🤦‍♀️ placing the palm and keeping it connected to his face: The mistranslation of V&V by B. Sujato

(work in progress)

This article will attempt to concisely summarize the detailed pali audit demonstrating B. Sujato's mistranslation of V&V vitakka and vicara.

Synopsis

1. If you understand this eardrum simile, you'll understand why his V&V translation is wrong.
2. The flaws of B. Sujato's vitakka explanation in his blog
3. What is he basing his "placing the mind and keeping it connected" on?

1. Simile of vaca as "placing a sound wave and connecting it to the listener's ear drum"

Re: manasā dhammaṃ viññāya: b.sujato's translation is grievously wrong

Mike,
B.Sujato's V&V translation, his redefinition of vaci-sankhara (with the mistranslated V&V) become corrupt, and his manasa & dhamma are corrupt. I think you, and most people, are under the wrong idea of how much interpretive license translators have. His mistranslation of V&V, is not in the category of "we should respect everyone's difference of opinion and choice of translation." It's wrong. It breaks the Dharma, and the coherence of how all the pieces of V&V, jhana, 4nt work together.

Example: If I were to translate vācā (vocalized speech) as "placing sound waves and connecting it to the listener's eardrum", that is extremely, extraordinarily wrong and destroys the meaning of the suttas. Even though that translation is partially correct, partially describing what happens with 'speech', it's missing the most important part of 'speech', the communicable ideas with meaning. 'Speech' isn't just any sound waves connecting with the ear drum, it's sounds in the form of language with communicable meaning.

In exactly the same way, for vitakka & vicara, it's not the 'placing of the mind and keeping it connected' , it's the thoughts that are connecting to it that are the important part.

Do you guys understand? It's a 'right' and 'wrong' situation here, not a translator preference.

2. The flaws of B. Sujato's vitakka explanation in his blog

https://sujato.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/why-vitakka-doesnt-mean-thinking-in-jhana/

and often we tend to assume that if a complex argument is just a sign of sophistry and lack of real evidence. So first up I’ll present the more straightforward reasons why vitakka/vicara don’t mean thinking in jhana, based on the texts and on experience. Then I’ll get into the more subtle question of why this mistake gets made.

Funny enough, that's what his entire explanation of vitakka amounts to. Sophistry and lack of evidence. Since he did translate the entire pali sutta collection, there is no excuse to ignore the prodigious mountain of evidence in the form of sutta passages against his interpretation, that he willfully ignores. This appears to be an attempt to maintain a defense of plausible deniability. He cherry picks 2 suttas to analyze and base his interpretation on for the blog post, ignoring the dozens of other sutta passages that contradict his findings, and then fills in the blanks with obfuscation and sophistry.