On one hand, yeah, Buddhism has a lot of new concepts, and if you don’t translate them, it sounds like incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, and if you do translate them, the translated words do not have the same connotations as the original ones. So there is now way to make the listener such as me happy.
On the other hand, it kinda sounds like if I told you “hey, I have a chocolate cookie for you”, and then added that I actually use very idiosyncratic definitions of “chocolate”, “cookie”, and “you”, so you shouldn’t really expect to get anything resembling a chocolate cookie at all, maybe not even anything edible, and maybe actually you won’t get nothing. But if I disclose it this way, it’s not really motivating.
If we tried to avoid sneaking in connotations, it might be something like: “Buddhism uses words for many concepts you don’t know, let’s just call them ‘untranslatable’ for now. So, we have figured out that untranslatable-1 causes untranslatable-2, but if you do a lot of untranslateble-3, then instead of untraslatable-2 you get untranslatable-4, and we would like to teach you how to do that.” And if someone asked “okay, this sounds confusing, but just to make sure, untranslatable-2 is bad and untranslatable-4 is good, right?”, the answer would be “well, not in the sense that you use ‘good’ and ‘bad’; perhaps let’s say that untranslatable-2 is untranslatable-5, and untranslatable-4 is not that”.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality. And if it’s the latter, how do all those words ultimately translate to… normal English.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.
On one hand, yeah, Buddhism has a lot of new concepts, and if you don’t translate them, it sounds like incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, and if you do translate them, the translated words do not have the same connotations as the original ones. So there is now way to make the listener such as me happy.
On the other hand, it kinda sounds like if I told you “hey, I have a chocolate cookie for you”, and then added that I actually use very idiosyncratic definitions of “chocolate”, “cookie”, and “you”, so you shouldn’t really expect to get anything resembling a chocolate cookie at all, maybe not even anything edible, and maybe actually you won’t get nothing. But if I disclose it this way, it’s not really motivating.
If we tried to avoid sneaking in connotations, it might be something like: “Buddhism uses words for many concepts you don’t know, let’s just call them ‘untranslatable’ for now. So, we have figured out that untranslatable-1 causes untranslatable-2, but if you do a lot of untranslateble-3, then instead of untraslatable-2 you get untranslatable-4, and we would like to teach you how to do that.” And if someone asked “okay, this sounds confusing, but just to make sure, untranslatable-2 is bad and untranslatable-4 is good, right?”, the answer would be “well, not in the sense that you use ‘good’ and ‘bad’; perhaps let’s say that untranslatable-2 is untranslatable-5, and untranslatable-4 is not that”.
Then the question is whether the idiosyncratic words are only ever explained using other idiosyncratic words, or whether at some point it actually connects with the shared reality. And if it’s the latter, how do all those words ultimately translate to… normal English.
The point is that the words ground out in actual sensations and experiences, not just other words and concepts. What I’m arguing is that it’s not useful to use the English word “suffering” to refer to ordinary pain or displeasure, because there is a distinction in experience between what we refer to as “pain” or “displeasure” and what is referred to by the term “dukkha,” and that “suffering” is best understood as this dukkha. That we commonly say things like “he suffered the pain” is an indication of this distinction already existing in English, even if there is a tendency to messily equivocate between the two.