The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [579]
SUTTA 23
275 Ven. Kum̄ra Kassapa was an adopted son of King Pasenadi of Kosala, born of a woman who, not knowing she was pregnant, had gone forth as a bhikkhunı̄ after having conceived him. At the time this sutta was delivered he was still a sekha; he attained arahantship using this sutta as his subject of meditation.
276 According to MA, this deity was a non-returner living in the Pure Abodes. He and Kumāra Kassapa had been members of a group of five fellow monks who, in the Dispensation of the previous Buddha Kassapa, had practised meditation together on a mountain-top. It was this same deity who spurred Bāhiya Dāruciriya, another former member of the group, to visit the Buddha (see Ud 1:10/7).
277 The meaning of the deity’s imagery will be explained later on in the sutta itself.
278 Kummāsa: The Vinaya and commentaries explain it as something made of yava, barley. Ñm had translated the word as bread, but from MN 82.18 it is clear that kummāsa is viscous and spoils overnight. PED defines it as junket; Horner translates it as “sour milk.”
279 MA: Just as a bar across the entrance to a city prevents people from entering it, so ignorance prevents people from attaining Nibbāna.
280 Dvedhāpatha might also have been rendered “a forked path,” an obvious symbol for doubt.
281 MA states that the four feet and head of a tortoise are similar to the five aggregates.
282 MA: Beings desiring sensual enjoyments are chopped up by the butcher’s knife of sensual desires upon the block of sense objects.
283 The symbolism is explicated at MN 54.16.
284 This is an arahant. For the symbolism, see n.75.
SUTTA 24
285 The parenthetical specification is supplied from MA. The Buddha’s native land is Kapilavatthu, at the foot of the Himalayas.
286 The last five items form a set called the five aggregates of Dhamma (dhammakkhandhā). “Deliverance” is identified with the noble fruits, “the knowledge and vision of deliverance” with reviewing knowledge.
287 Ven. Pu˚˚a Mantā˚iputta belonged to a brahmin family and was ordained by Ven. Aññā Kondañña at Kapilavatthu, where he continued to reside until he decided to visit the Buddha at Sāvatthı̄. He was later declared by the Buddha the most eminent bhikkhu among the preachers of the Dhamma.
288 Although these seven purifications (satta visuddhi) are mentioned elsewhere in the Pali Canon (at DN iii.288, with two added: purification by wisdom and purification by deliverance), it is curious that they are not analysed as a set anywhere in the Nikāyas; and this becomes even more puzzling when both these great disciples seem to recognise them as a fixed group of doctrinal categories. The sevenfold scheme forms, however, the scaffolding for the entire Visuddhimagga, which defines the different stages by means of the fully developed commentarial traditions on concentration and insight meditation.
In brief, “purification of virtue” (sı̄lavisuddhi) is the unbroken adherence to the moral precepts one has undertaken, explained by Vsm with reference to the moral training of a bhikkhu as the “fourfold purification of virtue.” “Purification of mind” (cittavisuddhi) is the overcoming of the five hindrances through the attainment of access concentration and the jhānas. “Purification of view” (diṭṭhivisuddhi) is the understanding that defines the nature of the five aggregates constituting a living being. “Purification by overcoming doubt” (kankhāvitaraṇavisuddhi ) is the understanding of conditionality. “Purification by knowledge and vision of what is the maggāmaggañāṇadassanavisuddhi path and what is not the path” ( ) is the correct discrimination between the false path of the ecstatic, exhilarating experiences and the true path of insight into impermanence, suffering, and not self. “Purification