Identity and Experience_Hamilton_1996

184 Identity and Experience
and Ethics when he states "the body is the sphere of suffering" and "... the
body is the origin of s~ffering".~~
The Pali word nibbdii is often found in contexts in the canon which refer
to the human body. We saw it above in the Ariguttara NiluZya passage about
the impermanence of the body. The way nibbidti is translated frequently
tends to further the view that the early Buddhist attitude towards the body
was negative. Nibbidii can mean 'disgust', 'revulsion', 'indifference' or
'di~enchantment'.~~ In contexts where it must mean 'indifference' or 'disen-
chantment', translating it as 'disgust' or 'revulsion' is highly misleading. In
the Pali Text Society translation of Volume V of the Samyutta Nikga, for
example, a translation by Woodward includes the following: "These seven
limbs of wisdom . . . conduce to downright revulsion (ekantanibbidqa), to
dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to full comprehension, to the wisdom, to
JVibbZna"." Nibbida' frequently occurs in this phrase, and in my opinion it
cannot here mean anything other than 'indifference' or 'dis-enchantment':
'downright revulsion', directed towards the body or anything else, would be
a karrnically unwholesome, and therefore binding, volition quite inappropriate
for a bhihkhu at this stage of the path. To use the words from another
of Woodward's translations, it would be one of the "evil, unprofitable
states which come to be because of wrong views".67 Even if one were to
understand the qualities referred to in this sentence, disgust or indifference,
dispassion, cessation, calm, full comprehension, wisdom, Nirvana, as being
qualities which are acquired sequentially, it seems highly improbable to me
that disgust would immediately precede so many other qualities which are
more associated with detachment. Woodward repeats the translation of
nibbidii as "downright revulsion" throughout his translations for the Pali
Text So~iety.~~ E. M. Hare translates nibbidti in the same context as
"complete or as "complete wearine~s".~~ T W. Rhys Davids,
however, translates it as "deta~hrnent".~'
There are a multitude of similar examples of translations which are
misleading about the attitude towards the body, but these will suffice to
make my point. Scholarly works other than translations can be just as
misleading in statements about the body, possibly because they have relied
on the translations.
We can now reconcile the apparent paradox referred to above in
summing up the attitude towards the human body found in the canonical
material. We have seen that the doctrinal position according to the
Buddha's teaching is that the attitude towards the body should be analytical.
This correlates with his teaching that karma is volition: it is one's state of
mind, not one's body, which is the source of desire, hatred and other
karmically binding states which determine the nature of one's future
rebirth(s). The presence in the canon of statements which appear to be
negative about the body is probably the result of outside influence or
doctrinal confusion which arises because of the demands of the spiritual