“The preaching recorded in the suttas… is mainly delivered with what Pali calls pariyaya. Literally, this word means ‘way round’ and so ‘indirect route’, but it refers to a ‘way of putting things.’ … Pariyaya refers to metaphor, allegory, parable, any use of speech which is not to be taken literally. A text delivered ‘with pariyaya’ is contrasted with one delivered without, in other words, with a text which is to be taken literally. In the early canons, it is the abhidharma texts that are without pariyaya and thus claim to give us the Buddhas texts literally. What does this mean for us? It is the primary task of a modern expositor like myself to present in our language what the Buddha meant, literally. Removing the figurative use of language which fills and enlivens his discourses is likely to make them less vivid and interesting; besides, it is always debatable to what extent that which is expressed by a metaphor can be conveyed by its literal equivalent, particularly when the subject matter is religious. I can, of course, try introducing metaphors of my own, but unless I am very careful to make clear what I am doing, this runs the risk of distorting the message, particularly because our own world is so far removed from that of ancient India. I had better stick to the task of decoding what the Buddha said by recognizing when he is speaking figuratively, and preferably also understanding why. But simply to ignore the metaphors is to lose an essential part of the meaning. -- Richard Gombrich, What the Buddha Thought Even though Ive read this book several times, every time I open it, I am struck, afresh, by some keen insight of the Professors. Today I was looking, again, at a difficult phrase in the Pali which uses the word pariyaya and then I came across the above in the Introduction. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in why the Buddha said what he said the way he said it -- as well as, well, what it was he was saying.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 05:17:24 +0000
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