The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [651]
1319 MA: They have seen this with the wisdom of insight.
1320 Tajjaṁ tajjaṁ paccayam paṭcca tajjā tajjā vedanā uppajjanti. The coming together of the eye, forms, and eye-consciousness is eye-contact, and this is the primary condition for the arising of feeling born of eye-contact. With the cessation of the eye, one of the factors responsible for eye-contact is removed. Thus eye-contact ceases, and with its cessation the feeling born of eye-contact also ceases.
1321 MA: He undertakes this teaching on the enlightenment factors because wisdom is not able to cut away the defilements by itself, but only when accompanied by the other six enlightenment factors (wisdom being equivalent to the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor).
1322 MA: She who was last in regard to good qualities had become a stream-enterer, but those whose intentions were to become once-returners, non-returners, and arahants each achieved the fulfilment of their intentions. Because of these results, the Buddha named Ven. Nandaka the foremost bhikkhu in instructing the bhikkhunı̄s.
SUTTA 147
1323 MA says that this discourse was spoken to Rāhula shortly after his higher ordination, presumably at the age of twenty. The sutta also occurs at SN 35:121/iv.105–7.
1324 Vimuttiparipācanı̄yā dhammā. MA interprets these as the fifteen qualities that purify the five faculties (faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom), namely, in regard to each faculty: avoiding people who lack the faculty, associating with those endowed with it, and reflecting on suttas that inspire its maturation. MA brings in another set of fifteen qualities: the five faculties again; the five perceptions partaking of penetration, namely, perception of impermanence, suffering, non-self, abandoning, and dispassion; and the five qualities taught to Meghiya, namely, noble friendship, the virtue of the monastic rules, suitable conversation, energy, and wisdom (see AN 9:3/iv.356; Ud 4:1/36).
1325 MA says that these deities, who came from various celestial realms, had been companions of Rāhula’s during the previous life in which he first made the aspiration to attain arahantship as the son of a Buddha.
1326 It should be noted that the last four items mentioned are the four mental aggregates. Thus this discourse covers not only the sense bases but also the five aggregates, the aggregate of material form being implied by the physical sense faculties and their objects.
1327 According to MA, stream-entry was the minimal attainment of those deities, but some attained the higher paths and fruits up to arahantship.
SUTTA 148
1328 This string of epithets, usually descriptions of the Dhamma as a whole, here serves to emphasise the importance of the discourse the Buddha is about to deliver.
1329 The last two clauses in this sequence are also found in the standard formulation of dependent origination, which is thus implicitly incorporated into this discourse on the six sets of six.
1330 The verb upapajjati (the PTS ed. reading, uppajjati, is an error), normally means “reappears” or “is reborn,” but it also has a special usage in logic to mean “to be tenable, to be acceptable,” as it does here.
1331 The argument derives the principle of non-self from the verifiable premise of impermanence. The structure of the argument may be briefly set out thus: Whatever is self must be permanent; X is directly perceived to be impermanent, i.e., marked by rise and fall; therefore X is not self.
1332 The full argument of the previous paragraph is repeated for each of the remaining five terms in each set of six.