Paṭipatti: Direct Approach to Buddhist Reality
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Briefing: The Meaning of Practice (Paṭipatti) in Buddhism
This briefing summarises key concepts from the provided text, “Excerpts from ‘The meaning of practice’”, which delves into the Buddhist understanding of ‘practice’ (Pāli: Paṭipatti). The text emphasises a direct, experiential understanding of reality as opposed to mere theoretical knowledge. The source implies that the word practice is not an accurate translation of paṭipatti.
Main Themes & Key Ideas:
1. Paṭipatti: Direct Approach to Reality
- The Pāli word for practice, Paṭipatti, is broken down as “Patti is particularly and paṭi is to approach” **(editor’s note: could be the other way round).
- This signifies a direct, experiential engagement with truth: “approach to the reality.”
- It’s not just about intellectual comprehension of concepts like citta (consciousness) or cetasikas (mental factors), but rather directly “experienc[ing] the object”.
- The goal is to “get closer to understand the truth” by directly understanding “that which is there.”
2. Awareness of Singular, Fleeting Reality
- Paṭipatti develops to understand “particularly one object only” at a time, as “Otherwise, it cannot be known when they are together.”
- Reality, whether during sleep or waking, is constantly arising and passing away: “just that which is there, the reality which arises and experience the object, only in one moment and then gone. Condition the next moment to arise, experience its object and gone. All the time in life”.
- This immediate, momentary nature of reality is often overlooked, being “so close, but it’s so far to understand. Because no idea, no thought, no teachings, no words about its truth.”
3. Moving Beyond Conceptual Understanding to Direct Knowing
- The text distinguishes between hearing/talking about truth and directly knowing it. “Should it be known directly, not just hearing and talking about it.”
- The Buddha’s teachings provide guidance on “the truth of each moment,” helping to build “firm confidence of the truth that its there right now.”
- True understanding (Sacca-ñāṇa) involves knowing that “The truth can never be changed; the ultimate truth of life of each moment.”
- However, this understanding must be experiential: “But it’s not enough, just to know it by words because it’s there now. Seeing is there now, it’s not just the word. It has to be known, not just saying it sees but now it’s so close, it sees now.”
- The Pāli word sati (mindfulness) is introduced as the reality through which this direct knowing occurs.
4. The Nature of Dukkha and Anattā
- All phenomena (of life) are dhammas, arising and falling away due to conditions.
- The concept of Dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness) extends beyond just “painful feeling, unpleasant feeling.” It encompasses the inherent impermanence and fleeting nature of all experiences: “no matter it’s pleasant or unpleasant, right understanding or ignorance, all gone. Just there so very, very, very short. No one knows because it arises and falls away very quickly.”
- Ignorance leads to perceiving these fleeting phenomena as atta (self or something substantial). “All of them are taken as atta (something), so it’s the world of atta.”
- Right understanding, through paṭipatti, reveals the truth of anattā (non-self/not-self): “But right understanding is not atta, it’s anattā, its the world of anattā.”
- The development of this understanding (Bhavana) leads to directly perceiving reality as anattā, for instance, by experiencing “only hardness and that which is there experiences hardness, no, nothing is there at all. The world is gone, so it’s clear understanding.” This illustrates a moment of pure experience devoid of self-identification, revealing the impersonal nature of reality.
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