It occurs to me that my remarks about your translation of the Netti, coming as they did mixed up with my onslaught on the Netti, may have appeared as rather unsympathetic. This, however, was not at all my intention: I had thought, rather, that a more or less outspoken comment on how your translation reads (quite apart from what it is a translation of) would be of value to you, and possibly something that you would not obtain elsewhere. You will have noted that I say explicitly that though I criticize certain things I cannot offer anything better in many cases. I am fully in agreement with you in your insistance upon not losing ontologically (and otherwise) significant words or roots, such as bhava and dhamma, and inevitably certain phrases are going to look a little odd in English. All that one can do in such cases is to suggest (if we can think of one) a more satisfactory and less cumbersome way of putting the translation, and also (though rather rarely) to suggest that an altogether different basic word would be more suitable. It so happens that I do now suggest a change of basic word, but I shall discuss this later. There comes, however, a point where one meets a phrase that is purely idiomatic, or seems to be, and it is then perhaps better to abandon any attempt at literal translation (which may be totally incomprehensible) and to use a short simple corresponding English "idiotismo". Do you, for example, translate ditthe va dhamme aññá as "comprehension inseparable from the idea of being seen" or as "comprehension immediately/here and now"? If your rule (of preserving the word dhamma) obliges you to use the former translation, then I suggest that this is a point where the rule must be abandoned. I say this rather reluctantly; but if one is going to translate for anyone's benefit beyond one's own, then some allowance has to be made for the reader (and it may be necessary to abandon the rule at an earlier point than this -- but it is a matter of opinion).
Quite apart, however, from cumbersomeness forced upon you by this rule, I complained, as you will remember, of surplusage in a more general way. You do not, I implied, run enough on your muscles. I find a tendency in your translations to be more explicit than the original text. There must, I admit, be enough in the finished translation to make grammatical sense; but you sometimes go some way beyond this, and close certain dialectics that, in particular, the Suttas leave open. For example, in the Netti translation you point out (very usefully) that the proper meaning of the phrase yathábhatam nikkhito evam niraye is to be found in the 20th Sutta of the Itivuttaka, but your actual translation of the passage is most uneconomical and says more than the original. Literally this passage is "burdenwise placed, thus, in hell", which requires in translation no more than "as if carried so he is placed in hell". (The evam, I take it, is either the counterpart of yathá or else refers to what precedes; and this translation will do in either case.) This particular instance is, no doubt, trivial; but what puzzled me rather is why you did not think of a shorter translation yourself. It now occurs to me that it may be a matter of temperament. Let me explain. I have noticed that masters of prose writing in English are very often very indifferent poets -- Joyce is an outstanding example; his few poems, except for the title (Pomes Pennyeach) are very ordinary -- and vice versa that good poets frequently write a most undistinguished prose (Eliot is rather like this, and Edith Sitwell is another). I am speaking here principally of rhythm (which involves, notably, the question of verbal economy); and in this matter I follow and agree with Fowler, that the test of rhythm is to read the passage aloud or aloud-to-oneself. If the passage can be read at sight, not only correctly, but easily and with pleasure, then it has rhythm; but if it is sticky and lifeless then it has none, though the grammar may be impeccable. Two words from chemistry seem to convey the distinction: rhytmic prose is crystalline, non-rhytmic prose is amorphous ("an amorphous grey powder"). I have actually read-aloud-to-myself three or more chapters of Gibbon and never stumbled once or felt at all fatigued, and I found the same thing, though to a lesser extent, in C.E. Montagne's "Disenchanment". (Ross Ashby has rhythm, Grey Walter has not; John Donne is at home in prose and verse -- rather an exception, I think.) It seems to me that perhaps people generally, and not merely professional writers, fall into two classes, those who would express themselves in verse (if they were to write) and those who would express themselves in prose; and that when they are called upon to use the other medium they are not properly at