In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [232]
12 Yathābhuttañ ca bhuñjatha. The Pāli means literally “eat the food as it has been eaten,” but this seems to be the implication. Walshe’s “Be moderate in eating” cannot be correct.
13 Purohita. He was a brahmin who served as an advisor on both religious and temporal affairs.
CHAPTER V: THE WAY TO A FORTUNATE REBIRTH
1 Cetanā ’haṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi, cetayitvā kammaṃ karoti kāyena vācāya manasā (AN III 415).
2 The distinction seems to be lightly drawn in the sutta literature, but in the commentaries it becomes hardened into a precise delimitation between the three types of results any kamma may produce.
3 For the distinction between these two types of right view, see MN 117 (not included in this anthology). In the technical terminology of the Pāli commentators, even the insight into the three characteristics (impermanence, suffering, nonself) and knowledge of the originative aspect of dependent origination are still mundane (lokiya) because their objects are mundane phenomena. In the commentarial system, only the direct cognition of the unconditioned, Nibbāna, is classified as supramundane right view. However, I here use the terms “supramundane” and “world-transcending” (lokuttara) in a broader sense, as referring to the knowledge and view (and, more broadly, to all practices) that lead to the transcending of the world.
4 For a fuller discussion of the psychological basis of Early Buddhist cosmology, see Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, pp. 119–26.
5 Respectively, dasa akusalā kammapathā and dasa kusalā kammapathā. In the Nikāyas, the latter occurs at AN V 57; both are at DN III 269.
6 Buddhist texts of a somewhat later date than the oldest strata of the canon add a fourth bad destination, the realm of the asuras. In the old canon, the asuras are depicted as titanic beings engaged in perpetual conflict with the devas but are not assigned to a separate realm. Since their living conditions, as described in the canon, can hardly be called unbearably miserable, the commentators identify the asuras that constitute the fourth bad destination—not with the asuras who battle against the devas—but with a class of beings in the realm of afflicted spirits. Needless to say, the picture of the realms that emerges when the asuras are considered distinct becomes somewhat blurred: if they are the beings who fight against the devas, they aren’t depicted as living in abject misery; if they are a class of beings in the spirit realm, there seems no reason to treat them as a separate realm.
7 I here describe the spheres of rebirth corresponding to the fourth jhāna in accordance with the cosmology of scholastic Theravāda Buddhism. Other schools of Early Buddhism—based on texts parallel to the Nikāyas—divided up the terrain of the fourth jhāna realms somewhat differently.
8 The community of noble disciples consists of four pairs of persons, those who have entered the four paths and those who have realized the four fruits. See p. 373.
9 Subhakiṇhā devā. These are the deities inhabiting the highest plane of rebirth corresponding to the third jhāna.
10 AN 4:235 explains this as the development of the Noble Eightfold Path; AN 4:236, as the development of the seven enlightenment factors.
11 This is a morally nihilistic materialist view that denies an afterlife and the fruits of kamma. “There is nothing given” means there is no fruit of giving; “no this world, no other world,” no rebirth into either this world or a world beyond; “no mother, no father,” no fruit of good and bad conduct toward parents. The statement about ascetics and brahmins denies the existence of Buddhas and arahants.
12 Ps says that “the devas of radiance” is not a separate class of devas but a collective name for the three classes that follow; the same for “the devas of glory.”
13 It should be noted that while “conduct in accordance with the Dhamma” as described in the sutta is a necessary condition for rebirth in the higher heavenly worlds and for the destruction of the taints, it is by no means a sufficient condition. Rebirth