[Mind-Speak] - ing

10th May 2009

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Linguistic Interlude

Manojalpa is a Sanskrit word derived from manas and the root jlp.

From the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon:

Manas. n. mind (in its widest sense as applied to all the mental powers), intellect, intelligence, understanding, perception, sense, conscience…cont
Jalpa. m. talk, speech, discourse (also pl.)…

In combining the two, one gets the closest representation of what might be termed the “Imagination,” (a nickname of mine in high school, that thusly stuck and was reincarnated over my three semesters of Sanskrit). Manojalpa literally means the mind speaking - creating narratives, worlds, fanciful imagery. But I romanticize.

Manojalpa has a tighter, much more restricted meaning derived in a school of yoga (Yogācāra) which focuses on meditation as the ultimate path to enlightenment. There, it’s considered “mental chatter” and following a string of links mutates its definition anywhere from “Discursive thought and examination; one of the mental functions (caitta), classed as morally neutral, it is the mental process which picks out the details of any object presented to the mind” (vicāra) to the more negative but possibly more personally meaningful (vikalpa) “ ‘Imagining’, an intellectual process which leads to the formation of concepts, judgements, views, and opinions. In Buddhist thought, the term usually signifies deluded or erroneous thinking which is tainted with emotions and desires and fails to grasp the true nature of things as they are. In this sense it is synonymous with the term prapañca, meaning ‘mental proliferation’, an activity of the deluded and unenlightened mind.”

I lost myself in a very satisfying linklabyrinth after that, but that’s the simple version.

Manojalpa = Imagination.