[Buddha-l] Query on Non-Local Consciousness

[Dan Lusthaus]

Stephen, et al.

Some additional thoughts on the aama passage.

I don't think I responded to the request (from Stephen? I don't remember)
for aat- as meaning food or eating. From the Sanskrit Heritage Dictionary:

http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/2.html#adf1

√ अद् ad_1 v. [2] pr. (atti) fut. (atsyati) inf. (attum) manger, consommer;
dévorer — ps. (adyate) être mangé — ca. (ādayati) nourrir || gr. εδω;
lat. edo; ang. to eat; all. essen.

अद् ad_2 [ad_1] ifc. m. f. qui mange (ex. matsyād qui mange du poisson) |
var. ada id.

aaddharati [which we have now determined should be read na + uddharati, or,
applying the required sandhi, noddharati, which made the following point
moot] could be broken up as aat + h.r or aat + dh.r. And aat would be an
imperfect accusative singular of ad.


On the passage itself -- since the question of Xuanzang's ability to
understand the Skt properly has come up -- it occurs to me that if taken in
tandem with the following line, we get an indication of how Xuanzang
understood the pair.

生而不吐
熟而持之

We agreed from the start that the second phrase indicates constipation, but
broken down more precisely, we see that since the phrases are in parallel
form, they should be read in contrastive parallel.

生 and 熟, which begin the phrases, are contrasted, each followed by 而
(Stephen's enclitic topic marker, my "and/and yet") and then verbal phrases
(不吐 "doesn't vomit" and 持之 "holds onto it"). As the examples I posted of
passages contrasting 生 and 熟 illustrated, 生 here would be something
immature, undeveloped, unprocessed and 熟 would be something that has
reached maturity, that has been processed. The first verbal phrase is stated
in the negative (doesn't vomit, doesn't expel), the second positively (holds
it). It is obvious that the agents of the two actions are not the undigested
or digested foods themselves, but the body, or the person whose body it is.
Putting the pieces together we get:

1. [Food that is] undigested nonetheless cannot be expelled upward.
2. [Food that has been] fully digested nonetheless is retained, held in.

There is a certain logic to that. While still relatively undigested (生),
its closest and most reasonable exit would be the mouth (the 口 of 吐); once
fully digested (熟), having traveled further down the alimentary canal, it
fails to exit by its logical, closest exit. Once digestion crosses a certain
line in the body, the escape route is downward, while the unprocessed food
that hasn't gotten very far would seek escape in the upward direction. Both
describe food getting "stuck" somewhere in the body, at different stages of
digestion, the former higher up (stomach) and the latter further down
(colon). Whether that accurately reflects Asanga's or Buddhist medical
thinking is another question (since the presence of undigested food in stool
is an important diagnostic symptom for CS), but it is a neat symmetrical
treatment.

Dan Lusthaus