The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [625]
945 MA explains the compound diṭṭhasutamutaviññātabba as meaning “what is to be cognized as the seen, heard, and sensed” and takes it to refer to sense-door cognitions. However, it can also comprise all grosser mind-door cognitions as well. To enter the fourth immaterial attainment, all the ordinary “mental formations” involved in other cognitive processes must be overcome, for their persistence is an obstacle to entering this attainment. Hence it is called “not percipient” (n’eva saññı̄).
946 Sasankhārāvasesasamāpatti. Within the fourth immaterial attainment a residue of extremely subtle mental formations remains. Hence it is called “not non-percipient” (n̄saññı̄).
947 The Brahmajāla explains seven types of annihilationism, here all collected together as one.
948 The “fear and disgust with identity” is an aspect of vibhavataṇhā , the craving for non-existence. The annihilationist view to which it gives rise still involves an identification with self—a self that is annihilated at death—and thus, despite his denial, it binds the theorist to the round of existence.
949 So far only four of the original five classes of speculations about the future have been analysed, yet the Buddha speaks as if they were all explicated. MA tries to resolve the problem by explaining that assertions of “Nibbāna here and now” were comprised by the terms “percipient of unity” and “percipient of diversity” in §3. This explanation, however, is not convincing. Ñm, in Ms, had added the heading “Nibbāna Here and Now” over §17, and §§17–21 do seem to correspond with the last four of the five doctrines of Nibb̄na here and now in the Brahmajāla. However, this interpretation seems contradicted by §13 and by the phrase used in §17, §19, and §21, “with the relinquishing of views about the past and the future,” which would exclude the doctrines of Nibb̄na here and now from views about the future (though it is placed among such views in the preamble). The problem seems insoluble, and raises the suspicion that the text was to some degree corrupted in the course of its oral transmission. The insertion of the views about the past just below is also problematic. Not only are such views not mentioned in the preamble, but the placing of the past after the future inverts the normal time sequence. Skilling suggests this passage may have been part of an oral commentary on the sutta which, at some point, was absorbed into the text.
950 This view includes all four of the eternalists who speculate about the past mentioned in the Brahmajāla.
951 Since this is a view referring to the past, it may be taken to imply that at some point in the past the self and the world arose spontaneously out of nothing. Thus it would comprise the two doctrines of fortuitous origination of the Brahmajāla, as MA maintains.
952 This includes the four types of partial eternalism.
953 This may include the four types of endless equivocation or “eel-wriggling” of the Brahmajāla.
954 Views 5–8 correspond exactly to the four extensionists of the Brahmajāla.
955 The eight views (9–16) are, in the Brahmajāla, included among the doctrines of percipient immortality comprised under speculations about the future.
956 That is, they must accept their doctrine on some ground other than knowledge, one involving belief or reasoning. At MN 95.14, it is said that these five grounds of conviction yield conclusions that can turn out to be either true or false.
957 MA: That is not really knowledge but wrong understanding; thus it is declared to be clinging to views.
958 MA says that at this point all sixty-two of the views set forth in the Brahmajāla Sutta have been incorporated, yet this sutta has an even wider range since it includes an exposition of identity view (most notably implied by §24).
959 This section title, and the following Roman numeral “V”, were inserted by Ñm on the supposition that this passage presents the doctrines of Nibbāna here and now, mentioned but not explicated earlier.