The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [297]
14. “About this a wise man considers thus: ‘This good teacher holds this doctrine and view: “There is no cause…in the six classes.” If this good teacher’s words are true, then both of us are exactly equal here, we stand on the same level: I who have not practised [this teaching] here and he who has practised it; I who have not lived [the holy life] here and he who has lived it. Yet I do not say that both [of us] will be purified without cause or condition. But it is superfluous for this good teacher…What do I know and see that I should lead the holy life under this teacher?’ So when he finds that this way negates the living of the holy life, he turns away from it and leaves it.
15. “This is the third way that negates the living of the holy life that has been declared by the Blessed One who knows and sees, accomplished and fully enlightened…
16. “Again, Sandaka, here some teacher holds such a doctrine and view as this: 752 ‘There are these seven bodies that are unmade, not brought forth, uncreated, without a creator, barren, standing like mountain peaks, standing like pillars. They do not move or change or obstruct each other. None is able [to arouse] pleasure or pain or pleasure-and-pain in another. What are the seven? They are the earth-body, the water-body, the fire-body, the air-body, pleasure, pain, and the soul as the seventh. These seven bodies are unmade…Herein, there is no killer, no slaughterer, no hearer, no speaker, no cognizer, no intimater. Even those who cut off someone’s head with a sharp sword do not deprive anyone of life; the sword merely passes through the space between the seven bodies. There are these fourteen hundred thousand principal kinds of generation, and sixty hundred kinds, and six hundred kinds; there are five hundred kinds of action, and five kinds of action, and three kinds of action, and action and half-action; there are sixty-two ways, sixty-two sub-aeons, six classes, eight planes of man, forty-nine hundred kinds of livelihood, forty-nine hundred kinds of wanderers, forty-nine hundred [518] abodes of serpents, twenty hundred faculties, thirty hundred hells, thirty-six elements of dust, seven percipient breeds, seven non-percipient breeds, seven sheathless breeds, seven kinds of gods, seven kinds of men, seven kinds of demons, seven lakes, seven knots, seven kinds of chasms, seven hundred kinds of chasms, seven kinds of dreams, seven hundred kinds of dreams; and there are eighty-four hundred thousand great aeons wherein, by running and wandering through the round of rebirths, fools and the wise both will make an end of suffering. There is none of this: “By this virtue or observance or asceticism or holy life I shall make unripened action ripen or annihilate ripened action as it comes.” Pleasure and pain are meted out. The round of rebirths is limited, there is no shortening or extending it, no increasing or decreasing it. Just as a ball of string when thrown goes as far as the string unwinds, so too, by running and wandering through the round of rebirths, fools and the wise both will make an end of suffering.’
17. “About this a wise man considers thus: ‘This good teacher holds this doctrine and view: “There are these seven bodies… fools and the wise both will make an end of suffering.” If this good teacher’s words are true, then both of us are exactly equal here, we stand on the same level: I who have not practised [this teaching] here and he who has practised it; I who have not lived [the holy life] here and he who has lived it. Yet I do not say that both of us will make an end of suffering by running and wandering through the round of rebirths. But it is superfluous for this good