The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha

by Bhikkhu Nanamoli

  369 According to MA, Saccaka was the son of Niga˚ṭha (Jain) parents who were both skilled in philosophical debate. He had learned a thousand doctrines from his parents and many more philosophical systems from others. In the discussion below he is referred to by his clan name, Aggivessana.

  370 Ven. Assaji was one of the first five disciples of the Buddha.

  371 This summary of the doctrine omits the second of the three characteristics, dukkha or suffering. MA explains that Assaji omitted this in order to avoid giving Saccaka the opportunity to attempt a refutation of the Buddha’s doctrine.

  372 MA explains that men play this game when preparing hemp cloth. They bind up handfuls of rough hemp, immerse them in the water, and beat them on planks to the left, right, and middle. A royal elephant saw this game, and plunging into the water, he took up water in his trunk and sprayed it on his belly, his body, both sides, and his groin.

  373 In asserting the five aggregates to be self he is, of course, directly contradicting the Buddha’s teaching of anattā. He ascribes this view to the “great multitude” with the thought that “the majority cannot be wrong.”

  374 The Buddha is here suggesting that the aggregates are not self because they lack one of the essential characteristics of selfhood—being susceptible to the exercise of mastery. What cannot come under my mastery or perfect control cannot be identified as “my self.”

  375 MA identifies this spirit (yakkha) as Sakka, ruler of the gods.

  376 The text between the asterisks is absent from the PTS ed. but is supplied from BBS and SBJ. The five aggregates are here called suffering because they are impermanent and not susceptible to the exercise of mastery.

  377 These are the characteristics of a sekha. The arahant, in contrast, not only possesses the right view of non-self, but has used it to eradicate all clinging, as the Buddha will explain in §25.

  378 MA gives several alternative explanations of these three terms. They are mundane and supramundane wisdom, practice, and deliverance. Or they are entirely supramundane: the first is the right view of the path of arahantship, the second the remaining seven path factors, the third the supreme fruit (of arahantship). Or the first is the vision of Nibb̄na, the second the path factors, the third the supreme fruit.

  379 Though Saccaka admitted defeat in debate, he must have still considered himself a saint, and thus did not feel impelled to go for refuge to the Triple Gem. Also, because he continued to regard himself as a saint, he must have felt that it was not proper for him to dedicate the merit of the alms offering to himself, and thus he wished to dedicate the merit to the Licchavis. But the Buddha replies that the Licchavis will gain the merit of providing Saccaka with food to offer to the Buddha, while Saccaka himself will gain the merit of offering the food to the Buddha. The merit of giving alms differs in quality according to the purity of the recipient, as explained at MN 142.6.

  SUTTA 36

  380 MA: Saccaka approached with the intention of refuting the Buddha’s doctrine, which he failed to do in his earlier encounter with the Buddha (in MN 35). But this time he came alone, thinking that if he were to suffer defeat no one would know about it. He intended to refute the Buddha with his question about sleeping during the day, which he does not ask until close to the end of the sutta (§45).

  381 MA: Ānanda says this out of compassion for Saccaka, thinking that if he gets to see the Buddha and to hear the Dhamma, it will lead to his welfare and happiness for a long time.

  382 It will become clear from §5 that Saccaka identifies “development of body” (kāyabhāvanā) with the practice of self-mortification. Because he does not see the Buddhist bhikkhus engaged in self-mortification, he maintains that they do not pursue development of the body. But the Buddha (according to MA) understands “development of body” as insight meditation, “development of mind” (cittabhāvanā ) as serenity meditation.

  383 These are the three mentors of the Ājı̄vakas; the last was a contemporary of the Buddha, the former two are near legendary figures whose identities remain obscure. The Bodhisatta had adopted their practices during his period of asceticism—see MN 12.45—but subsequently rejected them as unconducive to enlightenment.

