The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha

by Bhikkhu Nanamoli

  18 In this section and the next, the phenomena comprising personal identity are treated as twofold—by way of unity and diversity. The emphasis on unity (ekatta),MA informs us, is characteristic of one who attains the jhānas, in which the mind occurs in a single mode on a single object. The emphasis on diversity (nānatta) prevails in the case of the non-attainer who lacks the overwhelming unitive experience of jhānas. Conceivings stressing diversity come to expression in philosophies of pluralism, those stressing unity in philosophies of the monistic type.

  19 In this section, all phenomena of personal identity are collected together and shown as singlefold. This idea of totality can form the basis for philosophies of the pantheistic or monistic type, depending on the relation posited between the self and the all.

  20 MA understands “Nibbāna” here to refer to the five kinds of “supreme Nibbāna here and now” included among the sixty-two wrong views of the Brahmajāla Sutta (DN 1.3.19–25/i.36–38), that is, Nibbāna identified with the full enjoyment of sense pleasures or with the four jhānas. Enjoying this state, or yearning for it, he conceives it with craving. Priding himself on attaining it, he conceives it with conceit. Holding this imaginary Nibbāna to be permanent, etc., he conceives it with views.

  21 The sekha, the disciple in higher training, is one who has reached any of the three lower planes of sanctity—stream-entry, once-returning, or non-returning—but must still train further in order to reach the goal, arahantship, the supreme security from bondage. MN 53 is devoted to expounding the training he must undertake. The arahant is sometimes described as asekha,one beyond training, in the sense that he has completed the training in the Noble Eightfold Path. Ñm rendered sekha as “initiate” and asekha as “adept,” which have been changed here to avoid their “esoteric” connotations.

  22 It should be noted that, whereas the ordinary man is said to perceive each of the bases, the one in higher training is said to directly know them (abhijānāti). MA explains that he knows them with distinguished knowledge, knows them in accordance with their real nature as impermanent, suffering, and non-self. Ñm rendered: “From earth he has direct knowledge of earth.”

  23 The disciple in higher training is urged by the Buddha to refrain from conceiving and delight because the dispositions to these mental processes still remain within him. With his attainment of stream-entry he eradicated the fetter of identity view and thus can no longer conceive in terms of wrong views. But the defilements of craving and conceit are only uprooted by the path of arahantship, and thus the sekha remains vulnerable to the conceivings to which they are capable of giving rise. Whereas direct knowledge (abhiñña) is the province of both the sekha and the arahant, full understanding (pariññā) is the province exclusively of the arahant, as it involves the full abandoning of all defilements.

  24 This is the stock description of the arahant, repeated in many suttas.

  25 When ignorance has been abolished by the attainment of full understanding, the subtlest dispositions to craving and conceit are also eradicated. Thus the arahant can no longer engage in conceiving and delight.

  26 This section and the following two are stated to show that the arahant does not conceive, not only because he has fully understood the object, but because he has eradicated the three unwholesome roots—lust (or greed), hate, and delusion. The phrase “free from lust through the destruction of lust” is used to stress that the arahant is not merely temporarily without lust, but has destroyed it at the most fundamental level. Similarly with hate and delusion.

  27 On this word, the epithet the Buddha uses most often when referring to himself, see the Introduction, p. 24. The commentaries give a long detailed etymology, into which they try to compress virtually the entire Dhamma. The passage has been translated in Bhikkhu Bodhi, Discourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views, pp. 331–44.

  28 Pariññātantaṁ tathāgatassa. So BBS and SBJ and MA, though PTS reads simply pariññātaṁ. MA glosses: “fully understood to the conclusion, fully understood to the limit, fully understood without remainder.” It explains that while Buddhas and disciple-arahants are alike in abandoning all defilements, there is a distinction in their range of full understanding: whereas disciples can attain Nibbāna after comprehending with insight only a limited number of formations, Buddhas fully understand all formations without exception.

  29 This sentence gives a highly compressed statement of the formula of dependent origination (paṭicca samuppāda), usually expounded in twelve factors (as in MN 38). As interpreted by MA, “delight” is the craving of the previous life that brought into being the “suffering” of the five aggregates in the present life, “being” the kammically determinative aspect of the present life that causes future birth, followed by future ageing and death. This passage shows the cause for the Buddha’s elimination of conceiving to be his penetration of dependent origination on the night of his enlightenment. The mention of “delight” (nandı̄) as the root of suffering links up with the sutta’s title; moreover, by referring to the earlier statement that the ordinary person delights in earth, etc., it shows suffering to be the ultimate consequence of delight.

  30 MA explains the sequence of ideas thus: The Tathāgata does not conceive earth and does not delight in earth because he has understood that delight is the root of suffering. Further, by understanding dependent origination, he has completely abandoned the craving here called “ delight ” and has awakened to supreme full enlightenment. As a result he does not conceive earth or delight in earth.

