Pali

Joshua

I was curious to know if many bhikkhus or even casual people study Pali?

Does anybody on these forums have a decent command of Pali?

Is it pretty useful or perhaps excessive, especially with sites like Access to Insight in mind? Would you say Access to Insight is sufficient plenty for Tipitaka reading?

Moreover would the Pali bring a whole new dimension to the Tipitaka?

I ask because I have a great fondness for linguistics (so a new dimension to the Tipitaka isn't exactly paramount) and wouldn't hesitate to learn it if convinced that I ought to, however, I don't enjoy wasting my time on exceptionally useless languages, especially such a demanding one as Pali, which I've done many, many times in the past.

NamelessRiver

You can probably learn a more useful skill than Pali. :P

Cloud

OP: I think some monastics study Pali, even chant in Pali, in an English-speaking culture... even though the sutras have been translated in various ways into English already and our understanding of Buddhist concepts does not rely that much on any specific language. In part this is tradition, holding onto what has been; in part it's respect for the original language of the Tipitaka.

What you should do is ask yourself "why" learn Pali. If the reason is to study the sutras in Pali, then you'd better become an expert or you're just re-doing the work of others, or even more likely mistranslating, which could get you off the track and confused.

What is important, IMHO, is learning the Pali terms that are specific to Buddhism and the myriad English translations. In studying the differences, you learn the true meanings. Take dukkha for instance; translated variously as suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness and so on -- and none of these are exact.

Joshua

I don't intend to achieve a superior translation, though there is a vast amount of the Tipitaka that remains untranslated as I understand it. Obviously the Tipitaka alone will not give me liberation but with my linguaphilia in mind it won't exactly be hell, on the contrary in fact. It's probably analogous to a Jew exercising the thought of learning Hebrew in order to better enjoy the Tanakh or a Muslim learning biblical Arabic for the Qur'an as is so common. I can definitely see how this infringes upon dogma but regardless I don't care, that's the purpose of this post.

Native English speaking monks chant things in Pali which they cannot understand? That's funny. Seems a bit pointless.

nanadhaja

valois wrote: »

Native English speaking monks chant things in Pali which they cannot understand? That's funny. Seems a bit pointless.

I beg to differ on this point.Many chanting books have translations with them.The chanting book that I am learning from has translations along side the Pali in both English and Hokkien Chinese.It is very often said that we should not only chant in Pali but have a good understanding of what it is that is being chanted.
With metta

Jason

Many people study Pali nowadays, both lay and ordained. Personally, I think it's helpful to know key Pali terms since translations often reflect the translators bias or traditional interpretations, and it doesn't hurt to have a working knowledge of some of the more difficult to translate terms.

Joshua

nanadhaja wrote: »

I beg to differ on this point.Many chanting books have translations with them.The chanting book that I am learning from has translations along side the Pali in both English and Hokkien Chinese.It is very often said that we should not only chant in Pali but have a good understanding of what it is that is being chanted.
With metta

I can understand that perspective, but that is certainly one extreme, another extreme is the fact that if whatever being chanted is a sizable sentence or more involving unfamilar syntax when compared with English you can't really be too mindful of the individual, constituent ideas being expressed thereby meaning, if you are truly comprehending what's being said, you've somehow compressed an abstract sentence into one multi-dimensional idea, sort of like a single but very long word in place of a long English sentence. This isn't quite true comprehension unless somebody formally tore the chant apart word by word for you with explanations to syntactical and grammatical deviations (especially with a language like Pali--I mean, as far as Indo-European languages are concerned, Pali is about as unfamiliar as it gets from a simple language like English) Though this would work with something simple like 'om mani padme hum' where you can simply pretend each word is a variable for an English word but nothing longer or especially really long. As I understand, people chant the Heart Sutra, that's nonsense on this extreme.

Where's the middle-way? Things like om mani padme hum.

ThailandTom

Many monks learn pali depending on which country or sect of buddhism they follow. Ajahn brahm for example is fluent in pali and he is originally from London.. Pali is so say a fairly simple ancient language to learn and in fact many words are similar to the thai language seeing as the thai language is fairly unchanged since it came into being

naturelover

Do Pali to English dictionaries exist? If so, don't waste your time. If you have a question about a specific word or phrase, look it up.

Small story. When I was a Christian I took a New Testament class. With the help of several translation aids, we were asked to translate a small passage from Greek to English. Guess what? I couldn't do better than the translations already in existence. That lesson was the point of the exercise, of course.

ThailandTom

That dos not give you judgment on the English to pali translation what so ever. How can you possibly know that it is a waste of time without knowing any of the pali language?

Joshua

Hypothetically, if it were a waste of time, I don't care, like I said, I love languages.

I'm beginning to think learning Pali is contrary to Buddhism. It seems to learn Pali would be to give oneself too much attachment to the text and not to actual practise. In this light I'm beginning to see the traditional reverence of Pali as even more silly than the Pali chanting.