  384 MA explains that “development of body” here is insight, and “development of mind” concentration. When the noble disciple experiences pleasant feeling, he does not become overwhelmed by it because, through his development of insight, he understands the feeling to be impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not self; and when he experiences painful feeling, he does not become overwhelmed by it because, through his development of concentration, he is able to escape from it by entering into one of the meditative absorptions.

  385 Now the Buddha will answer Saccaka’s questions by showing first the extremely painful feelings he experienced during his course of ascetic practices, and thereafter the extremely pleasant feelings he experienced during his meditative attainments preceding his enlightenment.

  386 PTS is certainly mistaken in reading here avūpakaṭṭho, “not withdrawn.” In the first edition I translated this passage on the basis of BBS, which has kāyena c’eva cittena ca. But PTS and SBJ omit cittena, and it seems difficult to understand how these ascetics can be described as “mentally withdrawn” from sensual pleasures when they have not stilled sensual desire within themselves. I therefore follow PTS and SBJ.

  387 It is puzzling that in the following paragraphs the Bodhisatta is shown engaging in self-mortification after he had here come to the conclusion that such practices are useless for the attainment of enlightenment. This dissonant juxtaposition of ideas raises a suspicion that the narrative sequence of the sutta has become jumbled. The appropriate place for the simile of the fire-sticks, it seems, would be at the end of the Bodhisatta’s period of ascetic experimentation, when he has acquired a sound basis for rejecting self-mortification. Nevertheless, MA accepts the sequence as given and raises the question why the Bodhisatta undertook the practice of austerities if he could have attained Buddhahood without doing so. It answers: He did so, first, in order to show his own exertion to the world, because the quality of invincible energy gave him joy; and second, out of compassion for later generations, by inspiring them to strive with the same determination that he applied to the attainment of enlightenment.

  388 This sentence, repeated at the end of each of the following sections as well, answers the second of the two questions posed by Saccaka in §11.

  389 MA: During the Bodhisatta’s boyhood as a prince, on one occasion his father led a ceremonial ploughing at a traditional festival of the Sakyans. The prince was brought to the festival and a place was prepared for him under a rose-apple tree. When his attendants left him to watch the ploughing ceremony, the prince, finding himself all alone, spontaneously sat up in the meditation posture and attained the first jhāna through mindfulness of breathing. When the attendants returned and found the boy seated in meditation, they reported this to the king, who came and bowed down in veneration to his son.

  390 This passage marks a change in the Bodhisatta’s evaluation of pleasure; now it is no longer regarded as something to be feared and banished by the practice of austerities, but, when born of seclusion and detachment, is seen as a valuable accompaniment of the higher stages along the path to enlightenment. See MN 139.9 on the twofold division of pleasure.

  391 This sentence answers the first of the two questions posed by Saccaka in §11.

  392 MA explains the “sign of concentration” (sam̄dhinimitta) here as the fruition attainment of emptiness (suññataphalasamāpatti ). See also MN 122.6.

  393 This was the question that Saccaka originally intended to ask the Buddha. MA explains that though arahants have eliminated all sloth and torpor, they still need to sleep in order to dispel the physical tiredness intrinsic to the body.

  394 MA explains that even though Saccaka did not reach any attainment or even become established in the Three Refuges, the Buddha taught him two long suttas in order to deposit in him a mental im
pression (vāsānā) that would come to maturity in the future. For he foresaw that at a later time, after the Dispensation became established in Sri Lanka, Saccaka would be reborn there and would attain arahantship as the great arahant, Kā˘a Buddharakkhita Thera.

  SUTTA 37

  395 MA expands: “Briefly, to what extent is he said to be liberated in the destruction of craving, that is, in Nibbāna, the destruction of craving through the liberatedness of his mind [which occurs] by taking it [Nibbāna] as object. Teach me briefly the preliminary practice of the arahant bhikkhu by means of which he is liberated in the destruction of craving.”

