The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [588]
397 A personal name of Sakka, meaning “the owl.”
398 The gods and titans (asura) are depicted in the Pali Canon as being perpetually in a state of war with each other. See especially the Sakkasaṁyutta (SN i.216–28).
399 One of the Four Great Kings, the ruler of the yakkhas, his kingdom being in the north.
400 MA: He did this by entering into meditation on the water-kasi˚a and then resolving: “Let the foundation of the palace be like water.”
401 Sakka can refer to Ven. Mahā Moggallāna as a “companion in the holy life” because he himself had earlier attained to stream-entry (DN 21.2.10/ii.289) and was thus a noble disciple bound for the same deliverance that Mahā Moggallāna had already achieved.
SUTTA 38
402 According to MA, through faulty reasoning based on the fact of rebirth, Sāti came to the conclusion that a persisting consciousness transmigrating from one existence to another is necessary to explain rebirth. The first part of the sutta (down to §8) replicates the opening of MN 22, the only difference being in the view espoused.
403 This is the last of the six views described at MN 2.8. See n.40.
404 MA: The purpose of the simile is to show that there is no transmigration of consciousness across the sense doors. Just as a log fire burns in dependence on logs and ceases when its fuel is finished, without transmigrating to faggots and becoming reckoned as a faggot fire, so too, consciousness arisen in the eye door dependent on the eye and forms ceases when its conditions are removed, without transmigrating to the ear, etc., and becoming reckoned as ear-consciousness, etc. Thus the Buddha says in effect: “In the occurrence of consciousness there is not even the mere transmigration from door to door, so how can this misguided Sāti speak of transmigration from existence to existence?”
405 Bhūtam idan ti. MA: “This” refers to the five aggregates. Having shown the conditionality of consciousness, the Buddha states this passage to show the conditionality of all the five aggregates, which come into being through conditions, their “nutriment,” and pass out of being with the ceasing of those conditions. In the following tadāhārasambhavaṁ, MA takes the tad as a nominative representing the subject (= taṁ khandhapañcakaṃ), but it seems more likely that it qualifies āhāra and that both should be taken as ablatives, the subject īdaṁ being understood. This interpretation seems confirmed by the third statement, tadāhāranirodhā yaṁ bhūtaṁ taṁ nirodhadhammaṁ . Horner’s “This is the origination of nutriment” is clearly wrong.
406 This is said to show the bhikkhus that they should not cling even to the right view of insight meditation. The simile of the raft refers to MN 22.13.
407 On the four nutriments, see n.120. MA: The Buddha states this passage and the following one linking up the nutriments with dependent origination in order to show that he knows not merely the five aggregates but the entire chain of conditions responsible for their being.
408 This is a statement of the abstract principle of dependent origination exemplified by the twelvefold formula. The abstract principle on cessation is stated at §22. Ñm had rendered the principle of arising thus: “That is when this is; that arises with the arising of this.” And the principle of cessation: “That is not when this is not; that ceases with the cessation of this.”
409 The best reading is SBJ: samaṇavacanena ca mayaṁ. Ñm apparently translated from PTS samaṇā ca na ca mayaṁ and thus rendered it, “and so do [other] monks, but we do not speak thus.” “The Recluse” is the Buddha.
410 The following portion of the discourse may be understood as a concrete application of dependent origination—so far expressed only as a doctrinal formula—to the course of individual existence. The passage