  31 The bhikkhus did not delight in the Buddha’s words, apparently because the discourse probed too deeply into the tender regions of their own conceit, and perhaps their residual brahmanic views. At a later time, MA tells us, when their pride had been humbled, the Buddha expounded to these same bhikkhus the Gotamaka Sutta (AN 3:123/i.276), in the course of which they all attained arahantship.

  SUTTA 2

  32 The taints (̄sava), a category of defilements existing at the deepest and most fundamental level, are discussed in the Introduction, p. 38. MA explains that restraint (saṁvara ) is fivefold: through virtue, mindfulness, knowledge, energy, and patience. In the present sutta, restraint through virtue is illustrated by avoiding unsuitable seats and resorts (§19); restraint through mindfulness, by restraining the sense faculties (§12); restraint through knowledge, by the repeated phrase “reflecting wisely”; restraint through energy, by the removing of unwholesome thoughts (§20); and restraint through patience, by the passage on enduring (§18).

  33 Wise attention (yoniso manasikāra) is glossed as attention that is the right means (upāya), on the right track (patha). It is explained as mental advertence, consideration, or preoccupation that accords with the truth, namely, attention to the impermanent as impermanent, etc. Unwise attention (ayoniso manasikāra) is attention that is the wrong means, on the wrong track (uppatha), contrary to the truth, namely, attention to the impermanent as permanent, the painful as pleasurable, what is not self as self, and what is foul as beautiful. Unwise attention, MA informs us, is at the root of the round of existence, for it causes ignorance and craving to increase; wise attention is at the root of liberation from the round, since it leads to the development of the Noble Eightfold Path. MA sums up the point of this passage thus: the destruction of the taints is for one who knows how to arouse wise attention and who sees to it that unwise attention does not arise.

  34 Six of these—omitting the taints to be abandoned by seeing—are mentioned in the catechism on the taints in AN 6:58/iii.387–90.

  35 The word “seeing” (dassana) here refers to the first of the four supramundane paths—the path of stream-entry (sotāttimagga)—so designated because it offers the first glimpse of Nibbāna. The higher three paths are called the paths of development (bhāvanā) because they develop the vision of Nibbāna to the point at which all defilements are eradicated.

  36 MA makes the important point that there is no fixed determination in things themselves a
s to whether they are fit or unfit for attention. The distinction consists, rather, in the mode of attention. That mode of attention that is a causal basis for unwholesome states of mind should be avoided, while that mode of attention that is a causal basis for wholesome states should be developed. This same principle applies to §9.

  37 MA illustrates the growth of the taints through unwise attention as follows: When he attends to gratification in the five cords of sensual pleasure, the taint of sensual desire arises and increases; when he attends to gratification in the exalted states (the jhānas), the taint of being arises and increases; and when he attends to any mundane things through the four “perversions” (of permanence, etc.—see n.5), the taint of ignorance arises and increases.

  38 According to MA, this passage is undertaken to show the taint of views (diṭṭhāsava, not expressly mentioned in the discourse) under the heading of doubt. However, it might be more correct to say that the taint of views, disclosed by §8, emerges out of unwise attention in the form of doubt. The various types of doubt are already pregnant with the wrong views that will come to explicit expression in the next section.

  39 Of these six views, the first two represent the simple antinomy of eternalism and annihilationism; the view that “no self exists for me” is not the non-self doctrine of the Buddha, but the materialist view that identifies the individual with the body and thus holds that there is no personal continuity beyond death. The next three views may be understood to arise out of the philosophically more sophisticated observation that experience has a built-in reflexive structure that allows for self-consciousness, the capacity of the mind to become cognizant of itself, its contents, and the body with which it is inter-connected. Engaged in a search for his “true nature,” the untaught ordinary person will identify self either with both aspects of the experience (view 3), or with the observer alone (view 4), or with the observed alone (view 5). The last view is a full-blown version of eternalism in which all reservations have been discarded.

  40 The self as speaker represents the conception of the self as the agent of action; the self as feeler, the conception of the self as the passive subject. “Here and there” suggests the self as the transmigrating entity that retains its identity through a succession of different incarnations. The same view is maintained by the bhikkhu Sāti at MN 38.2.

  41 This is, of course, the formula for the Four Noble Truths, treated as a subject of contemplation and insight. MA says that up to the attainment of the path of stream-entry, attention denotes insight (vipassanā), but at the moment of the path it denotes path-knowledge. Insight directly apprehends the first two truths, since its objective range is the mental and material phenomena comprised under dukkha and its origin; it can know the latter two truths only inferentially. Path-knowledge makes the truth of cessation its object, apprehending it by penetration as object (ārammaṇa). Path-knowledge performs four functions regarding the four truths: it fully understands the truth of suffering, abandons the origin of suffering, realises the cessation of suffering, and develops the way to the cessation of suffering.

  42 The path of stream-entry has the function of cutting off the first three fetters binding to saṁsāra. MA says that identity view and adherence to rules and observances, being included in the taint of views, are taints as well as fetters, while doubt is (ordinarily) classified as only a fetter, not a taint; but because it is included here among the “taints to be abandoned by seeing,” it may be spoken of as a taint.

