user43: One word in Pali Canon seems to be especially challenging for translators to convey. This word is "papañca" (e.g. MN18, DN21, Sn 4.11, AN4.173). Some attempts at translating papañca include "exaggeration", "proliferation", "association", "conceptualization", "objectification", and "reification".
What is papañca and what is it's significance in Buddhism? How is it used in Pali Canon and what is it's referent in real life?
How is papañca (prapañca in Sanskrit) explained by Mahayana philosophers such as Nagarjuna, Asanga, and Tsongkhapa?

user10100: How to analysis this vocabulary?
Pac(a/i) + [ṃ of abbhāsa(root-repeating)] + pac(a/i) + a = papañca (saddanīti dhātumālā).
Pāka/vipāka, which use the same pac(a/i)-root, didn't abbhāsa by Buddha, because it is resultant. It is not the lead-cause dependent-origination-loop's repeating. So, Buddha didn't abbhāsa it.
What does pac(a/i) of papañca mean?
It refers to kilesa-vatta (unwholesome-causes) of the dependent origination which are the causes of the dependent-origination-loop's repeating. Because Kamma-vatta (formation/kamma-becomming) depending on kilesa-vatta (avijjā/taṅhā/upādāna) to cook(pacati) pāka/vipāka (resultants) of the dependent origination (vaṭṭa/paṭiccasamuppāda).
Why Buddha did abbhāsa(root-repeating) to pac(a/i) as papañca?
To refer papañca to kilesa-vatta (unwholesome-causes) of the dependent origination. I described above.
Where are kilesa-vaṭṭa (formation) in dependent origination?
The italic text below of Saṃ. Nidāna. Vibhaṅgasutta are kilesa-vaṭṭa (formation), the bold text are vipāka-vaṭṭa, the regular text are kamma-vaṭṭa:

– Katamo ca, bhikkhave, paṭiccasamuppādo?
– And what, bhikkhus, is paṭicca-samuppāda?
Avijjā·paccayā, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā;
Conditioned by avijjā, bhikkhus, there are saṅkhāras
saṅkhāra·paccayā
viññāṇaṃ;
conditioned by saṅkhāras, there is viññāṇa
viññāṇa·paccayā nāmarūpaṃ;
conditioned by viññāṇa, there is nāmarūpa
nāmarūpa·paccayā saḷāyatanaṃ;
conditioned by nāmarūpa, there are saḷāyatanas
saḷāyatana·paccayā
phasso;
conditioned by saḷāyatanas, there is phassa
phassa·paccayā vedanā;
conditioned by phassa, there is vedanā
vedanā·paccayā taṇhā;
conditioned by vedanā, there is taṇhā
taṇhā·paccayā upādānaṃ;
conditioned by taṇhā, there is upādāna
upādāna·paccayā bhavo;
conditioned by upādāna, there is bhava
bhava·paccayā jāti;
conditioned by bhava, there is jāti
jāti·paccayā jarā-maraṇaṃ soka parideva dukkha domanass·upāyāsā sambhavanti. Evam·etassa kevalassa dukkha'k'khandhassa samudayo hoti.
conditioned by jāti arise jarā-maraṇa, sorrow, lamentation, dukkha, domanassa and distress. Thus arises this whole mass of dukkha.

Which are the evidence sutta of this answer?
Every sutta which are contented papañca and papañceti are the evidences. They talking about dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda). So, I analysis papañca-word as dependent origination follow to those suttas' context.
Why atthakathā comments papañca as the Resistance?
Because the kilesa-vaṭṭa  causes the repeating of dependent-origination-loop. So, atthakathā comments papañca as the resistance of the dependent-origination-loop cessation.
Why atthakathā comments papañca as only Taṇhā, Diṭṭhi, and Māna, but the sutta refer to 7 anusaya?
It is just a brief of those 7 anusaya to cover 10 fetters in brief 3 kilesa, some point of atthakathā comment more than 3 as well. So, the sutta and atthakathā similarly explained papañca.

user13375: I am not a translator and do not know of the proper translation, but another closely related word that I'm particularly fond of is hypostatize. There is also the noun form hypostatization.
Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura translate the Sanskrit version of this term - prapañca - as hypostatization in Nagarjuna's Middle Way so it looks like I'm not too far off :)

The general definition is very close to reification. It means to attribute real ontological identity to a concept and Mirriam Webster gives the root as the Greek hypostatos which is "substantially existing."
Here is my favorite example of hypostatizing... 

