9.9 Of Speech conforming to Thought (KV9.9)

Controverted Point: That speech does not accord with thought.

Theravādin: If this be so, then a fortiori neither does speech accord with mental contact, feeling, perception, volition, nor with any property of consciousness. But surely, as you agree, the opposite is the case.

You must, again, deny that speech accords with adverting, ideating, co-ordinated application, willing, intending, aiming—which you will not, the opposite being true.

You admit that speech which is provoked by thought is co-existent, and one in its origin, with the thought. Yet this is in contradiction to your proposition.

Again, you commit yourself to this, that one speaks of what one does not wish to speak, discourses, addresses others, converses about what one does not wish. Surely the opposite is the case.

Pubbaseliya: You say I am wrong, but you must admit that people can speak, discourse, address others, converse about something different from that which is occupying their minds. Hence my proposition is tenable.

The Points of Controversy, an English translation of the Pali Abhidhamma Kathāvatthu. Translated by Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. First published by Pali Text Society, 1915.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Manfred Wierich and Ven. Vimala and proofread by Josephine Tobin. Some changes were introduced:

Abbreviations, i.e., those of cited works and the participants in the controversies, were expanded.

Cross-references were linked.

Some typographic changes were introduced, among others, i.e.: the phonetic symbol “ŋ” was changed to the Pāli diacritical letter “ṃ”, “ô” to “o”, single quotes to double quotes, and “:—” to “:”.

Letter-spacing with fixed spaces was replaced with bold font.

The corrigenda were merged into the text. Some could not be resolved, though.

This electronic version is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC 3.0) as found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

All copyright is owned by the Pali Text Society. See also the statement under http://www.palitext.com/ → Publications → Copyright Announcement. For non-commercial use only.