‘Sat cit ananda’ meaning, as translated by Warwick Jessup, in his book translating a Shankara teaching 'The Eternal Way' is ‘being-consciousness-bliss’. Jessup is a life-long student of Sanskrit and Head of Sanskrit in a London School.
PROBLEM/s There appears to be widespread agreement on the second and third parts i.e ‘consciousness and ‘bliss’ - but the first of the first of the three constituent parts has at least 4 translations. To ‘being’ we can add as alternatives from other translations ‘truth’ ‘reality’ and ‘existence’.
My first tentative solution is to say that since being, truth, and existence are all inherent in ‘reality’ the first of the constituent parts should be reality - or even ‘ultimate reality’ Wider questions
Is sat-cit-ananda intended as a description of a causative, step-by-step sequence?
Is sat-cit-ananda simply three essential developments within each of us, all of which are needed to reach a certain level before awakening occurs.