home in it and find it a labour. For my part, though I flatter myself that when I take the trouble to polish it, which, however, is only if it is intended for publication, I can write a prose that is not altogether dead (I can reread some of my past prose with a certain degree of pleasure, even though I may now disagree with what is said), yet I cannot put together two lines of the meanest doggerel and am lost in admiration of those who can (let alone of those who can write poetry). Now I find that in reading what you write, if it is verse I can "express my opinion only as praise" (where do you get the inspiration from to call the Netti a "comic hermeneutic grammar"?), whereas if it is prose I sometimes get a certain feeling of flatness, hard to analyze, but rather as if it had been written from a sense of duty, not with pleasure, and purely to convey information, not for its own sake (this doesn't at all apply to your letters, only to your formal prose). In the Vis. Mag., for example, almost every bit of verse (and there is a lot of it) rings the bell as a masterpiece of economy and style, but the prose -- even allowing for the fact that the original is commentarial Pali -- occasionally seems unnecessarily wordy. That this difference between us (if I have not simply imagined it) is temperamental and not a matter of difference in education -- the mathematician tends to neglect his grammar -- is to be seen in the fact that it was you who had to polish my translation of Evola[1] to make it presentable: yet as a result of a very small deliberate effort to write rhytmical English (since Ordination) I find I can (so I think) write rhytmical English quite naturally if I exert myself and with a certain degree of pleasure -- and I also find that I am totally incapable of writing (rhytmical) verse. On the whole, you come out of this better than I do; for whereas I should be quite satisfied if my prose were as good as your verse, you have no reason to alarm and despond yourself with the thought that your prose is no better than my verse. What the moral of all this is, I don't quite know, except perhaps that I am wrong to criticize you for using too many words in your prose when it may be that for you, in some way I do not altogether understand, they are not too many. "It is the nature of prose to have so many words; but verse, ah! that is different." Is this nonsense? What do you think?
You asked me in a recent letter what I understood by the word dhammá -- whether, for example, I equated it with "phenomena". I gave you a rather indeterminate reply; but since then the matter has been receiving attention, particularly as a result of reading the Netti translation (whatever I may think of the Netti, to read your translation was by no means a waste of time), and I now have rather more to say about it -- more, in fact, than I can say in this letter, though I can say something. But before doing so, let me, to avoid confusion and misunderstandings (I hope) say what I gather (from the Netti translation) are your views on this matter (please correct me if I am wrong). Taking the phrase manañca paticca dhamme ca as the basis, I think that you consider dhammá to be "ideas" in the sense of concepts (your translation of vayadhammo as "inseparable of the idea of dissolution" seems to indicate this) or images as opposed to the other five external áyatanas which are what Sartre would call "perceptions" (note here that in L'Imaginaire Sartre allows concepts without words or images, but he corrects this -- rightly -- in L'Être et le Néant [p. 601]). It may be (I don't know) that you even take dhammá, in this passage, as more or less equivalent to "thoughts". In any case, it seems that you make the following distinction: the first five external áyatanas are rúpa, and the sixth, dhammá, is náma. I presume (it is a guess) that your argument runs like this: "In the áruppas there is no rúpa, only náma; also (see Mahá Vedalla Sutta) the five indriyas (cakkhu...káyo) have been abandoned, and there is only mano, and externally a neyyam dhammam; thus dhammá are necessarily náma", and that you consider in addition to this that the function of naming things (this is A, that is B) is essentially a mental function, that first we perceive sensible objects with our five senses and then we set about identifying them (by naming them) with our mind (this may be the reason for your note in the Netti trs. that attá, which you say -- not unjustly -- is identification -- though I should not agree that it is all identification --, only arises in connexion with náma -- I forget your exact wording). If this is your view (or approximately your view) and you are confident enough about it not to consider changing it, then what I have to say may not be of interest to you.
