The Name

The formal name of this tradition is a single Pali word, opanayiko. A reader who comes to the site asking what it means would otherwise have to gather the answer from four or five pages; this one sets it out in order — the word, the passage it belongs to, the English it has been given, and what the editors did with it. Each rendering below carries its translator and its edition, and none is put more strongly here than /sources puts it. That page remains the full record of every borrowing on the site, this one included.

The passage it belongs to

In the early Buddhist texts, a teaching is described by six words in a row, a formula that recurs through those texts, and opanayiko is the fifth of the six. An 1881 English translation gives the whole passage like this: "possessed of faith in the Truth—believing the truth to have been proclaimed by the Blessed One, of advantage in this world, passing not away, welcoming all, leading to salvation, and to be attained to by the wise, each one for himself" (Mahāparinibbāna Sutta II.9, tr. T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, Sacred Books of the East XI, 1881, p. 27) . Count along that list and the fifth phrase is leading to salvation. That is Rhys Davids's English for the word.

What the dictionary gives

A scholarly dictionary of Pali gives the word a short entry: "Opanayika (adj.) [fr. upaneti, upa + nī] leading to (Nibbāna)" (The Pali Text Society's Pali–English Dictionary, T. W. Rhys Davids and William Stede, 1921–25, p. 168) . The bracket traces the word back to a verb, upaneti, and the gloss says where the teaching leads: to Nibbāna, the end point of the path in the tradition the word comes from. Like salvation, that is a destination, and no destination of that kind is kept here — the reasons are given in the part of /sources that deals with what was not taken.

What the commentary gives

The dictionary entry sends its reader on to a classical commentary, the Visuddhimagga, and there the word is explained by the direction it asks of a reader rather than by a place it arrives at: a teaching worth arousing in one's own mind by developing it. The modern English translation of that commentary renders the word onward-leading (Visuddhimagga VII.83, tr. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli, The Path of Purification, Buddhist Publication Society, 2011 edition) . That translation is still in copyright, so this site credits the rendering and quotes nothing from the book.

A fourth rendering is found in the English of a book of morning and evening chants, issued by Theravāda monasteries, which gives the word as leading inwards (Chanting Book: Morning and Evening Chanting (Pūjā) and Reflections, Amaravati Publications, 1994; Abhayagiri Monastic Foundation, 2004) . It too is in copyright and is credited, not quoted.

The rendering this site uses

The site's own phrase, leading inward, was chosen by the editors, and it serves as a name to work under, not a translation. It tries to say in plain words what the commentary's gloss describes: something a reader carries in and tests, rather than something handed over and kept. Other readers of the Pali put it differently, as the four renderings above show, and nothing here asks anyone to prefer this one. The word is also being used for a different purpose than it serves in its own tradition, and setting the older renderings beside it is how that difference stays in plain view.

Why this word

The word was taken because it names the test. Book I opens on the same ground: nothing in it asks for agreement, only for a trial made in an ordinary hour, with the result left to the reader (I.1). The six words of the formula became the Six Qualities, the checks every teaching on this site has to pass (/philosophy/knowing), and the fifth of them keeps the word's own sense: a teaching should send the reader to look at their own experience, not ask them to accept something about the world.

Two names and a borrowing

Two names are in use. Opanayiko is kept for formal use, while the Inward Way does the everyday work, shortened to the Way once a page has used it; someone trying the practice is a wayfarer (/glossary). The formal name is a borrowing, credited rather than claimed as a coinage, and the borrowing has a cost of its own: the word still belongs to a living tradition that did not offer it. That objection is stated at its strongest, and answered only after its point is conceded, at /objections.

If any rendering on this page is stated more strongly than its edition allows, or an edition is named wrongly, write to [email protected]. Corrections are published at /editors.