[Buddha-l] bodhi

[Dan Lusthaus]

Artur,

Sorry that the earlier message arrive garbled. It contained unicode --  
perhaps that confused one of the intermediary servers. I've resent that to 
you offlist -- hopefully it arrived in better shape.

As to:

> adhigata (PED 28) - "got into possession of, conquered, attained, found".
> This selection of meanings seems to exclude that one-way exchange between
> the giver and the receiver. What is suggested is possessing, winning.
> Attaining, not obtaining. Finding.

That is an interesting distinction you are drawing. Since "got possession 
of", "found," "attains" implies that the obtaining has already taken place, 
I'm not sure the distinction holds in the long run. I also don't think there 
is much difference -- in English [or Pali] -- between attaining and 
obtaining. In modern parlance we might be more inclined to say HIllary 
"attained" Everest's peak, but "obtained" is not incorrect to use in that 
instance, just a bit more archaic. There are some modern idiomatic 
distinctions (one is more likely to say "he obtained a PhD" than "he 
attained a PhD", but either could be said, depending on circumstance, and 
the more colloguial phrase would be "he got a PhD"). So obtain, attain and 
got are virtual synonyms. Do you get what I mean? Doesn't Polish have verbs 
similar to "get" that are used for "to understand, to *get* the point," 
etc.?

As I noted in the original message, in which I also included the PTS 
Dictionary definition for adhigata, the term adhigata is a past participle 
of adhigacchati. I also included the PTS Dict. definition for Adhigacchati

Adhigacchati [adhi + gacchati] to get to, to come into possession of, to
acquire, attain, find; fig. to understand D i.229 (vivesam) M i.140
[,,,] S i.22


Note that it *literally* means to get to, to come into possession of, to 
acquire, attain. It also has a *figurative* meaning, "to understand."

I also included a famous line from the Madhyamaka-karika, echoing the same 
language:

paramaartham anaagamya nirvaa,na,m naadhigamyate
"if paramartha is not attained, nirvana is not be attainable.

For the record Monier-Williams offers: "adhi-gamya mfn. attainable, 
practicable to be learnt."

cheers,
Dan