The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [592]
450 MA identifies this suññatā cetovimutti with insight into the voidness of selfhood in persons and things.
451 As above, the signless deliverance of mind is identified by MA with the attainment of fruition. Of the four deliverances of mind mentioned in §30, this one alone is supramundane. The first three—the brahmavihāras, the third immaterial attainment, and insight into the voidness of formations—all pertain to the mundane level.
452 Lust, hate, and delusion may be understood as “makers of measurement” (pamāṇakaraṇa) in that they impose limitations upon the range and depths of the mind; MA, however, explains this phrase to mean that the defilements enable one to measure a person as a worldling, a stream-enterer, a once-returner, or a non-returner.
453 MA: There are twelve immeasurable deliverances of mind: the four brahmavihāras, the four paths, and the four fruits. The unshakeable deliverance of mind is the fruit of arahantship. The statement that this unshakeable deliverance is void of lust, hate, and delusion—repeated at the end of §36 and §37 as well—also identifies it as the supramundane deliverance of mind through voidness.
454 The word kiñcana is explained by MA as meaning “impediment” or “obstacle.” Ñm rendered it as “owning.” I have gone back to the original meaning “something” to maintain coherence with the statement that its abandonment issues in deliverance of mind through nothingness.
455 MA: There are nine deliverances of mind through nothingness: the base of nothingness and the four paths and fruits.
456 MA interprets the phrase “maker of signs” (nimittakaraṇa ) to mean that lust, hate, and delusion brand a person as a worldling or a noble one, as lustful, hating, or deluded. But it may also mean that these defilements cause the mind to ascribe a false significance to things as being permanent, pleasurable, self, or beautiful.
457 MA: There are thirteen signless deliverances of mind: insight, because it removes the signs of permanence, pleasure, and self; the four immaterial attainments, because they lack the sign of material form; and the four paths and fruits, because of the absence of the sign of defilements.
458 All the four deliverances of mind are one in meaning in that they all refer to the fruition attainment of arahantship. MA also points out that the four deliverances are one in meaning because the terms—the immeasurable, nothingness, voidness, and the signless—are all names for Nibbāna, which is the object of the fruition attainment of arahantship.
SUTTA 44
459 Visākha was a wealthy merchant of Rājagaha and a non-returner. Dhammadinnā, his former wife in lay life, had attained arahantship soon after her ordination as a bhikkhunı̄. She was declared by the Buddha the foremost bhikkhunı̄ disciple in expounding the Dhamma.
460 MA explains the compound pañc’upādānakkhandhā as the five aggregates that become the condition for clinging (Ṃ: as its objects). Since these five aggregates are, in brief, the entire noble truth of suffering (MN 9.15; 28.3), it will be seen that the first four questions pose an inquiry into the Four Noble Truths expressed in terms of personal identity rather than suffering.
461 MA: Because clinging is only one part of the aggregate of formations (as defined here, greed), it is not the same as the five aggregates; and because clinging cannot be altogether disconnected from the aggregates, there is no clinging apart from the aggregates.
462 These are the twenty kinds of identity view. MA quotes Pṭs i.144–45 to illustrate the four basic modes of identity view in regard to material form. One may regard material form as self, in the way the flame of a burning oil-lamp is identical with the colour (of the flame). Or one may regard self as possessing material form, as a tree possesses a shadow; or one may regard material form as in self, as the scent is in the flower; or one may regard