From Insight Into Emptiness page 258, “For example, a young woman may
  want to have a child. When she is asleep, she dreams she gives birth
  to a child and is elated. But later in the dream, the child dies and
  she is devastated. However, on waking, she sees that neither the
  exhilarating appearance of having a child that brought her joy nor the
  horrible appearance of the child’s death that caused her anguish is
  real.”

Before she woke up she hypostatized her child (attributed real concrete existence to it) and this led to both elation and anguish. After she woke she stopped the hypostatization and the elation and anguish faded. However, there is also something very subtle happening when she woke up: she considered the dream unreal in relation to something else! Unreal and real are a dichotomy and mutually dependent notions :)
Another great and famous example is that of how three different beings perceive a cup filled with a liquid substance.

Three beings each perceive a cup filled with a liquid substance in
  front of them. The first, a god, looks and takes a sip and perceives,
  “ambrosia!” The second, a human being, looks and takes a sip and
  perceives, “water.” The third, a hungry ghost, looks and takes a sip
  and perceives, “blood and pus.”

Which is real? Which is unreal? What is worthy of being hypostatized and what is not? This is sometimes referred to as the simile of the three cups of liquid in Mahayana texts.
Another famous example by Nagarjuna is the body of a woman being seen differently by an ascetic, a lustful man, or a wild dog:

With respect to the same female body,
  Three different notions are entertained
  By the ascetic, the lustful and a [wild] dog,
  As a corpse, an object of lust, or food.

Each hypostatizes the body as very different things. Which is real? Which is unreal? Can the body be thought of as having any essence whatsoever? Or is each perception thoroughly and utterly relative and dependent? Is there anything whatsoever objectively real or worthy of being hypostatized in such a situation? Can any of it withstand analysis?
In fact, prapañca is a concept so important to Nagarjuna that he opens his famous Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way with this:

And here is how Siderits characterizes the commentaries on this opening Homage Verse:

Indeed, if you look through the rest of Nagarjuna's verses you will see that this is a major subject of the treatise as the commentaries attest.
Here is that very same Homage Verse as translated by Garfield and commented on by Je Tsongkhapa:

I prostrate to the perfect Buddha,
  The best of all teachers, who taught that
  That which is dependent origination is
  Without cessation, without arising;
  Without annihilation, without permanence;
  Without coming; without going;
  Without distinction, without identity
And peaceful—free from fabrication. 

Je Tsongkhapa cites Chandrakirti saying in his Prasannapada that these Homage Verses, "reveal the content and ultimate purpose of the Treatise."
Further, this site gives prapanca in Tibetan as spros pa which is also how it is used in Je Tsongkhapa's Ocean of Reasoning:

free from conceptual and verbal elaboration : sgra rtog gi spros pa
  zhi ba
  sgra rtog gi spros pa zhi ba : free from conceptual and verbal
  fabrication


user471: First, I will start with a canonical definition of papanca from MN 18 (translated by Ven. Sujato):

Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting
of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. What you
feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think
about, you proliferate. What you proliferate about is the source from
which a person is beset by concepts of identity that emerge from the
proliferation of perceptions. This occurs with respect to sights known
by the eye in the past, future, and present.
MN 18

And the same applies to the other five senses and their sense objects, including mind and thoughts.
For e.g. I see a cup. Feeling means sensing the vision of the cup with my eyes. Then I perceive it, meaning I identify it as "my late grandmother's cup" from memory. Then I proliferate, meaning I think about the times I spent with my grandmother and the times she drank using the cup. It stirs emotions about my late grandmother. Then I think about what I'm going to do with the cup in future. That's mental proliferation (papanca).

