TMingyur wrote:Considering these three alternatives I personally prefer B. Bodhi's translation since in my conditioned perception it more clearly conveys the meaning: first there is clinging to self ("I" and "mine") and then there is clinging to appearances (which are nothing other than the aggregates)
The phrasing using "existence or non-existence" lends itself to be mis-understood ontologically (reificationist, objectivying) with regard to some alleged "outer world".
Ven. Bodhi is following Ven. Ñāṇamoli's use of "being" in the translated edition of the
Middle Length Discourses. In his subsequent translation of the
Connected Discourses of the Buddha Ven. Bodhi translates bhava as "existence."
The point that I was trying to make in the last post was that deluded cognitions always conceive in terms of existence or non-existence, and that this is part of the problem which creates and re-creates a "world" and a "self." It's due to craving existence and grasping that consciousness is established and comes to growth. Of course, craving non-existence isn't acceptable either. Both of these mistaken compulsions are entwined within thickets of views which reify a self and objectify a world. In short, we are held captive by our infatuation with the very things that captivate us.
As MN 140 Dhātuvibhaṅga Sutta explains, an arahant doesn't form any specific fabrication or volitional intention towards either existence or non-existence:
- One does not form any specific fabrication or volitional intention towards either existence or non-existence. Not forming any specific fabrication or volitional intention towards either existence or non-existence, he does not cling to anything in this world.
It's in this way that there is no clinging with regard to anything in the world. Ud 3.10 Loka Sutta:
- Whatever ascetics or brāhmaṇas say that emancipation from existence is by means of existence, all of them are not liberated from existence, I say.
And whatever ascetics or brāhmaṇas say that escape from existence is by means of non-existence, all of them have not escaped from existence, I say.
Conceiving in ontological terms is ineffective and only reinforces underlying tendencies.
All the best,
Geoff