The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [605]
642 MA: Ven. Sāriputta, Rāhula’s teacher, gave Rāhula this advice unaware that he had already been given different meditation instructions by the Buddha. He was misled by Rāhula’s cross-legged posture into thinking that he was practising mindfulness of breathing.
643 MA: The Buddha here explains the meditation on the four great elements rather than mindfulness of breathing in order to dispel Rāhula’s attachment to the body, which had not yet been removed by the brief instruction on the egolessness of material form. See n.329 for explanation of terms requiring comment.
644 Space (ākāsa) is not a primary material element but is classified under derivative material form (upādā rūpa).
645 MA: This passage (§13–17) is taught to show the quality of impartiality (tādibhāva).
646 For explanations of unclear terms in this first tetrad on mindfulness of breathing (§26), see nn.140–142. Terms needing clarification in the following three tetrads will be explained in the notes to MN 118, the Ānāpānasati Sutta.
647 That is, the meditator dies calmly, with mindfulness and awareness.
SUTTA 63
648 Those who have always wondered about the fate of the monk who almost left the Buddha to satisfy his metaphysical curiosity will be gladdened to know that in his old age Mālunkyāputta received a brief discourse on the six sense bases from the Buddha, went off into solitary meditation, and attained arahantship. See SN 35:95/ iv.72–76. His verses are at Thag 399–404 and 794–817.
SUTTA 64
649 The five lower fetters (orambhāgiyāni saṁyojanāni) are so called because they lead to rebirth in the sense-sphere planes. They are eradicated in their entirety only by the non-returner.
650 MA: The question may be raised: “When the Buddha had asked about the fetters and the Elder replied in terms of the fetters, why does the Buddha criticise his reply?” The reason is that Mālunkyāputta held the view that a person is fettered by the defilements only at times when they assail him, while at other times he is not fettered by them. The Buddha spoke as he did to show the error in this view.
651 Anuseti tvev’assa sakkāyadiṭṭ̣hānusayo. On the anusayas or underlying tendencies, see n.473. In the commentaries the defilements are distinguished as occurring at three levels: the anusaya level, where they remain as mere latent dispositions in the mind; the pariyuṭṭ̣hāna level, where they rise up to obsess and enslave the mind (referred to in §5 of this discourse); and the vı̄tikkama level, where they motivate unwholesome bodily and verbal action. The point of the Buddha’s criticism is that the fetters, even when they do not come to active manifestation, continue to exist at the anusaya level so long as they have not been eradicated by the supramundane path.
652 Dhammā. This could also have been rendered “things.”
653 MA: The fetter and the underlying tendency are in principle not distinct things; rather, it is the same defilement that is called a fetter in the sense of binding, and an underlying tendency in the sense of being unabandoned.
654 Upadhivivekā. MA glosses upadhi here as the five cords of sensual pleasure. Though the first three clauses of this statement seem to express the same ideas as the two more usual clauses that follow, Ṃ indicates that they are intended to show the means for becoming “quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states.”
655 This passage shows the development of insight (vipassanā) upon a basis of serenity (samatha), using the jhāna on which the practice of insight is based as the object of insight contemplation. See MN 52.4 and n.552. Here two terms—impermanent and disintegrating—show the characteristic of impermanence; three terms—alien, void, and