SUTTA 13
200 MA: “Full understanding” (pariññā) here means overcoming (samatikkama) or abandoning (pahāna). The wanderers of other sects identify the full understanding of sensual pleasures with the first jhāna, the full understanding of material form with the immaterial planes of being, and the full understanding of feelings with the impercipient plane of being. The Buddha, in contrast, describes the full understanding of sensual pleasures as the path of the non-returner, and the full understanding of both material form and feelings as the path of arahantship.
201 MA gives a graphic description of each of these forms of torture.
202 It should be noted that while the previous dangers in sensual pleasures were called “a mass of suffering visible here and now” (sandiṭṭhiko dukkhakkhandho), this one is called “a mass of suffering in the life to come” (samparāyiko dukkhakkhandho).
203 MA says that Nibbāna is the removal and abandonment of desire and lust for sensual pleasures, for in dependence on Nibbāna, desire and lust are removed and abandoned. It might also be taken to include the path of the non-returner, which accomplishes the abandoning of desire and lust for sensual pleasures.
204 To expose the danger in feelings, the Buddha chooses the most refined and exalted type of mundane pleasure, the bliss and peacefulness of the jhānas, and shows that even those states are impermanent and therefore unsatisfactory.
SUTTA 14
205 Mahānāma the Sakyan was a cousin of the Buddha and the brother of the monks Anuruddha and Ānanda. He chose to remain a householder and let Anuruddha become a monk. The story is told in Ñā˚amoli, The Life of the Buddha, pp. 80–81.
206 According to MA, Mahānāma had long ago attained the fruit of the once-returner, which only weakens greed, hate, and delusion but does not eradicate them. MA says that he had the mistaken notion that greed, hate, and delusion are eradicated by the path of the once-returner. Thus, when he saw that they still arose in his mind, he realised that they were not abandoned and inquired from the Buddha the cause for their arising. Noble disciples can be mistaken about which defilements are abandoned by which path.
207 From the ensuing discussion on the danger in sensual pleasures, it seems that the “state” (dhamma) unabandoned by Mahānāma was sensual desire, which kept him tied to the home life and the enjoyment of sensual pleasures.
208 The “rapture and pleasure that are apart from sensual pleasures” are the rapture and pleasure pertaining to the first and second jhānas; the states “more peaceful than that” are the higher jhānas. From this passage it seems that a disciple may attain even to the second path and fruit without possessing mundane jhāna.
209 The Niga˚ṭhas or Jains, followers of the teacher Niga˚ṭha Nātaputta (also known as Mahāvı̄ra), stressed the practice of austerities to wear off the accumulations of past evil kamma. The purpose of this passage, according to MA, is to show the escape, which was not shown earlier along with the gratification and the danger in sensual pleasures. The Buddha brings in the Jain practice of asceticism to demonstrate that his own teaching is a “middle way” free from the two extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification.
210 The Jains held the view that whatever a person experiences is caused by past kamma. If that were so, the Buddha argues, the severe pains to which they subjected themselves as part of their ascetic discipline would have to be rooted in grave actions of their previous lives.
211 MA: This refers to his own experience of the pleasure of fruition attainment, i.e., the attainment of the fruit of arahantship (arahattaphalasamāpatti).
SUTTA 15
212 Vadantu, meaning literally “let them speak to me,” has the implied sense: “Let them speak to me by way of instruction and exhortation” (MA).
213 See MN 5.10–29.
214 See MN 8.44 and n.109.
215 It is from this passage that the sutta acquires its name.
216 MA: The ancients called this sutta the “Bhikkhupātimokkha.” A bhikkhu should review himself three times daily in the way described in the sutta. If he cannot do so three times, then he should do so twice, or, at the minimum, once.
SUTTA 16
217 MA explains cetokhila, translated “wilderness in the heart,” as rigidity, rubbish, or a stump in the mind. It explains cetaso vinibandha as something that binds the mind, clenching it like a fist; hence “shackle in the heart.” The former, as will be seen, consists of four cases of doubt, one of hate; the latter of five varieties of greed.