"What is Papañca?" is precisely the name of the article by Andrew Olendzki, the editor of the Insight Journal, who tries to answer this question, and then relates the purpose of vipassana later in his article, beyond my quote below.
Basically, papañca is the layers of thoughts and concepts that obscures what is barely perceived.
Imagine you walk through a canteen line and the canteen staff places five pieces of potato on your plate, while placing six pieces of potato on another person's plate. If you get angry about this, thinking perhaps, that the canteen staff is discriminating against you perhaps due to your ethnicity - well, this is an example of papañca, where it gives rise to aversion. You imagined a lot of stuff, on top of what is insignificant.
Another good example is this answer, where the author wrote that she was terrified because she misinterpreted the nightly sounds of cats mating as an adult woman and her baby crying in pain.
I've recently spoken to a depressed friend who did not feel that he is good enough and suffers from a lack of self-confidence. He cites examples of where others are better than him. I quoted qualities and examples of him that are better than each of those other persons and he was shocked. He never saw it in that way before. He was too obscured in his mental commentaries of his deficiencies that he couldn't see his good qualities and personal strengths.
But papañca can be a lot milder than that. For e.g. your feeling of patriotism or pride towards your country or ethnicity or religion is in my opinion, papañca too, as it a built-up concept.
In the article, he continues to speak of Vipassana as a means of one seeing things as they truly are.
The opposite of "papañca" could be "yathābhūtaṃ pajānāti" which means "seeing things clearly as they truly are".
From Andrew Olendzki's article, "What is Papañca?":


papahcabkirata paja nippapanca tathagata
“People delight in
proliferation, the Tathagata in nonproliferation.”
—Dhammapada 254

Papañca is one of those delightful Pali words that rolls off the
tongue (or bursts through the lips, in this case) and hits the nail on
the head. It points to something so immediate, so pervasive, and so
insidious that it deserves to join the English language and enter into
common usage. The exact derivation of papañca is not entirely clear,
but its sense hovers somewhere between the three nodes of 1) to spread
out or proliferate; 2) an illusion or an obsession; and 3) an obstacle
or impediment. The place where these three meanings converge in
experience is not hard to locate. Sit down with your back straight and
your legs folded around your ankles, close your eyes, and attend
carefully to your experience. What do you see? Papañca.
This term is used to describe the tendency of the mind to 1) spread
out from and elaborate upon any sense object that arises in
experience, smothering it with wave after wave of mental elaboration,
2) most of which is illusory, repetitive, and even obsessive, 3) which
effectively blocks any sort of mental calm or clarity of mind.
These are the narrative loops that play over and over in the mind, the
trains of thought pulling out of the station one after another and
taking us for a long ride down the track before we even know we’re
aboard. Bhikkhu Bodhi, eloquent as always, calls papañca “the
propensity of the worldling’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of
mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition” (from note
229 in Majjkima Nikaya (MN)).


Also of interest from the Tuvataka Sutta:

Seeing in what way is a monk unbound,
clinging to nothing in the world?"
"He should put an entire stop
to the root of objectification-classifications:
'I am the thinker.'

Ven. Thanissaro's footnote states:

On objectification-classifications and their role in leading to
conflict, see Sn 4.11 and the introduction to MN 18. The
perception, "I am the thinker" lies at the root of these
classifications in that it reads into the immediate present a set of
distinctions — I/not-I; being/not-being; thinker/thought;
identity/non-identity — that then can proliferate into mental and
physical conflict. The conceit inherent in this perception thus forms
a fetter on the mind. To become unbound, one must learn to examine
these distinctions — which we all take for granted — to see that they
are simply assumptions that are not inherent in experience, and that
we would be better off to be able to drop them.

That means the mind creates a self and then it objectifies and classifies everything else based on its relationship to the self.
For e.g. to a non-vegetarian, cooked meat looks like delicious food and to a vegan, it's disgusting.
The root of objectification-classification is the mental idea of the self.

The Madhupindika Sutta, cited in the question, seems to state that objectification (papañca) leads to "obsessions of passion, the obsessions of resistance, the obsessions of views, the obsessions of uncertainty, the obsessions of conceit, the obsessions of passion for becoming, & the obsessions of ignorance" and also "taking up rods & bladed weapons, of arguments, quarrels, disputes, accusations, divisive tale-bearing, & false speech".

"If, monk, with regard to the cause whereby the perceptions &
categories of objectification assail a person, there is nothing there
to relish, welcome, or remain fastened to, then that is the end of the
obsessions of passion, the obsessions of resistance, the obsessions of
views, the obsessions of uncertainty, the obsessions of conceit, the
obsessions of passion for becoming, & the obsessions of ignorance.
That is the end of taking up rods & bladed weapons, of arguments,
quarrels, disputes, accusations, divisive tale-bearing, & false
speech. That is where these evil, unskillful things cease without
remainder."


