- The Three Marks or Characteristics of All Existence: anicca (all things are radically impermanent); dukkha (all things are unsatisfactory, incapable of fulfilling us); anatta (all things are impersonal in an ultimate sense).
- Sammāditthi Sutta: the "Discourse on Right View"
- Sallatha Sutta: "The Arrow Discourse" (SN 36.6)
Mental proliferation: papañca
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| Things just keep dividing, growing, proliferating |
What is (Pali) papañca or (Sanskrit) prapañca? In Buddhist doctrinal usage, [puh-pon-chuh] signifies the proliferation, expansion, differentiation, "diffuseness," and "manifoldness" of the world. It may refer to the "phenomenal world" in general or to the mental attitude of "worldliness."
In A. IV, 173, it is said: "As far as the field of sixfold sense-impression extends, so far reaches the world of diffuseness (the phenomenal world, papañcassa gati). As far as the world of diffuseness extends, so far extends the field of sixfold sense-impression. Through the complete fading away and cessation of the field of sixfold sense-impression, there comes about the cessation and the coming-to-rest of the world of diffuseness (papañca-nirodho papañca-vupasamo)."
The opposite term nippapañca is another name for nirvana (Pali nibbāna) (S. LIII) in the sense of "freedom from samsaric diffuseness."
Dhammapada 254: "Humankind delights in the diffuseness of the world, whereas the Perfect Ones are free from such diffuseness" (papañcābhiratā pajā, nippapañca tathāgatā).
The eighth of the "thoughts of a great person" (mahā-purisa-vitakka, A. VIII, 30) is: "This Dhamma [Teaching, Truth, Doctrine] is for one who delights in non-diffuseness (nirvana, the unworldly); it is not for one who delights in worldliness (papañca)."
For the psychological sense of "differentiation," see MN 18 (Madhupindika Sutta): "Whatever a person conceives (vitakketi) that one differentiates (papañceti). And what one differentiates, by reason thereof ideas and considerations of differentiation (papañca-saññā-sankhā) arise in one."
On this text and the term papañca, see Dr. Kurt Schmidt in German Buddhist Writers (BPS.lk, Wheel 74/75) p. 61ff. See DN 21 (Sakka's Quest, Wheel 10).
In the Commentaries, one often finds a threefold classification (tanhā-, ditthi-, māna-papañca), which probably means the world's diffuseness created hy craving, wrong views, and conceit. See MN 123; A. IV, 173; A. VI, 14, Sn. 530, 874, 916.
Ven. Ñānananda Bhikkhu, in Concept and Reality: An Essay on Papañca and Papañca-saññā-sankhā (Kandy 1971, Buddhist Publication Society), suggests that the term refers to the human "tendency towards proliferation in the realm of concepts" and proposes translating the term as "conceptual proliferation," which appears convincing in a psychological context, for example, in two of the texts quoted above (A. IV, 173 and MN 18).
The threefold classification of papañca, by way of craving, wrong views, and conceit is explained by the author as three aspects, or instances, of the foremost of deluded conceptualizations, namely, the ego-concept, the belief in a permanent, unchanging "self" or "soul." See anatta.
- Buddhist Podcast (video); Ven. Nyanaponika (Buddhist Dictionary) edited by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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