218 MA explains “Dhamma” here as the scriptural teaching and penetration to the paths, fruits, and Nibbāna. The Dhamma as practice is mentioned separately just below as the training (sikkhā)—that is, the threefold training in virtue, concentration, and wisdom.
219 “Body” here is his own body, while “form” just below is outer forms, the bodies of others.
220 The four bases for spiritual power (iddhipāda) are included among the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment; they are the special foundation for the five mundane kinds of direct knowledge (abhiññā). According to MA, enthusiasm (ussoḷhi) is energy, which is to be applied everywhere.
221 The fifteen factors are the abandoning of the five wildernesses of the heart, the abandoning of the five shackles, and the five just mentioned. “Supreme security from bondage” (anuttara yogakkhema) is arahantship, as at MN 1.27.
222 This simile appears again at MN 53.19–22 in connection with the disciple’s breaking out to the three types of true knowledge (tevijjā).
SUTTA 17
223 The pattern on which §§3–6 are constructed may be stated simply as follows:no progress and requisites are scarce = depart;
no progress and requisites are plentiful = depart;
progress and requisites are scarce = stay;
progress and requisites are plentiful = stay.
224 The same pattern is applied in §§7–22 to village, town, city, and country.
225 PTS, in reading here anāpucchā, “without taking leave,” seems to be mistaken. BBS and SBJ read āpucchā, “after taking leave,” which seems more fitting. As the person on whom the bhikkhu relied—presumably a teacher or a lay supporter—provided the requisites in adequate measure, courtesy requires that the bhikkhu take leave of him before departing.
SUTTA 18
226 Da˚ḍapāni, whose name means “stick-in-hand,” was so called because he used to walk around ostentatiously with a golden walking stick, even though he was still young and healthy. According to MA, he sided with Devadatta, the Buddha’sarch foe, when the latter attempted to create a schism in the Buddha’s following. His manner of asking the question is arrogant and deliberately provocative.
227 The first part of the Buddha’s reply directly counters Da˚ḍapāni’s aggressive attitude. MA quotes in this connection SN 22:94/iii.138: “Bhikkhus, I do not dispute with the world, it is the world that disputes with me. A speaker of Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world.” The second part may be taken to mean that, for the arahant (spoken of here as “that brahmin” with reference to the Buddha himself), perceptions no longer awaken the dormant underlying tendencies to defilements, to be enumerated in §8.
228 This response seems to be an expression of frustration and bewilderment.
229 The interpretation of this cryptic passage hinges on the word papañca and the compound papañca-saññā-sankhā. Ñm had translated the former as “diversification” and the latter as “calculations about perceptions of diversification.” It seems, however, that the primary problem to which the term papañca points is not “diversification,” which may be quite in place when the sensory field itself displays diversity, but the propensity of the worldling’s imagination to erupt in an effusion of mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition. In a penetrative study, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhism, Bhikkhu Ñā˚ananda explains papañca as “conceptual proliferation,” and I follow him in substituting “proliferation” for Ñ
m’s “diversification.” The commentaries identify the springs of this proliferation as the three factors—craving, conceit, and views—on account of which the mind “embellishes” experience by interpreting it in terms of “mine,” “I” and “my self.” Papañca is thus closely akin to maññanā, “conceiving,” in MN 1—see n.6.The compound papañca-saññā-sankhā is more problematic. Ven. Ñā˚ananda interprets it to mean “concepts characterised by the mind’s prolific tendency,” but this explanation still leaves the word saññā out of account. MA glosses sankhā by koṭṭhāsa, “portion,” and says that saññā is either perception associated with papañca or papañca itself. I go along with Ñā˚ananda in taking sankhā to mean concept or notion (Ñm’s “calculation” is too literal) rather than portion. My decision to treat saññā-sankhā as a dvanda compound, “perceptions and notions ,” may be questioned, but as the expression papañca-saññā-sankhā occurs but rarely in the Canon and is never verbally analysed, no rendering is utterly beyond doubt. On alternative interpretations of its components, the expression might have been rendered “notions [arisen from] the proliferation of perceptions” or “perceptual notions [arisen from] proliferation.”