In the first place, I can by no means allow the distinction between the objects of the first five senses as rúpa and that of mind as náma, because it is in contradiction with a number of Suttas (e.g. Mahá Hatthipadopama) where all five khandhas arise with each of the six kinds of contact (cakkhusamphassa etc.), and thus náma is not confined to the sixth áyatana nor rúpa to the first five. In addition the áruppa argument (which I have fathered on you above), though logically valid, is a misapplication of logic; and I cannot accept náma, which is clearly defined in the Suttas as vedaná...manasikára, as at all on the same level as naming in the sense of deciding what things are (What is this? It is a bhikkhu. Is it really a bhikkhu? No, it is really a cow, but it looks like a bhikkhu. Are you certain? Not really.). In the second place I do not allow that dhammá is equivalent to thoughts, for the good reason that thoughts do not continue beyond first jhána, whereas dhammá do. In the third place I do not even allow that dhammá is equivalent to concepts or images, though the reasons for this cannot be set out briefly.[a] (Wherefore my projected treatise on mind.) [A neyyam dhammam, though possibly translatable as an "inferred dhamma" is probably better as an "abstract dhamma", since "inference" is too close to logic, which implies thought.] Certainly, thoughts, concepts, and images, are all dhammas, but none of them gives the meaning of dhamma.
Up to recently I advocated the use of the word "idea" as a translation of dhamma, and this for the two reasons, first that the obkect of the mind is clearly an idea (= concept or image), and second that dhamma is the essence or nature or whatness of a thing as opposed to sankhára which is its determinateness (and adequately translated as "determination"), and the Platonic Idea was precisely the essence of a thing (though conceived as possessing a separate kind of existence in another world). So long as these two reasons reinforced each other, the word "idea" seemed to be the ideal translation of dhamma; but now that I find that to translate manañca dhamme ca as "mind and ideas" is a mistake, if by "idea" we understand "concept" (which of course we do), this translation has to go, provided anything better can be found. What is needed is a word that conveys essence (though "essence" won't do, being far too esoteric), does not convey concept to the exclusion of anything else (as "idea" does), and is sufficiently general and versatile to be used in widely different contexts. I think there is such a word, though it is rather unexpected: MATTER. Provided that all "matter" in the sense of substance or what Dr. Johnson picked is "form" (rúpa) the word can be used exclusively in its other sense of "what is the matter?", "the mater in hand", "it is a matter of six-pence", "material (= relevant or essential) evidence". Let us try a few examples. Manasikárasamudayá dhammánam samudayo "with the origination of attention matters originate" (cf. "I shall give the matter my attention" which brings the matter into being); manañca paticca dhamme ca "dependent upon mind and upon matters..."; yam kiñci samudayadhammam sabbam tam nirodhadhammanti "all/everything whatsoever that is an originating matter is a ceasing matter" or, not so good, "everything/all whatsoever that is a matter of origination is a matter of cessation"; Buddha dhamma sangha "the Enlightened One, the Matter (the True Matter), the Community"; dhammánupassaná "contemplation of matters"; catunnam bhikkhave dhammánam natthi koci pátibhogo "in four matters, monks, there is no surety"; ditthe va dhamme aññá "comprehension as an immediate matter"; ditthasutamutaviññátabbesu dhammesu "in matters to be seen, heard, sensed and/or cognized..."; and so on -- all of them passable, and some of them good (note in particular "an originating matter" as opposed to "inseparable from the idea of origination"). "Matter" has the advantage, amongst others, over "things" that "thing" will really do for either sankhára or dhamma ("all things are impermanent; all things are not-self") and will therefore not do for either, whereas "matter" lays much more stress upon content than upon structure ("all determinations are impermanent; all matters are not-self"). Another point is this. In manañca dhamme ca, dhammá are, precisely, "phenomena" of any kind at all. But a phenomenon is made up of three parts, viññána (its presence), náma (its quality or description[b] -- blue, pleasant, etc.) and rúpa (its resistance or independence), and these cannot properly be called phenomena, since they are pre-phenomenal (they are negatives within phenomena). They are, however, called dhammá (cf. Mahá Vedalla Sutta), and it is clear that dhamma has an even wider meaning than that in manañca dhamme ca, namely anything at all that is different from (though not necessarily separable from) anything else (viññána is not separable from vedaná and saññá, though it is different from them). The word "matter" can cope: consciousness (cognition) can perfectly intelligibly be called a matter even though it is not a complete object or phenomenon. I offer you the word both as an improvement in sense over "idea" (though you may not agree) -- "matter" closes fewer dialectics than "idea", which is only a disadvantage if you are certain that "idea" is exactly right; it does not deny that dhamma may mean "idea", but only that it must do so -- and as a handier word in translation (which I think can hardly be denied).
