Reply To: Meaning of Sanatana

#45775
cubibobi
Participant

Thank you, Lal! Your response shed much light and made me think of a few things.

First, Aniduan wrote: “Upon Google search the word Sanatana Dharma comes up as eternal truth in Hinduism”

I thought that he had a typo and left out the “n”, and thus I thought of the above Dhammapada verse. This is because I have seen only this kind of translation for the verse;

It is not by hatred that hatred
subsides here anytime.
but by non-hatred they subside.
this is an eternal law.

The last line is always translated as:

this is the timeless Truth
this is the eternal law
etc.

I suppose this is another example of conventional meaning vs deeper meaning. I have not seen sanantano explained this way — as the end of “san” — although it makes a lot of sense, based on what we have been learning here.

Another question about the Pali breakdown: it seems like “anti” (in sammanti) and “anta” (in sanantano) are the same meaning components (the end) in different forms?

Related to the above, I was reading the latest post: Uncovering the Suffering-Free (Pabhassara) Mind

Under number 12, we have the phrase “sīti bhavissanti“, meaning “will be fully cooled down“. Does bhavissanti break down to “bhava” + “anti“?