Reply To: Jhana and magga pala

#52502
pathfinder
Participant

It does change the meaning! The sentence becomes ‘giving a gift of mental adornation and mental pre-requisites’ instead of ‘with a pre-requisite of a clear mind’. Meaning ‘we should give dhamma’ instead of previous interpretation ‘we should give with a clear mind’

ChatGPT:

  • Current grammatical structure: It suggests that “mental adornments and requisites” are what is being given as the object of dāna.
  • Your interpretation (“with a prerequisite of a decorated mind”): For this meaning, the compound would need to be in the instrumental case to show that these adornments are a condition for the giving, not the object itself.

I know ChatGPT’s interpretation is less in line with the whole sutta, but grammatically it is more accurate