The sequel will make it clear that the process of cognition is itself “the source through which perceptions and notions [born of] mental proliferation beset a man.” If nothing in the process of cognition is found to delight in, to welcome, or to hold to, the underlying tendencies of the defilements will come to an end.
230 Ven. Mahā Kaccāna was declared by the Buddha to be the most eminent disciple in expounding the detailed meaning of a brief saying. MN 133 and MN 138 were also spoken by him under similar circumstances.
231 Cakkhubhūto ñāṇabhūto dhammabhūto brahmabhūto. MA: He is vision in the sense that he is the leader in vision; he is knowledge in the sense that he makes things known; he is the Dhamma in the sense that he consists of the Dhamma that he utters verbally after considering it in his heart; he is Brahmā, the holy one, in the sense of the best.
232 This passage shows how papañca, emerging from the process of cognition, gives rise to perceptions and notions that overwhelm and victimise their hapless creator. Ms contains a note by Ñm: “The meeting of eye, form, and eye-consciousness is called contact. Contact, according to dependent origination, is the principal condition of feeling. Feeling and perception are inseparable (MN 43.9). What is perceived as ‘this’ is thought about in its differences and is thus diversified from ‘that’ and from ‘me.’ This diversification—involving craving for form, wrong view about permanence of form, etc., and the conceit ‘I am’—leads to preoccupation with calculating the desirability of past and present forms with a view to obtaining desirable forms in the future. ” Perhaps the key to the interpretation of this passage is Ven. Mahā Kaccāna’s explanation of the Bhaddekaratta verses in MN 133. There too delight in the elements of cognition plays a prominent role in causing bondage, and the elaboration of the verses in terms of the three periods of time links up with the reference to the three times in this sutta.
233 The Pali idiom phassapaññattiṁ paññāpessati, in which the verb takes an object derived from itself, is difficult. Ñm originally rendered “that one will describe a description of contact.” “To point out a manifestation” is less literal, but it should do justice to the meaning without jeopardising intelligibility. MA says that this passage is intended to show the entire round of existence (vaṭṭa) by way of the twelve sense bases; §18 shows the cessation of the round (vaṭṭa) by the negation of the twelve sense bases.
234 A large sweet cake or a ball made from flour, ghee, molasses, honey, sugar, etc. See also AN 5:194/iii.237.
SUTTA 19
235 The Bodhisatta’s twofold division of thought occurred during his six-year struggle for enlightenment.
236 Thoughts of non-ill will and thoughts of non-cruelty may also be explained positively as thoughts of loving-kindness (mettā) and thoughts of compassion (karuṇā).
237 MA: Excessive thinking and pondering leads to agitation. To tame and soften the mind, the Bodhisatta would enter a meditative attainment, then he would emerge from it and develop insight.
SUTTA 20
238 This sutta together with its commentary is available in a translation by Soma Thera, The Removal of Distracting Thoughts.
239 MA: The higher mind (adhicitta) is the mind of the eight meditative attainments used as a basis for insight; it is called “higher mind” because it is higher than the ordinary (wholesome) mind of the ten wholesome courses of action. The five “signs” (nimitta) may be understood as practical methods of removing the distracting thoughts. They should be resorted to only when the distractions become persistent or obtrusive; at other times the meditator should remain with his primary subject of meditation.
