nirvana’.
Consequently, no one knows for sure what the Buddha actually meant to say (or
describe) with that metaphor. 2.
2.
It appears (in some Pali discourses) that the word ‘nirvana’ was first used as a
past participle, possibly as an adjective. If that was the case, then the metaphor ‘nirvana’ would have been understood to mean
‘extinguished’ (as when fire ‘goes out’ or ‘dies down’ for lack of fuel),
hence not requiring a post burn-out ‘content’ (such as peace (or appeasement)
or bliss, both of these words being metaphors describing the subjective
affects of burning-out (hence of cooling) but not of being burnt out, and
when no subject with consciousness remains). When something extinguishes, for
instance, ‘birth’ or life or death, or ‘dukkha’, meaning ‘ill’ or
‘unpleasantness’, it simply ends, rather than reverts to an ‘own’
state=essence (possibly atta or atman as some ancient Indians
believed) or becomes a new state. When, later on, ‘nirvana’ was used as a noun (i.e. as ‘extinction’ or
‘burnt-out’) a ‘nirvana’ ‘content’ (or state)
suggested itself (Note that Nagarjuna eventually rubbished this notion of ‘nirvana’ (i.e. as blissful salvation) by equating
it with ‘samsara’ (a highly ambiguous
metaphor purporting to describe ‘this (awful, endless) world’)). It is not known if the
Tathagata used the term as participle (or adjective) or noun. It is
interesting to note that neither ancient Sanskrit nor Pali had the definite
article ‘the’, and which usually decides whether or not a word is a noun. 3.
3.
The etymological (or literal, rather than
factual, meaning, either physical or psychological) interpretation of the metaphor ‘nirvana’ was considered (by the early Christian popularisers of Buddhism,
and which they peddled for a living) to
be user-unfriendly. After all, which Western
Christian, having no knowledge of Buddhism, would make self-(more
precisely stated, personal)
extinction (actually, the extinction of what the Buddha believed to be
not-self (hence of the skandhas which are anatta)) the ultimate
goal of life’s striving? Selling personal extinction is hardly good for
business. Talking of (blissful?) ‘Nirvana’ is
much more comforting and skilful for the gathering of devotees rather than
speaking of bliss-less, pain-less extinction (without return). Consequently,
the Sanskrit metaphor ‘nirvana’ (Pali: nibbana)
is left un-translated. Un-translated, the word ‘nirvana’
functions as a meanings cloud (i.e. as a fuzz-word) shaped
to suggest a blissful state (or pure land, read: salvation), possibly with
esoteric, indeed numinous ‘own’ (i.e. ‘proper’ (German: eigen) = atta or
sva-bhava) properties. r restt.
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