43: <p>One word in Pali Canon seems to be especially challenging for translators to convey. This word is "<em>papañca</em>" (e.g. <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MN18</a>, <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.21.2x.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">DN21</a>, <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.11.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Sn 4.11</a>, <a href="https://legacy.suttacentral.net/en/an4.173" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AN4.173</a>). Some attempts at translating <em>papañca</em> include "exaggeration", "<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2012/03/papanca-1-translating-papanca.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">proliferation</a>", "<a href="http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2009/04/proliferation-stories-we-tell-ourselves.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">association</a>", "<a href="https://what-buddha-said.net/library/pdfs/concept_and_reality.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">conceptualization</a>", "<a href="https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/CrossIndexed/Uncollected/MiscEssays/ArrowsThinking.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">objectification</a>", and "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">reification</a>".</p>

<p>What is <em>papañca</em> and what is it's significance in Buddhism? How is it used in Pali Canon and what is it's referent in real life?</p>

<p>How is <em>papañca</em> (<em>prapañca</em> in Sanskrit) explained by Mahayana philosophers such as Nagarjuna, Asanga, and Tsongkhapa?</p>
 10100: <p><strong>How to analysis this vocabulary?</strong></p>
<p>Pac(a/i) + [ṃ of abbhāsa(root-repeating)] + pac(a/i) + a = papañca (saddanīti dhātumālā).</p>
<p>Pāka/vipāka, which use the same pac(a/i)-root, didn't abbhāsa by Buddha, because it is resultant. It is not the lead-cause dependent-origination-loop's repeating. So, Buddha didn't abbhāsa it.</p>
<p><strong>What does pac(a/i) of papañca mean?</strong></p>
<p>It refers to kilesa-vatta (unwholesome-causes) of the dependent origination which are the causes of the dependent-origination-loop's repeating. Because Kamma-vatta (formation/kamma-becomming) depending on kilesa-vatta (avijjā/taṅhā/<strong>upādāna</strong>) to cook(pacati) pāka/vipāka (resultants) of the dependent origination (vaṭṭa/paṭiccasamuppāda).</p>
<p><strong>Why Buddha did abbhāsa(root-repeating) to pac(a/i) as papañca?</strong></p>
<p>To refer papañca to kilesa-vatta (unwholesome-causes) of the dependent origination. <em>I described above.</em></p>
<p><strong>Where are kilesa-vaṭṭa (formation) in dependent origination?</strong></p>
<p><em>The <strong>italic text</strong> below of Saṃ. Nidāna. <a href="http://84000.org/tipitaka/read/v.php?B=16&amp;A=33&amp;Z=87&amp;eng=buddhavacana" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Vibhaṅgasutta</a> are kilesa-vaṭṭa (formation), the <strong>bold text</strong> are vipāka-vaṭṭa, the <strong>regular text</strong> are kamma-vaṭṭa:</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p>– Katamo ca, bhikkhave, paṭiccasamuppādo?</p>
<p>– And what, bhikkhus, is paṭicca-samuppāda?</p>
<p><em>Avijjā·paccayā</em>, bhikkhave, saṅkhārā;</p>
<p><em>Conditioned by avijjā</em>, bhikkhus, there are saṅkhāras</p>
<p>saṅkhāra·paccayā
viññāṇaṃ;</p>
<p>conditioned by saṅkhāras, <strong>there is viññāṇa</strong></p>
<p><strong>viññāṇa·paccayā nāmarūpaṃ;</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by viññāṇa, there is nāmarūpa</strong></p>
<p><strong>nāmarūpa·paccayā saḷāyatanaṃ;</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by nāmarūpa, there are saḷāyatanas</strong></p>
<p><strong>saḷāyatana·paccayā
phasso;</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by saḷāyatanas, there is phassa</strong></p>
<p><strong>phassa·paccayā vedanā;</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by phassa, there is vedanā</strong></p>
<p><strong>vedanā·paccayā taṇhā;</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by vedanā</strong>, <em>there is taṇhā</em></p>
<p><em>taṇhā·paccayā upādānaṃ;</em></p>
<p><em>conditioned by taṇhā, there is upādāna</em></p>
<p><em>upādāna·paccayā bhavo;</em></p>
<p><em>conditioned by upādāna</em>, there is bhava</p>
<p>bhava·paccayā jāti;</p>
<p>conditioned by bhava, <strong>there is jāti</strong></p>
<p><strong>jāti·paccayā jarā-maraṇaṃ soka parideva dukkha domanass·upāyāsā sambhavanti. Evam·etassa kevalassa dukkha'k'khandhassa samudayo hoti.</strong></p>
<p><strong>conditioned by jāti arise jarā-maraṇa, sorrow, lamentation, dukkha, domanassa and distress. Thus arises this whole mass of dukkha.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Which are the evidence sutta of this answer?</strong></p>
<p>Every sutta which are contented papañca and papañceti are the evidences. They talking about dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda). So, I analysis papañca-word as dependent origination follow to those suttas' context.</p>
<p><strong>Why atthakathā comments papañca as the Resistance?</strong></p>
<p>Because the kilesa-vaṭṭa  causes the repeating of dependent-origination-loop. So, atthakathā comments papañca as the resistance of the dependent-origination-loop <strong>cessation</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Why atthakathā comments papañca as only Taṇhā, Diṭṭhi, and Māna, but the sutta refer to 7 anusaya?</strong></p>
<p>It is just a brief of those 7 anusaya to cover 10 fetters in brief 3 kilesa, some point of atthakathā comment more than 3 as well. So, the sutta and atthakathā similarly explained papañca.</p>
 13375: <p>I am not a translator and do not know of the proper translation, but another closely related word that I'm particularly fond of is <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypostatize" rel="nofollow noreferrer">hypostatize.</a> There is also the noun form <em>hypostatization</em>.</p>

