Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge c8.61

c8.61

(166) The description of the second school of Sceptics is almost identical with that of the first except for the difference that according to these thinkers, to be led to believe in a proposition by one’s likes, desires, aversions and resentments would be an entanglement (upādānaṃ, D. I 25–6). Such entanglement would be a source of worry (vighāto) and as such a moral danger (antarāyo). Upādāna- literally means ‘grasping’ or ‘clinging’ (PTS. *Dictionary*, *s v* sense 2) but since these words express a pro-attitude¹ in that we grasp what we like or desire but not what we hate or are averse to, it would be better to translate the word as ‘entanglement’ or ‘act of involvement’. For it is obviously intended to include the objects that we like as well as dislike Prof. Rhys Davids translates the word as ‘grasping condition of the heart which causes rebirth’ (*op cit*, p 38) but this, as standing for a concept of the Sceptics, need not, and indeed cannot, from the context have the same technical significance as it has in Buddhism. In the Buddhist context the word commonly means ‘the entanglement or involvement that leads to becoming or survival in the next life’