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37 4 Saṃvega and the Incipient Phase of Faith The more we learn, the more we become other than what we were before. So it is with the magnificent human quality to which the English word faith points, which faith represents. We do not expect every religious tradition to say the same thing about this extraordinarily personal and dynamic quality, of course. But as we carefully consider what others of us have to say, we can find our understanding enhanced among friends which would also involve a deepening understanding of ourselves. Theravāda Buddhists have written of this quality of faith and aver that it is incipiently present in one’s becoming deeply moved. One of the most engaging dimensions of human self-understanding that becomes available to the student of humankind’s religiousness is a continuing process of watching unfold the depth and the complexities of what is involved in being human religiously, or of becoming fully, authentically human. One comes to understand that being religious involves the totality of the human personality : one’s thinking and acting, one’s feelings, perceptions, and responses. The grander in historical continuity the religious tradition being studied, the more comprehensive are the analyses of the human person that become apparent . A student of the Theravāda tradition, and of the men and women who have perpetuated this heritage by participating in it, is not without examples depicting acute sensitivity to mental processes from which one can learn more about the variegated components of religious awareness. There are key terms in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition awaiting patient, thorough, exhaustive treatment, terms a fuller understanding of which enhance our knowledge of this tradition and the religious staying power it has had in human history. We still have not exhausted the need to study further paññā, that entirely admirable insight that one might achieve (on the lokiya, customary, level) and also that life-altering spontaneous salvific realization that is available (on the lokuttara, world-transcending, level), or saddhā, a sense of entrusting, of 38 I n t he C om p a ny of Fr ie nd s placing one’s heart on something, of commitment (both in a lokiya and lokuttara sense). Nor have we learned all we can about pasāda, that remarkably delicate awareness of serenity that arises concomitantly with a sense of being taken up. One key term that awaits our further inquiry is saṃvega. This chapter has a narrow objective of pointing to the significance of the notion of saṃvega and indicating how we might begin to discern its place in the dynamics of Theravāda Buddhist religious awareness. There is no attempt to determine historical strata representing stages or development of interpretation of this term, although that would be a splendid objective for a longer and more exhaustive study. The task here is primarily to call attention to a subject that would repay our further reflection. The etymological derivation of saṃvega is conveniently straightforward: from the root vij, “to tremble,” with the prefix sam, suggesting, here, intensity.1 But its force, on the basis primarily of the Pali canonical texts, is both subtle and comprehensive. The great Pali lexicographers who went before us, and in whose shadows we continue to a considerable degree to do our work, communicate their awareness of the scope of meaning the notion of saṃvega apparently carries. One notes at various entries in the Pali Text Society’s Pali-English Dictionary2 the following suggestions for English equivalents: of the noun, “agitation, fear, anxiety; thrill, religious emotion”; of the verb, “to be agitated or moved, to be stirred,” also appearing as a past participle, with a middle force of “filled with fear or awe, made to tremble,” and a passive sense of “felt, realized”; and appearing also in the causative, imperative, and aorist, together with an infinitive, as a gerund with the basic force of “to be agitated or moved, to be stirred”; as a gerundive , that is, “that which should cause awe”; and also as an adjective, “agitating, moving,” or “apt to cause emotion.” Ven. A. P. Buddhadatta works only with three key interpretations: “emotion” or “religious emotion,” “anxiety,” and “agitation .”3 Ven. Nyanatiloka incorporates the familiar term of “emotion” but adds the notion of “a sense of urgency.”4 A. K. Coomaraswamy mentions, further, that our basic term, saṃvega, “implies a swift recoil from or trembling at something feared.”5 Franklin Edgerton adds, for the noun in...

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