<p>Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura translate the Sanskrit version of this term - <em>prapañca</em> - as hypostatization in <a href="https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1614290504" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Nagarjuna's Middle Way</a> so it looks like I'm not too far off :)</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/q3PhN.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/q3PhN.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>The general definition is very close to reification. It means to attribute real ontological identity to a concept and Mirriam Webster gives the root as the Greek hypostatos which is "substantially existing."</p>

<p>Here is my favorite example of hypostatizing... </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>From Insight Into Emptiness page 258, “For example, a young woman may
  want to have a child. When she is asleep, she dreams she gives birth
  to a child and is elated. But later in the dream, the child dies and
  she is devastated. However, on waking, she sees that neither the
  exhilarating appearance of having a child that brought her joy nor the
  horrible appearance of the child’s death that caused her anguish is
  real.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Before she woke up she hypostatized her child (attributed real concrete existence to it) and this led to both elation and anguish. After she woke she stopped the hypostatization and the elation and anguish faded. However, there is also something very subtle happening when she woke up: she considered the dream unreal in relation to something else! Unreal and real are a dichotomy and mutually dependent notions :)</p>

<p>Another great and famous example is that of how three different beings perceive a cup filled with a liquid substance.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Three beings each perceive a cup filled with a liquid substance in
  front of them. The first, a god, looks and takes a sip and perceives,
  “ambrosia!” The second, a human being, looks and takes a sip and
  perceives, “water.” The third, a hungry ghost, looks and takes a sip
  and perceives, “blood and pus.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Which is real? Which is unreal? What is worthy of being hypostatized and what is not? This is sometimes referred to as the simile of the three cups of liquid in Mahayana texts.</p>

<p>Another <a href="http://www.tibetanclassics.org/html-assets/Awakening%20Mind%20Commentary.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">famous example</a> by Nagarjuna is the body of a woman being seen differently by an ascetic, a lustful man, or a wild dog:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>With respect to the same female body,<br>
  Three different notions are entertained<br>
  By the ascetic, the lustful and a [wild] dog,<br>
  As a corpse, an object of lust, or food.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Each hypostatizes the body as very different things. Which is real? Which is unreal? Can the body be thought of as having any essence whatsoever? Or is each perception thoroughly and utterly relative and dependent? Is there anything whatsoever objectively real or worthy of being hypostatized in such a situation? Can any of it withstand analysis?</p>

