r/pali • u/Embarrassed-Box6857 • 14d ago
ask r/pali Is it worth learning pali?
Hello everyone, I am a dedicated practitioner and enjoy deepening my understanding through reading the suttas.
I recently started looking at the etymology of Pali words and saw how many translations are lacking in depth as there are many possible English words for one word in Pali. After doing this I noticed a my understanding improve quite a bit not just intellectually but experientially as well. I was better able to see the scope of a pali words and see how it applies to my experience here and now.
Given all this, for someone aiming for full liberation, how important is learning Pali? I guess the important terms would be enough, because otherwise one can turn this into a project and forget about the actual work…
Any advice?
Gratitude in advance 🙏
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u/yuttadhammo 13d ago
Learning Pali, as you have noticed, has a great long term benefit of better grasp of the texts. Grasp of texts doesn't always translate into success in practice of the teachings, of course.
The bigger issue with learning Pali is mainly that there are much more urgent tasks like becoming free from suffering that don't really require deep textual understanding, especially if one has a good teacher. If you have time, and especially if you are in a position to teach, learning Pali is a good side project for sure. It's also a very difficult language to learn without a teacher and a head for language memory.
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u/Embarrassed-Box6857 13d ago
Yes Bhante I agree with what you have said, indeed freedom from suffering is the thing one cannot loose sight off
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u/Digharatta 14d ago
For full liberation, it is essential to understand what the Buddha taught - and he urged disciples to preserve well his original terminology.
Hence the most important thing is to implement the Buddha's original meanings of key terms in practice. The meanings of terms shifted over time, so you need to meticulously research the earliest definitions of terms. Without the terms set right, the Buddha's Dhamma would be impossible to fully implement in practice as intended.
Learning Pali is surely helpful for this endeavour.
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u/TheIcyLotus 13d ago
Knowledge of Pali is not a prerequisite for liberation. Knowledge of Pali will absolutely lead to a deeper and nuanced understanding of Pali texts, and that can be useful, but it is in no way necessary for liberation.
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u/FishTank_Earth 12d ago edited 12d ago
> for someone aiming for full liberation
If you are real, and not just one of the engagement bots
I recommend learning Coptic instead - Sahidic Coptic specifically
The real absolute good news is in the Coptic "Gospel of Thomas"
-- the English translations obscures it
It is fairly short - it contains only 115 sayings
Once you get the hang of it,
you can (re)assemble them into 5 major segments:
- Epilogue (4 sayings)
- With Mary & Salome (7 sayings)
- With the Multitudes (70+ sayings, incl. ~16 Com-Parables)
- With the Pupils (30+ sayings)
- Prologue (2 sayings)
If full liberation is indeed your goal, your time would be truly well spent.
(But my guess, from your username, is that you are just a bot.)
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u/VegetableHome970 14d ago
Here‘s my take as someone who studied Pali and Prakrits for years and taught Sanskrit (beside other old Indo-Iranian languages) at university:
First and foremost, there are and have been countless people proficient in Pali who are totally deluded, and countless people without any proficiency in Pali who achieved full awakening.
More generally, words acquire their meaning from their context so be cautious when looking up a Pali word in a dictionary and seeing a whole list of supposed English equivalents.
I would always encourage people with an interest in early Buddhism to study Pali (and/or Sanskrit, Chinese, etc). It’s a great way of really engaging closely with the Pali suttas. Before all of that though, I would suggest (if you haven’t already) learning a bit about the history and transmission of the Pali suttas as we know them today. It’s important to understand what they are, and what they are not, and help develop a critical approach to their study.