And speaking of bad translations by Woodward (which I was, in the comments two posts back) and how they sometimes lead me to see things I wouldn’t otherwise, I was out looking for some fresh insight into the Brahma Vihara, when I came across one in the Angutarra Nikaya’s “Tens” (AN 10.208) that I read in the old Pali Text Society version first published in 1936, translated by R.L. Woodward, which led me to discover something I think is quite interesting.
The first few lines were what caught my attention because they were so muddy that I couldn’t understand what was being said:
Monks, I declare that of intentional deeds done and accumulated there can be no wiping out without experiencing the result thereof, and that too whenever arising, either in this same visible state or in some other state hereafter.
I declare, monks, that there is no ending of Ill as regards intentional deeds done and accumulated without experiencing the results thereof.
and in comparing that to two other translations, I found none of them quite agreed on what was being said. Here is Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s:
“Monks, I don’t speak of the wiping out of intentional acts that have been done & accumulated without [their results] having been experienced, either in the here & now or in a further state hereafter. Nor do I speak of the act of putting an end to suffering and stress without having experienced [the results of] intentional acts that have been done & accumulated.”
and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s:
“I declare, monks, that actions willed, performed and accumulated will not become extinct as long as their results have not been experienced, be it in this life, in the next life or in subsequent future lives. As long as these results of actions willed, performed and accumulated have not been experienced, there will be no making an end to suffering, I declare.
What we have here are three pieces:
- A first phrase in which the Buddha says something about kamma (“actions”) and their results
- A second phrase referring back to the first (muddled in Woodward’s version; mistranslated and misunderstood, I believe, in all three)
- A third phrase that is an almost exact duplication of the first, with the only differences being that this last sentence opens with an emphatic negation (“na tvevāhaṃ“) instead of the original mild one, and the word translated as “extinct” or “wiped out” in the first sentence is replaced with “dukkhassantakiriyaṃ” (“ending of Ill” or “end to suffering”) in this third.
The problems I found are in the middle phrase, which traditionally is being interpreted as talking about when one will experience suffering, which, if you think about it, isn’t a particularly significant thing to talk about: of course if we are going to experience the fruits of kamma it will either be experienced now or in the future — what would be the significance of pointing this out? Bhikkhu Bodhi’s answer seems to be that it’s telling us it will either be in our lives now or in a future life, but the Pali has nothing about lives in it at all.
You can find my notes on how I translated it the way I did here, but the short version is that the only verb in that middle phrase, along with its object noun, and the adjective that modifies that noun were misunderstood as (two or) three separate states or times in a life — joined by a couple of “or”s that seem to have been modified from a (similar appearing, but different in meaning) emphatic word that is clearly used two more times in this opening block of text. The three different forms joined by these “or”s (verb, adjective, noun) work much better as a team the way they would in any normal sentence than as three disparate types of words joined by “or”.
My translation, then — with numbering following the explanation above — is:
(1) I do not say, monks, that intentions’ actions are resolved without enduring its accumulated ends, (2) and indeed that way of seeing it arises only through others’ discourses. (3) But, monks, I certainly do not say that intentions’ actions are resolved without enduring its accumulated experience of suffering.
Here we have the Buddha starting out by declaring that he does not say something, and then explaining that when it gets mis-stated, it is because it comes from some other group of people who believe that is the way kamma works. Somewhere out there, there were folks who thought that one could clean up the consequences of kamma in such a way as to avoid “enduring its accumulated ends” but the Buddha says he certainly doesn’t say that we can get away without the experience of dukkha that results from intention’s actions.
The notes on this sutta comment that some have thought it cobbled together from disparate bits, but the sense that it doesn’t hang together may come from the mistranslation of this opening, which gives us context. If translators were confused when the Buddha went straight from talking about how and when we will experience the fruits of kamma to a discussion of the Brahma Vihara, they would be right in seeing that as not particularly logical. But if the Buddha’s very clear understanding of how things work (dhamma), allows him to use some methods of others in his teaching — for example, the Brahma Vihara that gets described next seems to be adapted from braminical systems — but they are not exact renditions of the methods of others, some people may think he is saying that we should get the very same results from his modified method, that the brahmins expect from theirs.
If the question, “Whose views is he saying he doesn’t agree with and why is he being so adamant about it?” never gets asked because of a mistranslation, then the sutta becomes unnecessarily confusing.
Working on the words in the opening of this sutta led to discovering a few more interesting things, which I’ll take on in future posts.