The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [557]
36 MA makes the important point that there is no fixed determination in things themselves as to whether they are fit or unfit for attention. The distinction consists, rather, in the mode of attention. That mode of attention that is a causal basis for unwholesome states of mind should be avoided, while that mode of attention that is a causal basis for wholesome states should be developed. This same principle applies to §9.
37 MA illustrates the growth of the taints through unwise attention as follows: When he attends to gratification in the five cords of sensual pleasure, the taint of sensual desire arises and increases; when he attends to gratification in the exalted states (the jhānas), the taint of being arises and increases; and when he attends to any mundane things through the four “perversions” (of permanence, etc.—see n.5), the taint of ignorance arises and increases.
38 According to MA, this passage is undertaken to show the taint of views (diṭṭhāsava, not expressly mentioned in the discourse) under the heading of doubt. However, it might be more correct to say that the taint of views, disclosed by §8, emerges out of unwise attention in the form of doubt. The various types of doubt are already pregnant with the wrong views that will come to explicit expression in the next section.
39 Of these six views, the first two represent the simple antinomy of eternalism and annihilationism; the view that “no self exists for me” is not the non-self doctrine of the Buddha, but the materialist view that identifies the individual with the body and thus holds that there is no personal continuity beyond death. The next three views may be understood to arise out of the philosophically more sophisticated observation that experience has a built-in reflexive structure that allows for self-consciousness, the capacity of the mind to become cognizant of itself, its contents, and the body with which it is inter-connected. Engaged in a search for his “true nature,” the untaught ordinary person will identify self either with both aspects of the experience (view 3), or with the observer alone (view 4), or with the observed alone (view 5). The last view is a full-blown version of eternalism in which all reservations have been discarded.
40 The self as speaker represents the conception of the self as the agent of action; the self as feeler, the conception of the self as the passive subject. “Here and there” suggests the self as the transmigrating entity that retains its identity through a succession of different incarnations. The same view is maintained by the bhikkhu Sāti at MN 38.2.
41 This is, of course, the formula for the Four Noble Truths, treated as a subject of contemplation and insight. MA says that up to the attainment of the path of stream-entry, attention denotes insight (vipassanā), but at the moment of the path it denotes path-knowledge. Insight directly apprehends the first two truths, since its objective range is the mental and material phenomena comprised under dukkha and its origin; it can know the latter two truths only inferentially. Path-knowledge makes the truth of cessation its object, apprehending it by penetration as object (ārammaṇa). Path-knowledge performs four functions regarding the four truths: it fully understands the truth of suffering, abandons the origin of suffering, realises the cessation of suffering, and develops the way to the cessation of suffering.
42 The path of stream-entry has the function of cutting off the first three fetters binding to saṁsāra. MA says that identity view and adherence to rules and observances, being included in the taint of views, are taints as well as fetters, while doubt is (ordinarily) classified as only a fetter, not a taint; but because