How should the terms 'kaya, vaci & citta sankhara' be translated?
The explanation about the 'vaci sankhara' (which is bolded) clearly states thought is the cause of speech. If this is true, how can thought be the "verbal fabrication" when it is obvious that: (a) speech is the verbal fabrication and (b) thought is that which fabricates (or causes) the speech?


In Pali just one word, sankhara, or pair of words.

English, being precise, has a lot of grammar. You can't construct an English sentence without a verb, a subject, maybe an object, and "prepositions". Maybe English has too much grammar (maybe there's a similar problem translating from Chinese into English), i.e. that to create a grammatical English translation you need to add extra grammar which didn't exist in the original.

Insisting on having a subject (an actor or an agent) for each verb (as English does), doesn't that invite the same kind of mistake as I-making or I-assuming, or reification?

So FYI (and I might be wrong) I think of (i.e. I mentally translate) sankhara as "putting together", i.e. as a kind of verb or a kind of process ... but without assuming there's a corresponding subject ... or you might translate is construction or constructing (or fabrication) without assuming there's a corresponding constructor.

So if you take thought as the cause (or prequel) of speech, I understand it as saying that it's the putting together (creation or construction) of speech.

You said that "speech is the fabrication" but in this context I think it's the fabricated.

Also I think that in English the word "fabrication" can refer to the process and to the end result (so "a fabrication" can be used as a synonym for "the fabricated"): e.g. "the story is a fabrication" means that telling the story is the process of telling a lie, and the told/completed story is the result of telling or having told a lie.

I think that sankhara is the process of constructing/fabricating something (e.g. breath, speech, thoughts) and also the product or result of that construction/fabrication.



Another thing is (and again I may be wrong), isn't the direction of the causation deliberately a bit vague? I read the answers to this topic as saying that it isn't as simple as "A causes B", nor "B causes A". It's not that "body causes breath" nor "breath causes body", rather it's "body and breath co-arise", or "body is the condition in which breath arises and vice versa". I might be wrong but does Western science/philosophy/logic/religion for one maybe try to teach us to believe in "cause and effect"? But isn't Buddhist logic rather about "co-arising", which might be a better description than simplistic "cause and effect"?

Assuming "causation" leads to (it invites) logical problems/fallacies like Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

For example, I think, it is that "fire causes heat", or is it that "heat causes fire"? Instead of one or the other, let's say that "heat and fire co-arise".



A final comment, if you read the Dharmafarer commentary on MN 44, the author distinguishes (or tells us to distinguish) between the singular saṅkhāra and the plural saṅkhārā -- saying that the singular (e.g. thought forming speech, or mindful speech, or "functional consciousness") is a quality (property or function) of the relatively enlightened mind, whereas the plural is "mental proliferation" or papañca.