  396 MA explains this passage as follows: “Everything” (sabbe dhammā) is the five aggregates, the twelve bases, the eighteen elements. These are “not worth adhering to” by way of craving and views because they turn out in actuality to be different from the way they are grasped: grasped as permanent, pleasurable, and self, they turn out to be impermanent, suffering, and not self. He “directly knows” them as impermanent, suffering, and not self, and “fully understands” them by scrutinising them in the same way. “Contemplating impermanence,” etc., is accomplished by the insight knowledges of rise and fall and of destruction and disappearance. “He does not cling” to any formation by way of craving and views, does not become agitated because of craving, and personally attains Nibbāna by the extinguishing of all defilements.

  397 A personal name of Sakka, meaning “the owl.”

  398 The gods and titans (asura) are depicted in the Pali Canon as being perpetually in a state of war with each other. See especially the Sakkasaṁyutta (SN i.216–28).

  399 One of the Four Great Kings, the ruler of the yakkhas, his kingdom being in the north.

  400 MA: He did this by entering into meditation on the water-kasi˚a and then resolving: “Let the foundation of the palace be like water.”

  401 Sakka can refer to Ven. Mahā Moggallāna as a “companion in the holy life” because he himself had earlier attained to stream-entry (DN 21.2.10/ii.289) and was thus a noble disciple bound for the same deliverance that Mahā Moggallāna had already achieved.

  SUTTA 38

  402 According to MA, through faulty reasoning based on the fact of rebirth, Sāti came to the conclusion that a persisting consciousness transmigrating from one existence to another is necessary to explain rebirth. The first part of the sutta (down to §8) replicates the opening of MN 22, the only difference being in the view espoused.

  403 This is the last of the six views described at MN 2.8. See n.40.

  404 MA: The purpose of the simile is to show that there is no transmigration of consciousness across the sense doors. Just as a log fire burns in dependence on logs and ceases when its fuel is finished, without transmigrating to faggots and becoming reckoned as a faggot fire, so too, consciousness arisen in the eye door dependent on the eye and forms ceases when its conditions are removed, without transmigrating to the ear, etc., and becoming reckoned as ear-consciousness, etc. Thus the Buddha says in effect: “In the occurrence of consciousness there is not even the mere transmigration from door to door, so how can this misguided Sāti speak of transmigration from existence to existence?”

  405 Bhūtam idan ti. MA: “This” refers to the five aggregates. Having shown the conditionality of consciousness, the Buddha states this passage to show the conditionality of all the five aggregates, which come into being through conditions, their “nutriment,” and pass out of being with the ceasing of those conditions. In the following tadāhārasambhavaṁ, MA takes the tad as a nominative representing the subject (= taṁ khandhapañcakaṃ), but it seems more likely that it qualifies āhāra and that both should be taken as ablatives, the subject īdaṁ being understood. This interpretation seems confirmed by the third statement, tadāhāranirodhā yaṁ bhūtaṁ taṁ nirodhadhammaṁ . Horner’s “This is the origination of nutriment” is clearly wrong.

  406 This is said to show the bhikkhus that they should not cling even to the right view of insight meditation. The simile of the raft refers to MN 22.13.

  407 On the four nutriments, see n.120. MA: The Buddha states this passage and the following one linking up the nutriments with dependent origination in order to show that he knows not merely the five aggregates but the entire chain of conditions responsible for their being.

  408 This is a statement of the abstract principle of dependent origination exemplified by the twelvefold formula. The abstract principle on cessation is stated at §22. Ñm had rendered the principle of arising thus: “That is when this is; that arises with the arising of this.” And the principle of cessation: “That is not when this is not; that ceases with the cessation of this.”

  409 The best reading is SBJ: samaṇavacanena ca mayaṁ. Ñm apparently translated from PTS samaṇā ca na ca mayaṁ and thus rendered it, “and so do [other] monks, but we do not speak thus.” “The Recluse” is the Buddha.

