The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [568]
143 MA: “Internally”: contemplating the breathing in his own body. “Externally”: contemplating the breathing occurring in the body of another. “Internally and externally”: contemplating the breathing in his own body and in the body of another alternately, with uninterrupted attention. A similar explanation applies to the refrain that follows each of the other sections, except that under the contemplation of feeling, mind, and mind-objects, the contemplation externally, apart from those possessing telepathic powers, must be inferential.
144 The expression samudayadhammānupassı̄ kāyasmiṁ viharati is usually translated “he abides contemplating in the body its arising factors” (as was done in the first edition), on the assumption that the compound contains a plural, samudayadhammā. A plural sense, however, is not mandatory, and it is more consistent with the use of the suffix -dhamma elsewhere to take it to mean “subject to” or “having the nature of” here as well. The commentarial explanation of the conditioning factors for each of the four foundations does not imply that the commentary understands -dhamma to mean the actual conditioning factors.
MA explains that the arising nature (samudayadhamma) of the body can be observed in its conditioned origination through ignorance, craving, kamma, and food, as well as in the moment-by-moment origination of material phenomena in the body. In the case of mindfulness of breathing, an additional condition is the physiological apparatus of respiration. The “vanishing nature” (vayadhamma ) of the body is seen in the cessation of bodily phenomena through the cessation of their conditions as well as in the momentary dissolution of bodily phenomena.
145 MA: For the sake of a wider and wider and higher and higher measure of knowledge and mindfulness.
146 The understanding of the bodily postures referred to in this exercise is not our ordinary natural knowledge of our bodily activity, but a close, constant, and careful awareness of the body in every position, coupled with an analytical examination intended to dispel the delusion of a self as the agent of bodily movement.
147 Sampajañña, also translated as “clear comprehension” (Soma, Nyanaponika), is analysed in the commentaries into four types: full awareness of the purpose of one’s action; full awareness of the suitability of one’s means; full awareness of the domain, that is, not abandoning the subject of meditation during one’s daily routine; and full awareness of reality, the knowledge that behind one’s activities there is no abiding self. See The Way of Mindfulness, pp. 60–100; The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, pp. 46–55.
148 In later Pali works the brain is added to the above list to form thirty-two parts. The details of this meditation practice are explained at Vsm VIII, 42–144.
149 These four elements are explained by Buddhist tradition as the primary attributes of matter—solidity, cohesion, heat, and distension. The detailed explanation is found at Vsm XI, 27–117.
150 The phrase “as though” (seyyathāpi) suggests that this meditation, and those to follow, need not be based upon an actual encounter with a corpse in the state of decay described, but can be performed as an imaginative exercise. “This same body” is, of course, the meditator’s own body.
151 Each of the four types of corpse mentioned here, and the three types below, may be taken as a separate and self-sufficient subject of meditation; or the entire set may be used as a progressive series for impressing on the mind the idea of the body’s transience and insubstantiality. The progression continues in §§26–30. The list of bones here is translated from the more elaborate version of the BBS ed.
152 Feeling (vedanā) signifies the affective quality of experience, bodily and mental, either pleasant, painful, or neither, i.e., neutral feeling. Examples of the “worldly