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virāgānupassī

masc nom sg of virāgānupassī (adj); masc nom pl of virāgānupassī (adj); fem nom sg of virāgānupassī (adj); nt nom pl of virāgānupassī (adj); …

1. observing dispassion; watching fading of desire; contemplating fading away

Built from

• vi — prefix · apart, asunder
  Reverses or breaks apart; here it undoes passion. Related to dvi 'two'; works like Latin dis-.
• rāga — root · passion, desire, colour
  From √raj 'to be coloured'. Passion is the colouring or staining of the mind. No clear European cognate, but the image is concrete: passion tinges perception.
• anu — prefix · along, after, following
  Trailing behind, tracing the track of. The observer follows the movement of dispassion as it unfolds.
• passī — stem · one who sees, observer
  From √pas 'to see' (related to pathos, patient — originally 'to be affected'). The suffix -ī makes an agent noun. Here anupassī is 'one who sees along', watchfully.

Analysis. virāga (dispassion, fading away of passion) + anupassī (one who observes along). A compound epithet meaning 'one who watches dispassion unfold', used in the canon of the meditator who sees passion fade as objects lose their grip.

Etymology. vi- (apart, asunder) + rāga (passion, desire; from √raj 'colour', 'to be coloured' — passion as the colouring or staining of the mind). anu- (along, following) + √pas 'see' (Latin passus, Greek pathos; the root means 'to be affected by', so anupassī reverses it: 'one who observes affect from outside'). The compound fuses two key meditative movements: seeing through passion (virāga) and witnessing that seeing as it happens (anupassī).

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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