In
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
, conceptual proliferation (
Pāli
Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a classical Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Therav� ...
: ;
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
: ; zh, s=戏论, t=戲論, p=xìlùn; ) or, alternatively, mental proliferation or conceptual elaboration, refers to conceptualization of the world through language and concepts which can then be a cause for suffering to arise. The translation of ''papañca'' as conceptual proliferation was first made by
Katukurunde Nyanananda Thera
Ven. Kaṭukurunde Ñāṇananda Mahāthera (10 July 1940 – 22 February 2018) (sometimes spelled Nyanananda or Nanananda in English, sometimes called Gnanananda in Sinhala: පූජ්ය කටුකුරුන්දේ ඤාණ� ...
in his research monograph ''Concept and Reality''.
The term is mentioned in a variety of ''
suttas
Buddhist texts are religious texts that belong to, or are associated with, Buddhism and Schools of Buddhism, its traditions. There is no single textual collection for all of Buddhism. Instead, there are three main Buddhist Canons: the Pāli C ...
'' in the
Pali canon
The Pāḷi Canon is the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhism, Buddhist tradition, as preserved in the Pāli language. It is the most complete extant Early Buddhist texts, early Buddhist canon. It derives mainly from t ...
, such as the Madhupindika Sutta (MN 18), and is mentioned in
Mahayana Buddhism
Mahāyāna ( ; , , ; ) is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices developed in ancient India ( onwards). It is considered one of the three main existing branches of Buddhism, the others being Thera ...
as well. When referencing the concepts derived from this process, such concepts are referred to in Pali as ''papañca-saññā-sankhā''. ''Nippapañca'' is the diametrical opposition of ''papañca''.
Theravada Buddhist monk Chandima Gangodawila writes:
Papañca is one of the most helpful Theravāda Buddhist teachings used to understand how our thoughts become impure and the most compelling account of this subject is the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta. Since many writers don't utilize papañca when alluding to defilements, many readers discover the setting of mental purification hard to understand. If we seriously want to learn how to keep our mental purification unadulterated from defilements, we should figure out how the mental purification can be tainted through papañca.
In addition, Chandima examines the association of papañca to kilesa (defilements), upakkilesa (mental impurities), saññā (perceptions) and abhiññā (comprehensions) to find out whether or not the essential components of mental purification begin from managing papañca, or the other dhamma concepts, that can be bold for anyone who struggles to subsume defilements in modern-day life.
See also
*
Make a mountain out of a molehill
Making a mountain out of a molehill is an idiom referring to over-reactive, histrionic behaviour where a person makes too much of a minor issue. It seems to have come into existence in the 16th century.
Metaphor
The idiom is a metaphor for the ...
*
Monkey mind
The term monkey mind or mind monkey originates from Chinese language, Chinese ''xīnyuán'' or Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Japanese ''shin'en'' (心猿), a word that literally means "Xin (heart-mind), heart-mind monkey." It is a Glossary of ...
* ''
Nibbāna: The Mind Stilled''
*
Reification (fallacy)
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical wikt:construct, construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real ...
References
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External links
Exploring the Honeyball Sutta, An Alternative Nidana Chain
Getting Away From Prapanca, The Practical Applications of the Honeyball SuttaDharma talk on papañcaby
Christina Feldman
Buddhist philosophical concepts
{{Buddhist-philo-stub