The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [565]
119 The passage from “he entirely abandons the underlying tendency to lust” until “he makes an end of suffering” shows the work accomplished by the paths of the non-returner and of arahantship—the elimination of the most subtle and obstinate defilements and the achievement of final knowledge. Here, the underlying tendencies to sensual lust and aversion are eliminated by the path of the non-returner, the underlying tendency to the view and conceit “I am” and ignorance by the path of arahantship. MA explains that the expression “underlying tendency to the view and conceit ‘I am’” (asmı̄ ti diṭṭhimānānusaya) should be interpreted to mean the underlying tendency to conceit that is similar to a view because, like the view of self, it occurs apprehending the notion “I am.”
120 Here I take sambhavesı̄nam to be an instance of the (rare) future active participle in -esin. (See Norman, Elders’ Verses I : Theragāthā, n.527, and Gelger, A Pāli Grammar, 193A.) The commentators, whom I have followed in the first edition of this work, take -esin as an adjectival formation from esati, to seek, and thus explain the phrase as meaning “those who are seeking a new existence.” See too n. 514 below. Nutriment āhāra) is to be understood here in a broad sense as a prominent condition for the individual life-continuity. Physical food (kabalinkāra āhāra) is an important condition for the physical body, contact for feeling, mental volition for consciousness, and consciousness for mentality-materiality, the psychophysical organism in its totality. Craving is called the origin of nutriment in that the craving of the previous existence is the source of the present individuality with its dependence upon and continual consumption of the four nutriments in this existence. For an annotated compilation of the canonical and commentarial texts on the nutriments, see Nyanaponika Thera, The Four Nutriments of Life.
121 The next twelve sections present, in reverse order, a factor-by-factor examination of dependent origination. The principal terms of the formula are explained briefly in the Introduction, pp. 30–31. The detailed exegesis is in Vsm XVII. Here each factor is patterned after the Four Noble Truths.
122 This refers to the five aggregates. See MN 10.38 and MN 44.2.
123 The six bases for contact are enumerated at §50 below.
124 The three kinds of being are explained in the Introduction, pp. 46–48, in the discussion of Buddhist cosmology. Here, by “being” should be understood both the actual planes of rebirth and the types of kamma that generate rebirth into those planes.
125 Clinging to rules and observances is the adherence to the view that purification can be achieved by adopting certain external rules or following certain observances, particularly of ascetic self-discipline; clinging to a doctrine of self is synonymous with identity view in one or another of its twenty forms (see MN 44.7); clinging to views is the clinging to all other types of views except the two mentioned separately. Clinging in any of its varieties represents a strengthening of craving, its condition.
126 Craving for mind-objects (dhammataṇhā) is the craving for all objects of consciousness except the objects of the five kinds of sense consciousness. Examples would be the craving for fantasies and mental imagery, for abstract ideas and intellectual systems, for feelings and emotional states, etc.
127 Contact (phassa) is explained at MN 18.16 as the meeting of sense faculty, its object, and consciousness.
128 Mind-base (manāyatana) is a collective term for all classes of consciousness. One part of this base—the “life continum” (bhavanga) or subliminal consciousness—is the “door” for the arising of mind-consciousness. See n.130.
129 Mentality-materiality (nāmarūpa) is an umbrella term for the psychophysical organism exclusive of consciousness. The five mental factors mentioned under nāma are indispensable to consciousness and