When new Buddhists learn Buddhism, should we learn Pali first?
No, no, no.
You shouldn't learn Pali first.
No, there's no need.
Language is not really a barrier.
There's nothing wrong with the English language.
It's not as nice as the Pali language, but there's nothing wrong with it.
I mean, even Pali was coming from, had its roots in a lot of delusion.
So they still used I and possessiveness and so on.
They kind of did.
They had a different use of possession.
Instead of saying, I have this, they would say, there is the this of me.
or there is my this but there's still very much possessiveness in it and things like that are not really Pali is not really a special language so a translation of the Buddha's teachings is not going to keep you from understanding the teaching now for someone who does know Pali it's very difficult to read translations I find because immediately I want to know what word what Pali word they're referring to
So definitely, if the question is, is there a benefit in learning Pali, I think there's an incredible benefit in learning Pali, because those are the exact words, as we understand, that the Buddha used.
So it's not that there's anything wrong with the English words, it's just we don't know that those are the words that the Buddha would use.
And in many cases, we're sure that that's not the word the Buddha would use.
And of course, everyone has their own opinion of which word the Buddha would have used, or which word is the word that the Buddha...
meant.
And it can even lead to different interpretations of the Buddha's teaching.
So it's incredibly useful to learn Pali.
There's no question about it.
But it's not going to stop you.
It's certainly not going to stop you from practicing meditation.
It's not going to stop you from becoming enlightened.
And that's what's most important.
Even though it's not your question, if the question were how should we go about learning Pali and where should it come about in our practice,
I would say after you get a solid practice and you are clear in your mind about the path that you're following, you, I mean, ideally, and I don't want to go throwing these words around, but ideally I would say one would want to become a Sotapanna before concerning oneself with learning Pali.
I mean, it's such a big thing to say, and most people are shocked by, or not most people, some people would be shocked to hear such a thing.
The idea of being so bold as to suggest, well, just attain that lesser, the lesser path, as though it were something simple to it, become a sotapanna, and as though you could do it without Pali.
But I stand by it.
I think this is...
ideal.
Now if you don't feel comfortable with such a proposition and think that becoming a Sotapanna is something that would take years or even your whole life to attain, then let's just put it once you're comfortable in your practice and you're sure you've got a practice that works for you and you're quite under the impression that you're not going to change your practice or you're not going to waver in your practice.
Because then all that needs to be done is to continue the practice.
Much of the studying in the meditation has been done and there's really very little concern at that point.
The point is, as a Sotapanna, there's no concern that you're going to fall away from the path.
So you want to have as little concern that you're going to fall away from the path first before you start to go into deep study of it.
So set yourself on the path first.
Once you've done that, then for the benefit of your practice and for the benefit of people around you, and for the benefit of you for your interactions with people around you, you should have an in-depth knowledge of the Buddhist teaching.
It's going to benefit your own practice, it's going to benefit your life, allow you to live a Buddhist life and interact with people around you in a Buddhist way.
So by all means, learn as much as you can, including Pali.
And I was thinking about this recently.
There are many ways that you can go about learning Pali, but the way I learned Pali seems to me to be one very valid means of becoming fluent in it.
And that was I took a year of Sanskrit.
So if you have the chance to take a year of Sanskrit, I would recommend it.
And I know it's a little bit roundabout, but Sanskrit is the formal...
sibling of Pali and it's kind of I suppose it's arguable or it's argued I don't really know the scholarly opinions on it but I've heard that there's the idea that Sanskrit is actually newer than Pali classical Sanskrit came after Pali
historically but be that as it may Sanskrit is a much more formal language and so if you can learn Sanskrit Pali makes much more sense and you can see where the Sanskrit or where the Pali words came from because Pali actually blurs many of the
the roots.
So it's difficult to see, like nirvana.
Vana is the root.
I think.
I don't know what the root is, but there you can actually see this, the prefix in the root, nir and vana.
In Pali it becomes nibana, which suddenly you can no longer see the nir and the vana.
Or the ni in Pali would be ni and vana.
Because the V becomes a V. And this happens quite a lot.
But when you learn Sanskrit, you have this technical structure.
And it's so much more difficult.
So then learning Pali is, of course, much easier than learning Sanskrit.
Another reason is that Sanskrit is actually still taught in some places in the world, whereas Pali is very difficult to find a course.
I actually took a course on Pali after the Sanskrit, but you couldn't compare the two because the Pali was so much watered down for people who were really not of the same caliber.
When we took Sanskrit, there were 20 people in the class, and I think 10 of us passed.
And that's what the teacher said.
He said, when I first took Sanskrit, the teacher walked into the room on the first day and said, half of you are going to fail.
And in our Sanskrit class, I think half of them either dropped out or failed.
But I did great in it.
I was really keen on learning it, so it was not difficult at all.
And so that's what I would recommend.
If you can't do that, I mean, puttering through a Pali, an introduction to Pali, what book is not really going to give you an understanding of Pali.
You really do need to hunker down.
I don't know what the... I think it's hunker down.
Hanker down, hunker down.
You have to sit down and memorize.
You have to start memorizing the paradigms, memorizing...
Yeah, just paradigms really.
Vocabulary, memorizing vocabulary would work.
But the modern ways of learning Pali are not very helpful in my opinion because they go hodgepodge and they don't give you a clear overview of anything.
So you really have to learn the paradigms.
You have to learn the various forms of the word purisa.
And then kanya, kanyayo, kanya, the various forms of the word kanya.
uh i mean it's kind of purist but that's how they did it in ancient times and that's how they do it in buddhist countries and it makes so much more sense it's so much more beneficial over the long term for the student to have that clear theoretical understanding anyway that wasn't your question but uh
In regards to learning Pali, I would go about it in a very structured form and really take the time.
And it does help to answer your question because it helps you see that it's a real big undertaking.
Simply reading a book like Introduction to Pali or New Course on Pali or so on, I wouldn't go for it.
I would do things the right way so you get a clear understanding of the grammar and...
And then start doing translations once you've got the grammar under your belt.
There's a lot of it.
There's a lot of grammar.
Because then you really understand the words.
You don't just look in a dictionary and say, this means this.
Like the word sati, for example.
People say, well, sati means mindfulness.
And then some people say, oh, sati doesn't mean mindfulness and so on and so on.
But it really doesn't.
It really doesn't have anything to do with the word mindfulness.
And you know that because it comes from the word sar, which has nothing to do with mindfulness.
Sar means to remember or to recollect or to have, you might say, to have some presence of mind in terms of recollecting yourself.
And so that's where they get the word mindfulness from.
But if you understand how sarar becomes sati, then you have a much better understanding.
Sampajanya, the other one, sam is the prefix, pa is another prefix, and janya is sampajanya.
jana would be to know and then nya I think is the or the ta it's a ta suffix or something like that that becomes nya and so on sampajano sampajanya helps you to really understand what the word means sang means full or no sam sorry sam means complete or it can mean yeah you could say
collected, and pa means full, and ca means knowledge, chanya means knowledge, sampacanya, full and complete knowledge, fully and completely aware of something, sampacanya, for example.
So yeah, learning the very depths of Pali grammar is quite useful.
And then the other thing is how far you need to go with it.
So some people might find it enough to learn the basics that are given in these introduction courses.
Anyway, yeah, don't start with Pali, but get around to it someday.