Avidya

The Sanskrit term avidya, usually translated as "ignorance," underlies all of Buddha's teaching. It literally means not-seeing and this not-seeing initiates the entire chain of dependent origination. 

In the Avijja Sutta, the Buddha said:

Ignorance is the leader in the attainment of unskillful qualities, followed by lack of conscience & lack of concern. 

He contrasted this ignorance with clarity:

Clear knowing is the leader in the attainment of skillful qualities, followed by conscience & concern. 

When we see clearly, we can function skillfully. We just need to look.

Thank you for your practice.

Comments

[jiblet]

With apologies for nit-picking, the abstract sanskrit noun 'avidya' is derived from the root 'vid', meaning (from the Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary): "to know , understand , perceive , learn , become or be acquainted with , be conscious of , have a correct notion of..." The 'a-' prefix negates the usual meaning, hence "ignorance".

I know very little of pali, so perhaps the pali equivalent term, 'avijja' has a different connotation.

[Barry Briggs]

Thanks for your comment, Jiblet - I need all the correction I can get (and probably more than most people are willing to give).

That said, scholars (and I am most certainly not a scholar) say that "avidyā" drives from the Proto-Indo-European root *weid-, meaning "to see" or "to know". It is a cognate or Latin vidēre, from which we get "video" and "vista, and also the lovely and witty English word "wit".

Perhaps this is one of those rare human occasions in which we both get to be right?