Talk:Saṅkhāra

Dead Link
The link "See also: Nibbana § Transcendent knowing" under "Nibbana" appears to be dead.

Seems poorly explained
I sincerely doubt that many people who had no experience with Buddhist philosophy could learn the meaning of 'sankhara' by reading this page. The explanation of the term in the article seems to be simultaneously overcomplicated and uninformative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.200.69.146 (talk) 03:54, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello, please don't forget to sign your comments. Wikipedia is free to edit. Please be WP:BOLD and effect the changes yourself as you see fit. Other editors whose expertise is Buddhism would also be happy to help you. You may bring this matter up to WP:BUDDHISM if you have any suggestions or concerns. You don't need an account to do this, but having an account is preferable. Cheers, a fellow Buddhist. 舎利弗 (talk) 03:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Anyone seems poorly explained this article can refer to pages like Karma in Buddhism, Pratītyasamutpāda, and Caitasika. Have a nice day!Kalakannija (talk) 20:38, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Is there a translation policy?
I'm objecting to the biased and controversial translation of "visankharagatam cittam" as 'unconditioned consciousness', presented here as un-contraversial and linked to the Nirvana page, which is a peculiar and distinctive interpretation of Ajahn Geoff Thanissaro, but not generally accepted. Vi- prefix is equivalent to de- and not un- in English, and we have plenty of examples above in the article of sankhara used in an active sense, i.e. deconstruction rather than unconstructed, so the translation as 'unconditioned consciousness' is writing an extreme interpretation that is inconsistent with so many other suttas into the translation itself. The grammatical ambiguity is like saying 'un-peeled banana' -do I mean a banana that has been peeled, or an 'Un-peeled Banana' that has exists in an eternal self-existent state of being without peel?! (Where we've got visankhara, or 'de-peeled' in my silly analogy, it's clearer that it means a banana that has been peeled.)

I expect if I change the translation here I'll get jumped on by the majority of Buddhism project editors who're probably in the USA and probably students of either Ajahn Geoff or Ajahn Amaro and will probably agree it is definitely unconditioned consciousness, who'll then invoke the 'authoritative source for references' wikipedia criterion and then the 'no original research' criterion if I suggest my own translation, so I hardly want to bother trying. But in case anyone bothers to look here, for the record, I think it's outrageously mistranslated and that Ajahn Geoff in doing so is failing to show the integrity morally required of a pioneer translator when few of his audience have access to the original language to check him and have practically no alternative but to trust him or reject the whole thing, so that at the very least he should make it clear that this is his interpretation and is far from being self-evident from the text. Apologies if I've put this note in the wrong place too, but I looked at the project page and I have no idea how to work with it anymore!

If I was going to dare suggest a fairer translation, I would suggest "the mind having gone to deconstruction" -it's not as pretty sounding, but more likely to be closer to the authentic meaning in the context of the early suttas viewed as a whole. There probably is no easy way of saying it in English because our language is un-reconstructed with regard to naive agent-action-object ontology, whereas the languages that were adapted by and for Buddhism became familiar with process language (loads of passive participles, often used as abstract nouns). Kester ratcliff (talk) 18:52, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Kester,
 * I think that the best place to address translation issues is in the article itself, i.e. Nirvana in this case. Here is an example of how I have addressed different possible translations on another page:
 * Dukkha


 * But in the case of dukkha, for example, I listed only translations that I found in reliable secondary sources. In the main article, I emphasized the most commonly used terms from other sources. If you add your own translation, than that would be considered original research, which is contrary to the guidelines (and therefore not helpful for the purposes of Wikipedia).


 * The guidelines on secondary sources are here: Identifying_reliable_sources


 * The section in this article that you are referring to is currently citing only "primary" sources, which is also contrary to the guidelines. I hope to correct this situation at some point, but my time is limited right now. I hope this helps. Best regards, Dorje108 (talk) 01:24, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

change to lede
The lede suggested only that Sankhara were anicca - and said nothing about anatta/dukkha - I have modified this gross omission 20040302 (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Merger with Samskara?
On the talk page for Samskara (Indian philosophy), there have been multiple requests for a merger with this page Sankhara. Some of us think this is a good idea (see the talk page). Others contend that the two concepts are different and that having one page for the Hinduism concept and another for the Buddhist concept is better. What do people think?

Lastly the modifier 'Indian philosophy' is a bit redundant. After all both are originally Indian philosophies. It may make more sense to change it to (Hinduism) or something similar. Alexkyoung (talk) 18:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Disagree with merge: Some overlapping content is not in itself reason enough for merger, especially if merger would lead to a very large article. Both articles have many reliable sources, much content, and are sufficiently different—so no merge is required.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 18:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
 * 'Disagree with rename: the article Samskara (Indian philosophy) does mention many forms of Indian philosophy, some of which are not always qualified as Hinduism.-- Farang Rak Tham   (Talk) 18:46, 30 June 2019 (UTC)