A party visited the other day with a woman who asked if it was true that my mother died of sorrow. This, I suppose, is the Ven. Narada Thera's doing. It is either false -- I was told she died of a heart attack --, or else a ridiculous understatement -- I am prepared to believe she died of despair, perhaps not unmixed with fury. But to say that she died of sorrow is to throw the whole affair into an absurdly artificial and romantic light. The Ven. Thera has his own ideas about women, which he would not have altered even if he had met my mother, which he did not.
The new cistern has stopped leaking, I am glad to say. No doubt it has sealed itself with the impurities suspended in the escaping water. The weather is bright but rather damp (no decent rain however). The SW wind started punctually on the 19th (my notes on the Ceylon weather says it starts about the 20th) and has been blowing ever since.
As I was removing one of my two large mápilas -- "large" in the sense of "fat", not "long", since they are no longer than the thin ones -- the brown one -- I met the Vedamahatthaya[2], who said it was a nága-mápila and very poisonous indeed. This incident is remarkable only for the fact that it is the first time I have heard any Sinhala admit that a mápila does anything else than drink your blood. The Vedamahatthaya, however, is a bit of an impressionist, he likes a broad canvas with bold general effects, and the details don't matter very much. There is a cock junglefowl who will now come up and eat in my presence, about three or four yards away. I think it is a bird who has known me since its chickhood as a source of food. It looks just like a farmyard rooster, though perhaps a little less smug. First year about a dozen frogs in the roof; last year fifty; this year so far none at all, but perhaps they will come later.
About identification. Perhaps I should make it clear that I regard attá as identification in the sense that I cannot entertain the idea of my self without at the same time identifying it in some way with some object (or matter in the sense of dhamma). But I do not at all regard the question of an object's identity (or self-identity if you prefer) as involving attá in the Sutta sense. If I say "that bhikkhu is really a cow" I am simply making an inference to the future: "When we get closer we shall see that what now appears to be a bhikkhu will appear to be a cow". This sort of identification need have nothing to do with tanhá at all, and can perfectly well be made by an arahat, and indeed must be, in all his practical teleological dealings (such as obtaining food). Any interpretation of a sign as indicating something else is an identification, and can be expressed in terms of the word "self" -- a thing's self being what it really is, i.e. what it is a sign of, what it indicates -- though there is no need to do so. And such an interpretation or identification can well be mistaken, even if made by an arahat. The attá of attaváda is something quite different. The "self" of an object is the identity of what is not given in the first place -- first we must conceive "I am" and only then can we decide what I am, and the result is eso me attáti. The root of the trouble is not in the identification but in the conception. For the puthujjana there is "this is" and there is "I am"; for the arahat there is only "this is": the puthujjana identifies both "this" and "I"; the arahat identifies only "this". Do I make myself clear? And do you agree or not?
[EL. 157] 21.iv.1959
Many thanks for your letter and for the C.O.D. extracts. As I thought, the words are so imprecisely used in English that one can make them mean very much what one pleases without violating usage; and I suspect that the situation was much the same, mutatis mutandis, in the Buddha's day. At the same time, there seem to be certain parallels between English usage and the Sutta usage: for example, CONSCIOUSNESS, according to the C.O.D., can mean "the totality of a person's thoughts and feelings", and it can also mean "perception (of, that)". The second meaning, with due allowance for looseness in the meaning of the English word "perception", approximates to what I understand by viññána, and the first meaning is quite close to citta (which I translate as "intent"). The Sutta connexion between these two is námarúpapaccayá viññána and námarúpasamudayá cittassa samudayo. "Mind" is delightfully Protean -- as "seat of consciousness" it is manáyatana, as "soul, opp. to body" it is mano in manokamma.
