Q: What is the difference in learning Pali for someone walking on the path and for those who are not?
A: That is a good question.
The difference is similar to that between someone who eats a delicious cake compared to someone who just sees it in the display of a pastry shop.
The crux of the Buddha’s teaching – maintained in the Pali language – is to apply in one's own life what he taught. He always taught with the intention to help people to live a better, more harmonious and less self-centered life – with the perspective to come out of the impurities that hinder one to do so. Whether we aim at complete liberation or not may be for the student of today less important in the first hand – the actual benefits we notice start once we apply the Noble Eightfold Path in life (these will be explained in more detail in the coming chapters of the Exploring the Path course).
These benefits usually instigate us to rouse more energy and efforts to keep on going. While all the links of the Eightfold Noble Path naturally support each other, the practice of meditation enables one to develop each one of them on a deeper level – as this is the only way to diminish the impurities that stand in the way; that burst forth repeatedly and again support doubts and fatigue and reinforce old habits. But with the deepened base of insight through Vipassana-meditation each one of these links gets strengthened, walking the path becomes more natural and right knowledge, based on insight and experience gets cultivated.
Of course – if you just want to learn Pali as a language – that’s a different story altogether!