<p>In fact, <em>prapañca</em> is a concept so important to Nagarjuna that he opens his famous <em>Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way</em> with this:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8i0Cl.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/8i0Cl.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>And here is how Siderits characterizes the commentaries on this opening Homage Verse:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/43AQe.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/43AQe.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>Indeed, if you look through the rest of Nagarjuna's verses you will see that this is a major subject of the treatise as the commentaries attest.</p>

<p>Here is that very same Homage Verse as translated by Garfield and commented on by Je Tsongkhapa:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>I prostrate to the perfect Buddha,<br>
  The best of all teachers, who taught that<br>
  That which is dependent origination is<br>
  Without cessation, without arising;<br>
  Without annihilation, without permanence;<br>
  Without coming; without going;<br>
  Without distinction, without identity<br>
  <em>And peaceful—free from fabrication</em>. </p>
</blockquote>

<p>Je Tsongkhapa cites Chandrakirti saying in his <em>Prasannapada</em> that these Homage Verses, "reveal the content and ultimate purpose of the Treatise."</p>

<p>Further, this <a href="http://english-tibetan-dictionary.tumblr.com/post/59664751630/prapanca" rel="nofollow noreferrer">site</a> gives <em>prapanca</em> in Tibetan as <em>spros pa</em> which is also how it is used in Je Tsongkhapa's <em>Ocean of Reasoning</em>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>free from conceptual and verbal elaboration : sgra rtog gi <em>spros pa</em>
  zhi ba<br>
  sgra rtog gi <em>spros pa</em> zhi ba : free from conceptual and verbal
  fabrication</p>
</blockquote>
 471: <p>First, I will start with a canonical definition of <em>papanca</em> from <a href="https://suttacentral.net/mn18/en/sujato" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MN 18 (translated by Ven. Sujato)</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Eye consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting
of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. What you
feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think
about, you proliferate. What you proliferate about is the source from
which a person is beset by concepts of identity that emerge from the
proliferation of perceptions. This occurs with respect to sights known
by the eye in the past, future, and present.<br />
<a href="https://suttacentral.net/mn18/en/sujato" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MN 18</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>And the same applies to the other five senses and their sense objects, including mind and thoughts.</p>
<p>For e.g. I see a cup. Feeling means sensing the vision of the cup with my eyes. Then I perceive it, meaning I identify it as &quot;my late grandmother's cup&quot; from memory. Then I proliferate, meaning I think about the times I spent with my grandmother and the times she drank using the cup. It stirs emotions about my late grandmother. Then I think about what I'm going to do with the cup in future. That's mental proliferation (<em>papanca</em>).</p>
<hr />
<p>&quot;<a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-papanca/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">What is <em>Papañca</em>?</a>&quot; is precisely the name of the article by Andrew Olendzki, the editor of the Insight Journal, who tries to answer this question, and then relates the purpose of <em>vipassana</em> later in his article, beyond my quote below.</p>
<p>Basically, <em>papañca</em> is the layers of thoughts and concepts that obscures what is barely perceived.</p>
<p>Imagine you walk through a canteen line and the canteen staff places five pieces of potato on your plate, while placing six pieces of potato on another person's plate. If you get angry about this, thinking perhaps, that the canteen staff is discriminating against you perhaps due to your ethnicity - well, this is an example of <em>papañca</em>, where it gives rise to aversion. You imagined a lot of stuff, on top of what is insignificant.</p>
<p>Another good example is <a href="http://qr.ae/TUpq52" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this answer</a>, where the author wrote that she was terrified because she misinterpreted the nightly sounds of cats mating as an adult woman and her baby crying in pain.</p>
<p>I've recently spoken to a depressed friend who did not feel that he is good enough and suffers from a lack of self-confidence. He cites examples of where others are better than him. I quoted qualities and examples of him that are better than each of those other persons and he was shocked. He never saw it in that way before. He was too obscured in his mental commentaries of his deficiencies that he couldn't see his good qualities and personal strengths.</p>
<p>But <em>papañca</em> can be a lot milder than that. For e.g. your feeling of patriotism or pride towards your country or ethnicity or religion is in my opinion, <em>papañca</em> too, as it a built-up concept.</p>
<p>In the article, he continues to speak of <em>Vipassana</em> as a means of one seeing things as they truly are.</p>
