Upāsaka Cattasallā (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cattasalla) wrote2025-05-30 09:38 am
cattasalla) wrote2025-05-30 09:38 am
What "Cattasallā" Means
Towards the end of 2024, my teacher gave me a Pali name: Cattasallā. Pali is the liturgical language of Theravāda Buddhism, and the closest we have to what the Buddha spoke. After a period of dedicated practice, sometimes laity (upāsaka for male or non-gendered, upāsikā for female) are given Pali names. Like those conferred upon monastics by their preceptors, the name reflects both the work in which they have engaged and an aspiration for future work. In my case, my teacher had two specific things in mind when bestowing the moniker upon me.
First, what does cattasalla mean? He gave me an initial definition of “pulling out the thorn,” and then further explained that salla can mean anything sharp. It could mean a thorn, but could also mean a dart or an arrow.
The simile of a thorn, dart, or arrow occurs in a few prominent places in the Pali canon. One well-known one is in the context of dukkha, a somewhat technical term usually translated as “suffering” but refers not only to what we might think of in English as “suffering,” but in a broader sense, all forms of stress and tension. The idea behind the simile can be expressed with a slogan you may have heard: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” We are going to encounter pain in life. That’s an fact of human existence. But what we do in response to the pain is something we can learn to be able to choose. This is ultimately the point of the practice: to go beyond simple reaction to actively making a choice about how we respond to painful things, and choosing equipoise or equanimity. The simile is of getting hit by an arrow. This is the initial, physical pain. But then, those of us who are not fully enlightened, shoot us with a second arrow, as we add to that physical pain by wishing it wasn’t there, multiplying the anguish from the physical to the emotional.
That’s not one of the meanings my teacher meant when he gave it to me, though. At least, he didn’t mention it in the full moon talk he gave to our group when he conferred the name upon me. Instead, he talked about two others usages.
One is the tendency to over-intellectualize and theorize in a way that blocks progress and obscures the direct experience of suffering. In this story, a monastic approaches the Buddha and demands answers to certain metaphysical questions before doing any further Dhamma practice: Is the cosmos finite or infinite? Is it eternal or limited in time? Does the self exist or not? These were major philosophical questions floating around in the spiritual communities of the time, but we could easy extend the spirit of the queries to most of the major philosophical problems in any society.
The Buddha responded that he teachs only one thing: the existence and cessation of suffering. That’s it. Everything in the Dhamma points to that. Anything not pointing to that is not Dhamma.
He then elaborated with a simile. Say there was a man struck by a poisoned arrow. The doctor comes to pull it out, treat the wound, and administer an antidote. But before he can, the man says, “No, before you heal me, I must know: Who shot the arrow? What caste were they? Were they married or single? Short or tall? I refuse to accept any medical treatment until these questions are answered.” That is the problem: demanding answers to “deep” questions about philosophy, rather than working on understanding and freeing yourself from your own self-inflicting suffering.
That used to be me. I’m a scientist and an autist, so categorizing things and understanding theoretical structures with mathematical precision are what draw my mind. Part of what attracted me to Theravāda is the intricacy of the doctrinal architecture. Memorizing lists is the sort of thing I do for fun.
This approach is not uncommon for those of us who learn towards the intellectual. But over the years, through my own exploration of my mind with my teacher’s guidance, that is no longer an approach I take. When I look at my old writings, they read like encyclopedia articles! I hope the reader can agree that this is not my style anymore…at least not the style of my usual post. Moreover, I am no longer interested in theory for theory’s sake, but instead of learning how to look directly at my mind. That’s not to say there’s no use for doctrine—in fact, having done all of that study is helpful, and study was recommended by the Buddha—but it needs to be put into practice.
So that’s one meaning he meant. But that wasn’t the main one.
The Buddha also refers to sensuality as a thorn. By “sensuality,” I mean making my whole life about getting sensual pleasures, never resting for very long until I’m chasing the next thing. I’ve never had any interest in wealth, power, or material posessions, but I’ve always sought out pleasurable experiences. So, for someone like me, sensuality is a thorn. It cuts into me. I used to never let myself feel discomfort or boredom very long before moving to find something interesting or exciting. (Of course, ADHD plays a role in this, which is an entire other essay!) Walking through the world is like walking through a briar patch. But instead of trying to avoid the thorns, as soon as one catches me I grab onto it or hold it tight. Not as much as I used to, but I still do. This is “sensuality.”
These are the thorns I am pulling out, one by one, so I can heal. I have spent lifetimes grabbing them, and digging them into my flesh, but now it’s time to remove them.
