In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [243]
20. Mind-consciousness (manoviññāṇa) comprises all consciousness except the five types of sense consciousness just mentioned. It includes consciousness of mental images, abstract ideas, and internal states of mind, as well as the consciousness that reflects upon sense objects.
21. In the context of the doctrine of dependent origination, volitional formations (saṅkhārā) are wholesome and unwholesome volitions. The bodily formation is volition expressed through the body; the verbal formation, volition expressed by speech; and the mental formation, volition that does not reach bodily or verbal expression.
22. It should be noted that while ignorance is a condition for the taints, the taints—including the taint of ignorance—are in turn a condition for ignorance. Ps says that this conditioning of ignorance by ignorance implies that the ignorance in any one existence is conditioned by the ignorance in the preceding existence. Since this is so, the conclusion follows that no first point can be discovered for ignorance, and thus that saṃsāra is without discernible beginning.
23. The “four phases” (or “four turnings,” catuparivaṭṭa) are: aggregate, origin, cessation, and the way to cessation, as applied to each of the five aggregates.
24. This passage describes the trainees (sekha). They have directly known the Four Noble Truths and are practicing for the ultimate cessation of the five aggregates, that is, for Nibbāna.
25. This passage describes the arahants. According to DN II 63–64, the round of existence turns as a basis for manifestation and designation only in so far as there is consciousness together with name-and-form; when both consciousness and name-and-form cease, there is no round to serve as a basis for manifestation and designation.
26. Cha cetanākāyā. The fact that there is a difference between the name of the aggregate, saṅkhārakkhandha, and the term of definition, cetanā, suggests that this aggregate has a wider range than the others. In the Abhidhamma and the commentaries, it is treated as an “umbrella category” for classifying all the mental factors mentioned in the suttas apart from feeling and perception. Volition is mentioned in the definition because it is the most important factor in this aggregate, not because it is its exclusive constituent.
27. It is significant that while contact is the condition for the arising of the three aggregates of feeling, perception, and volitional formations, name-and-form is the condition for the arising of consciousness. This supports the statement in the ten-factored formula of dependent origination, found in Text II,3(3), that name-and-form is the condition for consciousness.
28. According to Spk, desire (chanda) here is synonymous with craving (taṇhā). This is said because the five aggregates in any given existence originate from the residual craving for new existence of the immediately preceding existence.
29. Clinging is not the same as the “five aggregates subject to clinging” because the aggregates are not reducible to clinging. Yet clinging is not something apart from the “five aggregates subject to clinging” because there is no clinging that does not have the aggregates as its support and object.
30. On “I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit,” see p. 445 (chapter IX, n.63).
31. This is the second discourse of the Buddha, according to the narrative of the Buddha’s teaching career at Vin I 13–14. The five bhikkhus are the first five disciples, who at