The comic element in the Netti has now, I think, given us all the laughs it was capable of; and we can now say, in a phrase of my schooldays, "Joke over". Perhaps needless to say, the charge of being comic is no more directed at you than is the charge (if I were to make such a charge in a general way: "Those who...") of being a champion, even quasi-crypto, of the Commentaries. I am quite well aware that you are quite well aware of the deficiencies (not to put the matter too strongly) both of the Netti and of the Commenatries, and that you are not deceived by them. (Upon occasion I give more credit to the Commentary than you do -- notably in the Cittavisuddhi section of the Vis. Mag., and also, perhaps, in its analysis of the four mahábhútáni. Apart from its usefulness as a dictionary, it also contains, however muddleheadedly, certain earlier interpretations that are of value.) What, then, is the origin of the suspicion, suspected by you, that I, and perhaps the Ven. Kheminda Thera too (though whether he would be so anti-commentarial were the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera not so pro-commentarial I don't know) may or may not entertain, of the propriety of your relations with the Commentary? Perhaps a remark of the Ven. Soma Thera's, that you once told me of, throws some light on the matter. It seems that, upon reading a disparaging passage in an early draft of your Vis. Mag. Introduction ("an opinion expressed", apparently, "only as dispraise"), he exclaimed "But if that is your opinion of the Visuddhi Magga I can't think why you bother to translate it". It is true that this does not take into account the fact that you translated it in order to find out what it was about, and not at all in order to propagate it as the Eternal Truth (which you might have done had you been an admirer of the work); but even when this is taken into account there seems to remain a vague unaccounted-for residue, perhaps expressible as "But is it necessary, in order to find out what it is about, to translate it quite so thorougly?" That, to other people, there is an air, a faint aura, of ambiguity about your relations with the Commentary, you will probably admit, since you seem to be aware of it yourself; but I, for one, should not attribute it to a secret admiration (though to what, exactly, it might be attributed is not altogether easy to say). Perhaps it is really, after all, nothing more mysterious than a slight self-indulgence in the pleasure of (18th century) scholarship. (I should certainly not suspect you, except to be perverse, of the seriousness of Scholarship in its present-day meaning -- indeed, of the three of us, the Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, yourself, and myself, you are the least serious, though not, therefore, the most comic.)
It seems very probable that the existence of the Commentaries have preserved the Text of the Vinaya and Suttas, which would long since have fallen into neglect and oblivion after the decision that practice was less important than preservation. But the question arises, for whose benefit have they been preserved?
The new cistern is directly in front of the room, so placed that water from the guttering can be caught in it. It is sunken, two feet below ground and one foot above (though it would be wrong to think of it as a tripod), and is thus inconspicuous and does not exclude the gaze from the ultimate horizon. The earlier one is under the trees to your right as you stand at the entrance to the cankamana facing outwards. Since neither is empty, there are no voices singing out of them, but by the end of September there will be, no doubt.
This letter is partly to uncross the situation, since my last letter to you crossed yours to me.
P.S. An alternative translation of yathábhatam nikkhitto evam niraye is "he is as if set-down like a burden in hell" (i.e. "he is in hell as if set down [there] like a burden"). This takes evam as referring to the whole of yathábhatam nikkhitto, instead of as just the complement of yathá (yathábhatam nikkhitto evam [nikkhitto] niraye), which gives (as I suggested) "as if carried, so he is placed in hell", placed being here a pun in the two senses of "to be placed (put down) like a burden" and "to be placed (located) in hell". Of these two renderings I prefer the second ("as if carried...") being a verbal ambiguity, whereas the first is a rhytmical ambiguity.
[EL. 158, a postcard] 5.v.1959
Haunt cod please. Ñánavíra
[EL. 159] 28.v.1959
Many thanks for your letter of the 25th. The weather here for the past month has been rather unpleasant, though nothing to what you seem to have been having.
