The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [652]
1333 MA explains that this passage is stated to show two noble truths—suffering and its origin—by way of the three obsessions (gāha). The truth of suffering is shown by the term “identity,” elsewhere explicated as the five aggregates affected by clinging (MN 44.2). The three obsessions are craving, conceit, and views, which respectively give rise to the notions “mine,” “I am” and “my self.” The two truths together constitute the round of existence.
1334 MA: This passage is stated to show the other two noble truths—cessation and the path—by the repudiation of the three obsessions. These two truths constitute the ending of the round.
1335 MA: This passage shows the round of existence once again, this time by way of the underlying tendencies. On the underlying tendencies and their correlation with the three types of feeling, see MN 44.25–28.
1336 MA: The first-mentioned ignorance is only the lack of understanding of the origination, etc., of neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. The second-mentioned is the ignorance that is at the root of the round.
1337 MA: There is nothing wonderful in the fact that sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship when the Buddha first taught this sutta. But each time Sāriputta, Moggallāna, and the eighty great disciples taught it, sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship. In Sri Lanka the Elder Maliyadeva taught this sutta in sixty places, and each time sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship. But when the Elder Tipiṭaka Cū˘anāga taught this sutta to a vast assembly of humans and gods, at the end of the discourse a thousand bhikkhus attained arahantship, and among the gods only one remained a worldling.
SUTTA 149
1338 MA: When one does not know and see the eye by way of insight knowledge and path knowledge.
1339 That is, the craving that arises and settles on the eye and forms, etc., holds to them with clinging, and this produces kamma that can generate a new set of five aggregates in the next existence.
1340 When one knows and sees the eye by insight and the path.
1341 The eight factors of the path mentioned here seem to pertain to the preliminary or mundane portion of the path. MṬ identifies them with the factors possessed by a person at the highest level of insight development, immediately prior to the emergence of the supramundane path. In this stage only the former five path factors are actively operative, the three factors of the morality group having been purified prior to the undertaking of insight meditation. But when the supramundane path arises, all eight factors occur simultaneously, the three factors of the morality group exercising the function of eradicating the defilements responsible for moral transgression in speech, action, and livelihood.
1342 MA says that this refers to the simultaneous arising of serenity and insight in the supramundane path. The former is present under the heading of right concentration, the latter under the heading of right view.
1343 These are the four functions exercised by the supramundane path: fully understanding the truth of suffering, abandoning the cause of suffering, realising the cessation of suffering, and developing the path leading to the end of suffering.
1344 Here serenity and insight represent the entire Noble Eightfold Path.
1345 MA identifies “true knowledge” with the knowledge of the path of arahantship, “deliverance” with the fruit of arahantship. Here these take the place usually reserved for Nibbāna, the true cessation of suffering.
1346 This passage and each of the following passages repeat the entire text of §§9–11, the only change being in the sense faculty and object.
SUTTA 151
1347 MA: The arahant’s fruition attainment of voidness. See n.458 and n.1144.
1348 MA: This is the abiding of such great men (mahāpurisa) as Buddhas, paccekabuddhas, and the great disciples of the Tathāgatas.
1349 Among the five terms, desire and lust are synonymous as are hate and aversion.
1350 Beginning with this section a sequence of development may be discerned. The abandoning of the five cords of