The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [591]
434 MA says that the question and reply refer to mundane feelings that are the objective range of insight. The Pali construction here, sukham pi vedeti, etc., shows feeling as simultaneously a quality of the object and an affective tone of the experience by which it is apprehended. MA points out that feeling itself feels; there is no other (separate) feeler.
435 MA: The question and reply refer to mundane perceptions that are the objective range of insight.
436 MA: Wisdom has been excluded from this exchange because the intention is to show only the states that are conjoined on every occasion of consciousness.
437 MA: Purified mind-consciousness (parisuddha manoviññāṇa ) is the consciousness of the fourth jhāna. It can know the immaterial attainments insofar as one established in the fourth jhāna is capable of reaching them. The base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception is excluded here because, owing to its subtlety, it does not come into the direct range of contemplation for the attainment of insight.
438 MA: The eye of wisdom (paññ̄ācakkhu) is wisdom itself, called an eye in the sense that it is an organ of spiritual vision.
439 For the distinction between direct knowledge (abhiññā) and full understanding (pariññā), see n.23.
440 MA: “The voice of another” (parato ghosa) is the teaching of beneficial Dhamma. These two conditions are necessary for disciples to arrive at the right view of insight and the right view of the supramundane path. But paccekabuddhas arrive at their enlightenment and fully enlightened Buddhas at omniscience solely in dependence on wise attention without “the voice of another.”
441 MA: Right view here is the right view pertaining to the path of arahantship. “Deliverance of mind” and “deliverance by wisdom” both refer to the fruit of arahantship; see n.83. When one fulfils these five factors, the path of arahantship arises and yields its fruit.
442 “Renewal of being in the future” (āyatiṃ punabbhavābhinibbatti ) is rebirth, the continuation of the round. This question and the next may be regarded as synoptic approaches to the entire twelvefold formula of dependent origination laid out in MN 38.17 and 20.
443 The five outer sense faculties each have their own unique object—forms for the eye, sounds for the ear, etc.—but the mind faculty is able to experience the objects of all five sense faculties as well as the mental objects exclusive to itself. Hence the other five faculties have mind as their resort (manopaṭisaraṇaṁ).
444 MA identifies vitality (āyu) with the life faculty (jıvitindriya ), which has the function of maintaining and vitalising the other material phenomena of the living body.
445 Heat (usmā) is the kamma-born heat intrinsic to the living body.
446 “Vital formations” (āyusankhārā), according to MA, denotes vitality itself. They cannot be states of feeling because they are required to keep the body of a bhikkhu alive when he has attained to the cessation of perception and feeling. This special meditative attainment, in which all mental activity ceases, is accessible only to non-returners and arahants who also have mastery over the eight attainments on the side of serenity. For a brief discussion see the Introduction, p. 41, and for the full scholastic account, Vsm XXIII, 16–52. The cessation of perception and feeling will be taken up again in MN 44.
447 That is, dead. The departure of consciousness from the body is not sufficient to constitute death; vitality and the vital heat must also perish.
448 The bodily formations are in-and-out breathing, the verbal formations are applied thought and sustained thought, the mental formations are perception and feeling—see MN 44.14–15. MA says that the faculties during the ordinary course of life, being impinged upon by sense objects, are afflicted and soiled like a mirror set up at a crossroads; but the faculties of one in cessation become exceptionally clear like a mirror placed in a case and deposited in a box.
449 MA: The “signless deliverance of mind” (animittā cetovimutti) is the attainment