...You understood my postcard perfectly -- just what I wanted, many thanks. I had originally asked for something else (as you gathered) but then remembered the answer; so I was left with a useless half-written post card. The brevity of the message that I did send was hardly style or wit, but perhaps reflected my desire to get rid of the postcard as soon as I found some excuse for doing so. I really wanted to know whether "haunt" would do for patisarana, which occurs in the Suttas in three passages (to my knowledge). The first (which I can't trace) is where a certain tree is described as the patisarana of some birds; the second is bhagavam-múlaká/patisaraná/nettiká no dhammá; and the third is where mano is described as the patisarana of the five indriyas (Mahá Vedalla Sutta). As I have told you, I now think that mano in this context (i.e. indriyas or áyatanas), is no more than the other five in association, and is not related to them as intellect (or thought) is related to the senses (as in nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu[1] -- note the "prius"). As a textual support for this you may refer to the description of the eighteen manopavicárá in the Saláyatanavibhanga Sutta (of the Majjhima), where mano is used in two senses, one as áyatana, and the other as approximately "intellect", "what one thinks with" (manopavicára). You will see that manopavicára occurs based upon each of the six, not five, báhiráyatanáni, and dhammá is on the same level, relative to manopavicára, as the other five. Now, how to translate patisarana? The usual translation "refuge" won't do. In the first place, is a tree the refuge of birds? From a storm, perhaps, but not from a huntsman, where they take to their wings for refuge. In the second place "refuge" makes poor sense in the second passage (bhagavampatisarano) and no sense at all in the third. "Haunt" will do well for the first (a tree is certainly the haunt of birds), but not -- so the cod informs me -- for the other two. A word that might fit all three is "seat", though it is a little odd to think of a tree as the (country) seat of some birds. I eventually decided to ignore the first passage and to concentrate on getting an adequate rendering for the last two. The word "authority" seems to fit quite snugly: it reflects the etymological meaning of patisarana -- a flowing back, a referring to a source --; and in its sense of a collection of departments -- an Urban District Council consists of a Water Department, an Electricity Department, a Health Department, and so on -- it well represents mano as a collection or association of sense-indriyas. Kant replied to Hume as follows:
Il se peut que sur le terrain de l'expérience on ne puisse découvrir d'autre lien entre la cause et l'effet que la consécution empirique. Mais pour qu'une expérience soit possible il faut que des principes a priori la constituent.[2]-- which, as Sartre remarks, is correct. Now if you will substitute "entre un sens et un autre que l'association emprique"[3] in this passage you will see what I mean by mano -- it is the "principe a priori" without which an experience of the senses combined (my pen is both visible and tangible) would be impossible; it is the faculty or capacity that the senses have of combining. (Strictly, mano is not so much the faculty that the senses have of combining or associating as the senses themselves in combination or association or superposition.) In this way my visible-and-tangible(-and-audible, it has a squeaky nib) pen is a dhamma, a "matter" and not an "idea" ("ideas" are on the level of manopavicára). Incidentally, your objection to "matter" for dhamma, that it is haunted in the definite singular by the scientists' and materialists' "matter" is not, I think, valid, since the definite singular is not "matter" (which is certainly open to this objection) but "the matter". Thus we have "matters" in the plural, and "a matter" or "the matter" in the singular; and I do not go to "Matter" for refuge but to "the Matter" (the Enlightened One, the Matter or the True Matter, the Community; and dhammánussati is "Recollection of the [True] Matter"). I am glad that, in general, it does not entirely meet with your disapproval.
It was not, in fact, my intention to suggest that you describe, Visuddhimagga fashion (the worst chapter in the Vis. Mag.), the six pairs of áyatanas in terms of námarúpa. What I did intend (however badly I expressed it) was to disagree with your note in the Netti translation where you make the first five pairs of phassáyatanáni responsible for patighasamphassa and the sixth pair for adhivacanasamphassa (I forget exactly how you worded it). This division of labour seems to imply that the five báhiráyatanáni are rúpa and the sixth (dhammá) is náma. Perhaps it does not imply this; but even so I do not agree with this division -- cakkhusamphassa, I find, is both patigha and adhivacana, and so too is manosamphassa. Do you, in fact, still endorse the view you state in that note?
My earlier suspicion, namely that sekha is not restricted to sotápanna and above (excluding arahattaphala) receives confirmation. It is clear from M.i,477-79 that sekhá are káyasakkhí, ditthippatto, saddhávimutto, dhammánusárí and saddhánusárí, and it is clear from this same Sutta, and also from M.i,141-2 (and also from other Suttas) that the last two are not yet attained to sotápatti. These passages are quite unmistakable, and the Commentarial definition, in consequence, is unmistakably wrong.
