[grenier]

Bonjour Monsieur Lal,
About the term ”papanca”, I read in ”Concept and Reality ”…an essay on Papanca and Papanca-sanna-sanka, by Nanananda Bhikkhu, who suggests that the term refers to man’s ”tendency towards proliferation in the realm of concepts”and proposes a rendering by ”conceptual proliferation” , which appears convincing in psychological context, e.g. in two of the texts quoted above, A.IV,173 and M.18. I read the same explanation in the ”Manuel of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines”, by Maha Thera Nyanatiloka; and the same interpretation in the book of Sue Hamilton, ”Early Buddhism: A new Approach, the I of the beholder”at pages..30, 76-8, 83, 92, 95, 110, 124, 132-3, 144, 147, 173, 184, 187. THIS WORLD SEEMS TO BE CHALLENGING FOR TRANSLATORS (E.G. MN18, DN21, Sn.11, AN4.173). Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura translate it as ”Hypostatization” close to the root as the Greek ”hypostatos” (substantially existing). Bhikkhu Bodhi calls papanca ”the propensity of the worlding’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition” (from note 229 in Majjkima Nikāya (MN)…et pour finir j’ajoute la référence à Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in ”The Arrows of Thinking, Papanca & the path to end conflict” in his book : ”Beyond all Directions”…”this arrow has many names in the Pali Canon and one of them is ”papanca”. Papanca is a type of thinking that causes conflict within those who think it and leads them into conflict with people outside.” Is it so hard to translate and a source of conflict?
Grenier,an old man of Montreal, Québec. Merci