  410 The following portion of the discourse may be understood as a concrete application of dependent origination—so far expressed only as a doctrinal formula—to the course of individual existence. The passage §§26–29 may be taken to show the factors from consciousness through feeling that result from past ignorance and formations, §40 the causal factors of craving and clinging as they build up a continuation of the saṁsāric round. The following section (§§31–40), connecting dependent origination to the appearance of the Buddha and his teaching of the Dhamma, shows the practice of the Dhamma to be the means of bringing the round to an end.

  411 MA: The gandhabba is the being arriving there. It is not someone (i.e., a disembodied spirit) standing nearby watching the future parents having intercourse, but a being driven on by the mechanism of kamma, due to be reborn on that occasion.The exact import of the word gandhabba in relation to the rebirth process is not explained in the Nikāyas, and the word in this sense occurs only here and at 93.18. DN 15/ii.63 speaks of consciousness as “descending into the mother’s womb,” this being a condition for rebirth to take place. Thus we might identify the gandhabba here as the stream of consciousness, conceived more animistically as coming over from the previous existence and bringing along its total accumulation of kammic tendencies and personality traits. The fullest study of the concept of the gandhabba is Wijesekera, “Vedic Gandharva and Pali Gandhabba,” in Buddhist and Vedic Studies, pp. 191–202.

  412 MA explains that he delights in the painful feeling by clinging to it with thoughts of “I” and “mine.” In confirmation of the statement that a worldling may delight in painful feelings, one thinks not only of full-fledged masochism but also of the common tendency of people to put themselves into distressing situations in order to reinforce their sense of ego.

  413 MA: An immeasurable mind (appamāṇacetaso) is a supramundane mind; this means that he possesses the path.

  414 This statement reveals that the chain of dependent origination is broken at the link between feeling and craving. Feeling arises necessarily because the body acquired through past craving is subject to the maturation of past kamma. However, if one does not delight in feeling, craving will not have the opportunity to arise and set off reactions of like and dislike that provide further fuel for the round, and thus the round will come to an end.

  SUTTA 39

  415 “Brahmin” should be understood in the sense explained below, §24.

  416 Shame (hiri) and fear of wrongdoing (ottappa) are two complementary qualities designated by the Buddha “the guardians of the world” (AN i.51) because they serve as the foundation for morality. Shame has the characteristic of disgust with evil, is dominated by a sense of self-respect, and manifests itself as conscience. Fear of wrongdoing has the characteristic of dread of evil, is dominated by a concern for the opinions of others, and manifests itself as fear of doing evil. See Vsm XIV, 142.

  417 MA quotes SN 45:35–36/v.25: “What, bhikkhus, is recluseship (sāmañña)? The Noble Eightfold Path…—this is called recluseship. And what, bhikkhus, is the goal of recluseship (
sāmaññattho)? The destruction of greed, hate, and delusion—this is called the goal of recluseship.”

  418 MA gives a detailed elaboration of each of the five similes. An English translation can be found in Nyanaponika Thera, The Five Mental Hindrances, pp. 27–34.

  419 Each of the explanations to follow involves a word play that cannot be reproduced in English, e.g., a bhikkhu is a recluse (saṃaṇa) because he has quieted down (samita) evil states, a brahmin because he has expelled (bāhita) evil states, etc.

  420 The term “washed” (nhātaka) refers to a brahmin who, at the end of his discipleship under his teacher, has taken a ceremonial bath marking the end of his training. See Sn 521.

  421 The Pali word sotthiya (Skt, śrotriya) means a brahmin well versed in the Vedas, one conversant with sacred knowledge.

  SUTTA 40

  422 Where the previous sutta used the phrase “things that make one a recluse” (dhamm̄ samaṇakaraṇā), the present sutta speaks of “the way proper to the recluse” (samīcipaṭipadā ).

  423 The first ten of these twelve “stains for a recluse” are included among the sixteen “imperfections that defile the mind” at MN 7.3.