240 MA: When thoughts of sensual desire arise directed towards living beings, the “other sign” is the meditation on foulness (see MN 10.10); when the thoughts are directed to inanimate things, the “other sign” is attention to impermanence. When thoughts of hate arise directed towards living beings, the “other sign” is the meditation on loving-kindness; when they are directed to inanimate things, the “other sign” is attention to the elements (see MN 10.12). The remedy for thoughts connected with delusion is living under a teacher, studying the Dhamma, inquiring into its meaning, listening to the Dhamma, and inquiring into causes.
241 This method can be illustrated by the reflections of the Bodhisatta in MN 19.3–5. Calling to mind the unworthiness of the evil thoughts produces a sense of shame (hiri); calling to mind their dangerous consequences produces fear of wrongdoing (ottappa).
242 Vitakka-sankhāra-saṇṭ̣hānaṁ. MA understands sankhāra here as condition, cause, or root, and takes the compound to mean “stopping the cause of the thought.” This is accomplished by inquiring, when an unwholesome thought has arisen: “What is its cause? What is the cause of its cause?” etc. Such an inquiry, according to MA, brings about a slackening, and eventually the cessation, of the flow of unwholesome thought.
243 MA: He should crush the unwholesome state of mind with a wholesome state of mind.
244 This shows the attainment of arahantship. See n.50.
SUTTA 21
245 At SN 12:12/ii.13 Moliya Phagguna puts a series of questions to the Buddha, which the Buddha rejects as wrongly formulated. Later it is reported that he reverted to lay life (SN 12:32/ii.50).
246 According to MA, the Buddha said this because Phagguna still did not wish to comply with his advice but continued to resist him, and this induced the Buddha to speak praise of the compliant bhikkhus during an earlier part of his ministry. For the passage on eating at a single session, see MN 65.2 and MN 70.2.
247 Tadārammaṇaṁ, lit. “with him as the object.” MA: First one develops loving-kindness towards the person who addresses one with one or another of the five courses of speech, then one directs that mind of loving-kindness towards all beings, making the entire world the object.
SUTTA 22
248 This sutta with a fine introduction and detailed notes is available in a translation by Nyanaponika Thera, The Discourse on the Snake Simile.
249 In making this assertion he directly contradicts the third of the four intrepidities of the Tathāgata—see MN 12.25. According to MA, while reflecting in seclusion he came to the conclusion that there would be no harm if bhikkhus were to engage in sexual relations with women and he maintained that this should not be prohibited by the monastic rules. Though his statement does not expressly mention the sexual issue, the similes about sensual pleasures brought forth by the bhikkhus lend credence to the commentary.
250 The first seven similes for sense pleasures are expanded upon at MN 54.15–21.
251 This first part of the Ariṭṭha episode occurs twice in the Vinaya Pịaka. At Vin ii.25 it leads to the Sangha announcing an act of suspension (ukkhepaniyakamma) against Ariṭṭha for refusing to give up his wrong view. At Vin iv
.133–34 his refusal to give up his wrong view after repeated admonitions is defined as a monastic offence of the Pācittiya class.
252 Though the Pali uses the one word kāma in all four cases, from the context the first phrase must be understood to refer to objective sensual pleasures, i.e., sensually enjoyable objects, the other phrases to refer to subjective defilements connected with sensuality, i.e ., sensual desire. MA glosses “that one can engage in sensual pleasures” with “that one can indulge in sexual intercourse.” sures” with “that one can indulge in sexual intercourse.” MṬ says that other physical acts expressive of sexual desire such as hugging and stroking should be included.
253 MA explains that this passage is stated in order to show the fault in wrongly motivated acquisition of intellectual knowledge of the Dhamma—apparently the pitfall into which Ariṭṭha fell. The “good (attha) for the sake of which they learned the Dhamma” is the paths and fruits.
254 This famous “simile of the raft” continues the same argument against misuse of learning introduced by the simile of the snake. One who is preoccupied with using the Dhamma to stir up controversy and win debates carries the Dhamma around on his head instead of using it to cross the flood.
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha Page 132