Note for those curious about the grammar: The Venerable gave me a choice: the nominative singular cattasallo or the vocative cattasallā. The former is the masculine nominative form. He told me the latter was vocative (Pali names are always given in either the nominative or vocative), which surprised me because I had only ever heard of the -a ending for the vocative case of masculine nouns. But, in fact, -ā can be used as the vocative for both masculine and non-gendered nouns! In fact, it can even be a feminine nominative! As an agender person, that felt most appropriate.
First, what does cattasalla mean? He gave me an initial definition of “pulling out the thorn,” and then further explained that salla can mean anything sharp. It could mean a thorn, but could also mean a dart or an arrow.
The simile of a thorn, dart, or arrow occurs in a few prominent places in the Pali canon. One well-known one is in the context of dukkha, a somewhat technical term usually translated as “suffering” but refers not only to what we might think of in English as “suffering,” but in a broader sense, all forms of stress and tension. The idea behind the simile can be expressed with a slogan you may have heard: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” We are going to encounter pain in life. That’s an fact of human existence. But what we do in response to the pain is something we can learn to be able to choose. This is ultimately the point of the practice: to go beyond simple reaction to actively making a choice about how we respond to painful things, and choosing equipoise or equanimity. The simile is of getting hit by an arrow. This is the initial, physical pain. But then, those of us who are not fully enlightened, shoot us with a second arrow, as we add to that physical pain by wishing it wasn’t there, multiplying the anguish from the physical to the emotional.
That’s not one of the meanings my teacher meant when he gave it to me, though. At least, he didn’t mention it in the full moon talk he gave to our group when he conferred the name upon me. Instead, he talked about two others usages.
One is the tendency to over-intellectualize and theorize in a way that blocks progress and obscures the direct experience of suffering. In this story, a monastic approaches the Buddha and demands answers to certain metaphysical questions before doing any further Dhamma practice: Is the cosmos finite or infinite? Is it eternal or limited in time? Does the self exist or not? These were major philosophical questions floating around in the spiritual communities of the time, but we could easy extend the spirit of the queries to most of the major philosophical problems in any society.
The Buddha responded that he teachs only one thing: the existence and cessation of suffering. That’s it. Everything in the Dhamma points to that. Anything not pointing to that is not Dhamma.
He then elaborated with a simile. Say there was a man struck by a poisoned arrow. The doctor comes to pull it out, treat the wound, and administer an antidote. But before he can, the man says, “No, before you heal me, I must know: Who shot the arrow? What caste were they? Were they married or single? Short or tall? I refuse to accept any medical treatment until these questions are answered.” That is the problem: demanding answers to “deep” questions about philosophy, rather than working on understanding and freeing yourself from your own self-inflicting suffering.
That used to be me. I’m a scientist and an autist, so categorizing things and understanding theoretical structures with mathematical precision are what draw my mind. Part of what attracted me to Theravāda is the intricacy of the doctrinal architecture. Memorizing lists is the sort of thing I do for fun.
This approach is not uncommon for those of us who learn towards the intellectual. But over the years, through my own exploration of my mind with my teacher’s guidance, that is no longer an approach I take. When I look at my old writings, they read like encyclopedia articles! I hope the reader can agree that this is not my style anymore…at least not the style of my usual post. Moreover, I am no longer interested in theory for theory’s sake, but instead of learning how to look directly at my mind. That’s not to say there’s no use for doctrine—in fact, having done all of that study is helpful, and study was recommended by the Buddha—but it needs to be put into practice.
So that’s one meaning he meant. But that wasn’t the main one.
The Buddha also refers to sensuality as a thorn. By “sensuality,” I mean making my whole life about getting sensual pleasures, never resting for very long until I’m chasing the next thing. I’ve never had any interest in wealth, power, or material posessions, but I’ve always sought out pleasurable experiences. So, for someone like me, sensuality is a thorn. It cuts into me. I used to never let myself feel discomfort or boredom very long before moving to find something interesting or exciting. (Of course, ADHD plays a role in this, which is an entire other essay!) Walking through the world is like walking through a briar patch. But instead of trying to avoid the thorns, as soon as one catches me I grab onto it or hold it tight. Not as much as I used to, but I still do. This is “sensuality.”
These are the thorns I am pulling out, one by one, so I can heal. I have spent lifetimes grabbing them, and digging them into my flesh, but now it’s time to remove them.
Note for those curious about the grammar: The Venerable gave me a choice: the nominative singular cattasallo or the vocative cattasallā. The former is the masculine nominative form. He told me the latter was vocative (Pali names are always given in either the nominative or vocative), which surprised me because I had only ever heard of the -a ending for the vocative case of masculine nouns. But, in fact, -ā can be used as the vocative for both masculine and non-gendered nouns! In fact, it can even be a feminine nominative! As an agender person, that felt most appropriate.