[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Jim,

> ta.nhaapapa~nco di.t.thipapa~nco maanapapa~ncoti ime tividhapapa~ncaa.
> va.t.tasmi.m satte papa~ncentiiti ta.nhaadayo 'papa~ncaa'ti vuccanti. ---
> Saaratthadiipanii-.tiikaa, I 305 (Be)
>
> Roughly translated as:
> These papa~nca-s (proliferators) are of three kinds: the papa~nca of
> craving, the papa~nca of conceit, and the papa~nca of (wrong) view.
Craving
> and so on are called "proliferators" because they proliferate (or spread
> out) beings in the cycle of existence.
>
> Instead of "they proliferate (or spread out) beings in the cycle of
> existence", "they multiply beings in the cycle of existence" might be
> an alternative. I read the compounds "ta.nhaapapa~nco" etc. as
> kammadhaaraya-s, i.e., the proliferator, craving, etc.

Thanks for this succinct statement on *types* of papanca. I'm not sure it
sheds light on what papanca is or how it does what it does. The three types
are three types of causes, each of which causes people to continue to cycle
through the rounds of suffering rebirth. Desire, arrogance and wrong view is
a nice commentator's move to "proliferate" the types of papanca into
correlates of greed, hatred, delusion, i.e., the three poisons.

I think what Nagarjuna and Asanga were trying to do was to provide more
therapeutic specificity. Both shifted the focus to linguistic-conceptual
psychological issues in detailed ways, not to proliferate additional
categories but to help us recognize the ones already driving our thinking,
attitudes, and presuppositions.

Dan