[Buddha-l] the benefits of Jayarava's discussion

[Jayarava]

> A small quibble seems in order here.

Or indeed several small quibbles...

> Saṅkhārā doesn't mean just any old thing, but specifies conditioned 
> things. 

Granted. Except that I would say it is not just any old conditioned "thing", but conditioned dhammas. 

> Vaya (Sanskrit vyaya) usually means something like mutable,
> liable to change, (literally, vi+i likely to go away.)

PED has 1. loss, want, expense. 2. Decay. So I think I must have just mis-spoken on this occasion - i.e. lied. It was the first definition that led me to "disappointment" which is a/the subjective aspect of loss, want and expense. 

> > Of course experiences are
> > disappointing _because_ they are impermanent.
> 
> That seems a bit categorical to me, and even false. The
> vast majority of experiences, I would argue, are actually fulfilling
> precisely because they are impermanent.

Yes. My statement works better if you limit the discussion to pleasant vedana. With unpleasant vedanas they are disappointing because you have them at all, although one is 'appointed' slightly when they stop, one is disappointed when they eventually start up again etc - and overall the whole annoying process is quite disappointing I find.  I'm just not sure about neutral vedanas... 

> All things considered, I'd say that impermanence in
> itself is neither disappointing nor, er, appointing. It's only when
> viewed with an expectation or hope that things be other than they are 
> that anything becomes disappointing. 

Yes I'd agree with this. It is the failure to see experiences for what they are which makes them disappointing, not the experiences themselves. 

> So I vote against translating or interpreting vaya as disappointing. I 
> trust this does not disappoint anyone. If it does, it's your old damn 
> fault. (I belong to the "tough compassion" school of Buddhism.)

I'm quite disappointed; not that old; but yes, probably damned. Anyway it's not the final translation that is the interesting part but the journey getting to it - without my lengthy contextualising argument we're just waving dictionaries around and you probably have a bigger one than me! Although my next long article shows that dictionaries can be wrong too sometimes! I'm not insisting on "disappointing", but this general approach of focussing on the subjective pole of experience helps me to make sense of what I do as a Buddhist. Other translations are valid and useful. 

Jayarava