[Buddha-l] MMK 25.09 (was: as Swami goes...)

[Richard Nance]

Re:

>>>> ya ājavaṃjavībhāva upādāya pratītya vā |
>>>> so 'pratītyānupādāya nirvāṇam upadiśyate || MMK_25,09

Dan Lusthaus wrote:

>> The "ya X so Y" structure I take to be a kind of "That which is X is
>> therefore Y".

I'm not the Richard you're looking for, I certainly don't have the
Sanskrit acumen of several on this list, and I haven't yet had my
morning coffee, but I'll weigh in. The verse looks like a standard
relative-correlative construction -- i.e., that what is characterized
by the qualifiers in the first line is indeed characterized by the
qualifiers in the second (no need for the "therefore"). So one --
admittedly clunky -- stab at a translation might be:

"The state of coming and going which is dependent or conditioned:
That, neither dependent nor conditioned, is taught to be nirvāṇa."

Of course, this can make it seem as though N. is contradicting himself
-- but that need not be a problem. A little commentarial ingenuity
(say, presuming pada C to be haunted by an implicit "ultimately") goes
a long way. For what it's worth, it would be a mistake to attach too
much importance to "state" in the above translation; the term "bhāva"
can be rendered many different ways.

Might as well throw out the Tibetan while we're at it:

/ 'ong ba dang ni 'gro ba'i dngos /
/ brten nam rgyur byas gang yin pa /
/ de ni brten min rgyur byas min /
/ mya ngan 'das pa yin par bstan //

Looking at the Tibetan now, I'm not sure why you thought the Tibetan
translation "hid all the tensions and difficulties" present in the
Sanskrit. The above seems to me to render the verse's lack of
straightforwardness pretty straightforwardly. But maybe I'm missing
something -- it wouldn't be the first time.

Best wishes,

A different Richard (now off to seek morning coffee)