About style etc. You are quite right in castigating rhythm as blank-verse-written-as-prose with your admirable example (a catch in the voice is needed to declaim it effectively), and prose that is soporific by that very fact fails to be rhytmical (though it might be metrical). Perhaps the Ultimate Criterion is this: rhytmical prose is prose that entirely conceals itself. If it fails to conceal itself, as an orchestra playing badly fails to conceal itself behind the music, then it is unrhytmical. You point out that my prose tends to harden into formalism and sometimes uses stiff grammatical formulae. This is true. It is the near enemy of my style of writing as rága is the near enemy of mettá. To write good (rhytmical) prose one must cast one's sentences whole (even though one may alter them later), and this means that one must, before writing, re-think what one wants to say in rhytmical sentences. This is all very well when one has a clear idea of what is to be said, but when the thoughts are meagre or incomplete the result tends to be an artificial bony framework. Part of Gibbon's secret is that he always makes sure that he has got enough to say in each sentence -- nowhere does one find a sentence written for the sake of the style. But it would be a mistake to use Gibbon's style unless one were writing Gibbon's History. The style must be appropriate to the subject-matter, and this really is a matter of trial and error (Gibbon tells us that he wrote the opening chapter three times before he was satisfied that he had found the proper style).
Here is a matter in which I should like Ven. Ñánaloka's ruling. Next July you will be entering your tenth Vas (so shall I, of course). At what point should I start addressing you (on letters) as Thera? The Ven. Thera has, at different times, made different rulings, as is his way, and I really don't know which to follow. The possibilities seem to be these. You become a Thera (i) at the beginning of your tenth Vas residence; (ii) at the end (pávaraná) of your tenth Vas residence; (iii) when you have been upasampanna for ten calendar years (July 22, 1960); (iv) for ten lunar years (I don't know how that works out); (v) when you are formally declared a Thera by the Sangha in a Símá. Would you please ask Ven. Ñánaloka about this?
...If N.Q. Dias has discovered noia[4] that is the beginning of the end for him; though it may take some time before he gathers momentum on the downward slope. The Brahmacariya is the only cure for this disease. He should cultivate his boredom diligently (and take good care to be bored with America).
Now that the wind has changed we say farewell to: --
Elephants (none about for several weeks)And we welcome: --
Curd (still a week or two of this perhaps)
Rain
Baths (except for a month or two with the buffaloes)
Mosquitos
Visitors from England (who come in the winter)
Grass and green undergrowth (begins now to dry up)
Fishermen
Awicchas[5]
Frogs (two or three have arrived, whose two or three hashes will probably be settled by two or three mápilas)I learn from Mr. P. that the days round the full and new moons are regarded as "heavy" days, on which rain may be expected (which we had already discovered) and on which pregnant women are liable to give birth (which we had not). And also people avoid having operations on these days (I don't quite see why). Mothers, it seems, avoid taking baths on Fridays, since it is bad for the children.
Cicadas (in inverse ratio to the frogs; many, I think, this year)
Venison (always more plentiful in the off-season, when deer are easier to kill)
Saltern atmosphere (only a suspicion so far)
Tarantulas (no. 54 the other morning)
Colitis (common here in the sry season)
Wood-apples
Pilgrims returning from Kataragama.
P.S. The advantage of "nescience" for avijjá is that it enables vijjá to be "science".
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[156.1] The Doctrine of Awakening. [Back to text]
[156.a] One reason, though not the principal, is that there is no Sutta passage where dhamma requires this interpretation. [Back to text]
[156.b] Which precedes any question of identification (i.e. what it really is), just as conception (maññaná -- "mine") precedes self-identification ("it is my self", "it belongs to my self"). [Back to text]
[156.2] Ayurvedic doctor. [Back to text]
[159.1] There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in sensation. [Back to text]
[159.2] It may be that in the field of experience one cannot discover any other link between cause and effect than empirical consecutiveness. But for an experience to be possible it is necessary that a priori principles constitute it. [Back to text]
[159.3] ...between one sense and another other than empirical association. [Back to text]
[159.4] Italian for 'boredom' (cp. ennui). [Back to text]
[159.5] This seems to be a species of robin. [Back to text]