[Buddha-l] Prapanca

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Jim,
> I think the commentator (Saariputta) would reject the notion of the three
> types of papa~nca being correlates of the three unwholesome roots or
poisons

I don't think so. It's a very transparent move and I suspect a deliberate
move. Here's an easy substitution test. Replace the three poisons for the
three papancas and see if they make sense. In fact, the poisons make *more*
sense as causes of samsara since that has always been their traditional
roles. The commentator is piggybacking the papancas on this, by a bit of
terminological conflation.

> because "di.t.thi" and "maana" are both accompanied by lobha or greed
> according to the Abhidhamma

And this is why Nagarjuna considers such exercises prapanca -- precisely
because when driven to literalist extremes, they become self-contradictory
(or tautological, or entail infinite regresses).

ta.nhaa easily overlaps with raaga, kaama, lobha, etc.

maana as a substitute for dve,sa, pratigha, is the most interesting of the
triad -- that's why here it must denote arrogance (and not merely conceit).

di.t.thi as an expression of moha (conceptual confusion) is also interesting
(and clearly post-Nagarjuna).

The terminology of the three poisons (and their correlates) is not rigid -- 
it fluxuates, even in the earliest sources. The referents of the terms are
not exhausted by the terms themselves, which means to think or look beyond
verbal formulations. One way to get people to do that is let the words
dance, shift their referents, play with substitutions, etc. Buddhist texts
do that all the time. Take an absolutely fundamental term in the early
texts, like aasava. We could ask the same question as with papanca. What the
hell does that mean? There are several lists of "types" (which add and
subtract various items); it is borrowed from Jain karma theory, where its
meaning is quite clear and cogent; in the Buddhist usages it gets
increasingly vaguer and vaguer, until eventually replaced by completely
different terms, like kle"sa (kilesa barely appears in the Tipitaka) and the
two aavara.nas. It survives in some literature as a vague value atmosphere
(saasrvava vs anaasrava), rather than a list of types. And so on.

Dan