<p>The opposite of &quot;<em>papañca</em>&quot; could be &quot;<em>yathābhūtaṃ pajānāti</em>&quot; which means &quot;seeing things clearly as they truly are&quot;.</p>
<p>From Andrew Olendzki's article, &quot;<a href="https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-papanca/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">What is <em>Papañca</em>?</a>&quot;:</p>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>papahcabkirata paja nippapanca tathagata<br />
“People delight in
proliferation, the Tathagata in nonproliferation.”<br />
—Dhammapada 254</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Papañca</em> is one of those delightful Pali words that rolls off the
tongue (or bursts through the lips, in this case) and hits the nail on
the head. It points to something so immediate, so pervasive, and so
insidious that it deserves to join the English language and enter into
common usage. The exact derivation of <em>papañca</em> is not entirely clear,
but its sense hovers somewhere between the three nodes of 1) to spread
out or proliferate; 2) an illusion or an obsession; and 3) an obstacle
or impediment. The place where these three meanings converge in
experience is not hard to locate. Sit down with your back straight and
your legs folded around your ankles, close your eyes, and attend
carefully to your experience. What do you see? <em>Papañca</em>.</p>
<p>This term is used to describe the tendency of the mind to 1) spread
out from and elaborate upon any sense object that arises in
experience, smothering it with wave after wave of mental elaboration,
2) most of which is illusory, repetitive, and even obsessive, 3) which
effectively blocks any sort of mental calm or clarity of mind.</p>
<p>These are the narrative loops that play over and over in the mind, the
trains of thought pulling out of the station one after another and
taking us for a long ride down the track before we even know we’re
aboard. Bhikkhu Bodhi, eloquent as always, calls <em>papañca</em> “the
propensity of the worldling’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of
mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition” (from note
229 in Majjkima Nikaya (MN)).</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Also of interest from the <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.14.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Tuvataka Sutta</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Seeing in what way is a monk unbound,<br />
clinging to nothing in the world?&quot;<br />
&quot;He should put an entire stop<br />
to the root of objectification-classifications:<br />
'I am the thinker.'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ven. Thanissaro's footnote states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On objectification-classifications and their role in leading to
conflict, see <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.11.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Sn 4.11</a> and the introduction to <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MN 18</a>. The
perception, &quot;I am the thinker&quot; lies at the root of these
classifications in that it reads into the immediate present a set of
distinctions — I/not-I; being/not-being; thinker/thought;
identity/non-identity — that then can proliferate into mental and
physical conflict. The conceit inherent in this perception thus forms
a fetter on the mind. To become unbound, one must learn to examine
these distinctions — which we all take for granted — to see that they
are simply assumptions that are not inherent in experience, and that
we would be better off to be able to drop them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That means the mind creates a self and then it objectifies and classifies everything else based on its relationship to the self.</p>
<p>For e.g. to a non-vegetarian, cooked meat looks like delicious food and to a vegan, it's disgusting.</p>
<p>The root of objectification-classification is the mental idea of the self.</p>
<hr />
<p>The <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.018.than.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Madhupindika Sutta</a>, cited in the question, seems to state that objectification (<em>papañca</em>) leads to &quot;obsessions of passion, the obsessions of resistance, the obsessions of views, the obsessions of uncertainty, the obsessions of conceit, the obsessions of passion for becoming, &amp; the obsessions of ignorance&quot; and also &quot;taking up rods &amp; bladed weapons, of arguments, quarrels, disputes, accusations, divisive tale-bearing, &amp; false speech&quot;.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>&quot;If, monk, with regard to the cause whereby the perceptions &amp;
categories of objectification assail a person, there is nothing there
to relish, welcome, or remain fastened to, then that is the end of the
obsessions of passion, the obsessions of resistance, the obsessions of
views, the obsessions of uncertainty, the obsessions of conceit, the
obsessions of passion for becoming, &amp; the obsessions of ignorance.
That is the end of taking up rods &amp; bladed weapons, of arguments,
quarrels, disputes, accusations, divisive tale-bearing, &amp; false
speech. That is where these evil, unskillful things cease without
remainder.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>