  43 If abandonment of the taints is understood in the strict sense as their ultimate destruction, then only two of the seven methods mentioned in the sutta effect their abandonment—seeing and development—which between them comprise the four supramundane paths. The other five methods cannot directly accomplish the destruction of the taints, but they can keep them under control during the preparatory stages of practice and thereby facilitate their eventual eradication by the supramundane paths.

  44 The primary factor responsible for exercising this restraint over the sense faculties is mindfulness. A fuller formula for sense restraint is given in many other suttas—e.g., MN 27.15—and analysed in detail at Vsm I, 53–59. MA explains “fever” (pariḷaha) in the above passage as the fever of defilements and of their (kammic) results.

  45 The passages that follow here have become the standard formulas that bhikkhus use in their daily reflections upon the four requisites of the holy life. They are explained in detail at Vsm I, 85–97.

  46 Unsuitable seats are the two kinds mentioned in the Pātimokkha—sitting with a woman on a screened seat convenient for sexual intercourse, and sitting alone with a woman in a private place. Various kinds of unsuitable resort are mentioned at Vsm I, 45.

  47 The first three types of unwholesome thought—of sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty—constitute wrong thought or wrong intention, the opposite of the second factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. The three types of wrong thought and their opposites are dealt with more fully in MN 19.

  48 These are the seven enlightenment factors (satta bojjhangā) included among the thirty-seven requisites of enlightenment, and treated more extensively below at MN 1 0 . 4 2 and MN 118.29–40.The present section explains the seven enlightenment factors specifically as aids for developing the three higher supramundane paths, by which the taints that escaped eradication by the first path will be eradicated. The terms “seclusion” (viveka ), “dispassion” (virāga), and “cessation” (nirodha) may all be understood as referring to Nibbāna. Their use in this context signifies that the development of the enlightenment factors is directed to Nibbāna as its goal during the preparatory stages of the path, and as its object with the attainment of the supramundane paths. MA explains that the word vossagga, rendered as “relinquishment,” has the two meanings of “giving up” (pariccāga), i.e., the abandonment of defilements, and “entering into” (pakkhandana), i.e., culminating in Nibbāna.

  49 The taint of sensual desire is eradicated by the path of non-returning, the taints of being and of ignorance only by the final path, that of arahantship.

  50 The ten fetters that must be destroyed to gain full deliverance have been enumerated in the Introduction, pp. 42–43. Conceit, at the most subtle level, is the conceit “I am,” which lingers in the mental continuum until the attainment of arahantship. The “penetration of conceit” (mānābhisamaya) means seeing through conceit and abandoning it, which are both accomplished simultaneously by the path of arahantship. The bhikkhu has “made an end of suffering” in the sense that he has put an end to the suffering of the round of saṁsāra (vaṭṭadukkha).

  SUTTA 3

  51 MA: The Buddha delivered this sutta because many bhikkhus were becoming elated over the gains and honour accruing to the Sangha, to the neglect of their spiritual training. The Buddha obviously could not lay down a training rule prohibiting the use of the requisites, but he wanted to show the practice of the heirs in Dhamma to those bhikkhus who were earnestly desirous of training.

  52 MA explains that these five qualities gradually fulfil all the stages of the practice culminating in arahantship.

  53 Elder bhikkhus (thera) are those with more than ten rainy seasons since ordination (usampadā); middle bhikkhus have between five and nine rains; new bhikkhus less than five rains.

  54 The evil qualities mentioned here, and in the sections that follow, are introduced to show the states referred to above (§6) by the statement: “They do not abandon what the Teacher tells them to abandon.” They are also the factors that induce a bhikkhu to become an heir of material things rather than an heir of Dhamma. In MN 7.3 the same sixteen qualities, with “ill will” substituted for “hate,” are referred to as “the imperfections that defile the mind” (cittas’ upakkilesā). See n. 87 below.

  55 The Noble Eightfold Path is introduced here to show the practice that makes one an “heir in Dhamma.”The antithesis between the defilements and the path restates, from a new angle, the contrast between “heirs in material things
” and “heirs in Dhamma” with which the Buddha had opened the sutta.

  SUTTA 4

  56 MA says that Jā˚usso˚i was not a given name but an honorific title meaning “ royal chaplain”(purohita) bestowed on him by the king. MN 27 is also addressed to bestowed on him by the king. MN 27 is also addressed to the brahmin Jā˚usso˚i.

  57 Bhoto Gotamassa sā janatā diṭṭhānugatiṁ āpajjati. Ñm renders: “Do these people follow the implications of Master Gotama’s view?” And Horner: “These people emulate the views of the honoured Gotama” (MLS 1:22). MA, too, glosses: “These people have the same view, opinion, outlook as Master Gotama.” However, it makes much better sense in this context to read diṭṭha not as a sandhi form of diṭṭhi, but as the past participle, and to take this phrase as meaning “following what they have seen of him,” i.e., his example. This meaning is clearly required by the phrase in its appearances at SN ii.203, AN i.126, AN iii.108, 251, 422.