SUTTA 2

[^32]: The taints (äsava), a category of defilements existing at the deepest and most fundamental level, are discussed in the Introduction, p. 38. MA explains that restraint (samivara) is fivefold: through virtue, mindfulness, knowledge, energy, and patience. In the present sutta, restraint through virtue is illustrated by avoiding unsuitable seats and resorts ( §19 ); restraint through mindfulness, by restraining the sense faculties ( §12 ); restraint through knowledge, by the repeated phrase "reflecting wisely"; restraint through energy, by the removing of unwholesome thoughts ( §20 ); and restraint through patience, by the passage on enduring ( §18 ).

[^33]: Wise attention (yoniso manasikāra) is glossed as attention that is the right means (upaya), on the right track (patha). It is explained as mental advertence, consideration, or preoccupation that accords with the truth, namely, attention to the impermanent as impermanent, etc. Unwise attention (ayoniso manasikāra) is attention that is the wrong means, on the wrong track (uppatha), contrary to the truth, namely, attention to the impermanent as permanent, the painful as pleasurable, what is not self as self, and what is foul as beautiful. Unwise attention, MA informs us, is at the root of the round of existence, for it causes ignorance and craving to increase; wise attention is at the root of liberation from the round, since it leads to the development of the Noble Eightfold Path. MA sums up the point of this passage thus: the destruction of the taints is for one who knows how to arouse wise attention and who sees to it that unwise attention does not arise.

[^34]: Six of these - omitting the taints to be abandoned by seeing - are mentioned in the catechism on the taints in AN 6:58/iii.387-90.

[^35]: The word "seeing" (dassana) here refers to the first of the four supramundane paths - the path of stream-entry (sotapattimagga) - so designated because it offers the first glimpse of Nibbāna. The higher three paths are called the paths of development (bhāvanā) because they develop the vision of Nibbāna to the point at which all defilements are eradicated.

[^36]: MA makes the important point that there is no fixed determination in things themselves as to whether they are fit or unfit for attention. The distinction consists, rather, in the mode of attention. That mode of attention that is a causal basis for unwholesome states of mind should be avoided, while that mode of attention that is a causal basis for wholesome states should be developed. This same principle applies to §9.

[^37]: MA illustrates the growth of the taints through unwise attention as follows: When he attends to gratification in the five cords of sensual pleasure, the taint of sensual desire arises and increases; when he attends to gratification in the exalted states (the jhānas), the taint of being arises and increases; and when he attends to any mundane things through the four "perversions" (of permanence, etc. - see n.5), the taint of ignorance arises and increases.

[^38]: According to MA, this passage is undertaken to show the taint of views (dittthāsava, not expressly mentioned in the discourse) under the heading of doubt. However, it might be more correct to say that the taint of views, disclosed by §8, emerges out of unwise attention in the form of doubt. The various types of doubt are already pregnant with the wrong views that will come to explicit expression in the next section.

[^39]: Of these six views, the first two represent the simple antinomy of eternalism and annihilationism; the view that "no self exists for me" is not the non-self doctrine of the Buddha, but the materialist view that identifies the individual with the body and thus holds that there is no personal continuity beyond death. The next three views may be understood to arise out of the philosophically more sophisticated observation that experience has a builtin reflexive structure that allows for self-consciousness, the capacity of the mind to become cognizant of itself, its contents, and the body with which it is inter-connected. Engaged in a search for his "true nature," the untaught ordinary person will identify self either with both aspects of the experience (view 3), or with the observer alone (view 4), or with the observed alone (view 5). The last view is a full-blown version of eternalism in which all reservations have been discarded.

[^40]: The self as speaker represents the conception of the self as the agent of action; the self as feeler, the conception of the self as the passive subject. "Here and there" suggests the self as the transmigrating entity that retains its identity through a succession of different incarnations. The same view is maintained by the bhikkhu Sāti at MN 38.2.

[^41]: This is, of course, the formula for the Four Noble Truths, treated as a subject of contemplation and insight. MA says that up to the attainment of the path of streamentry, attention denotes insight (vipassanā), but at the moment of the path it denotes path-knowledge. Insight directly apprehends the first two truths, since its objective range is the mental and material phenomena comprised under dukkha and its origin; it can know the latter two truths only inferentially. Path-knowledge makes the truth of cessation its object, apprehending it by penetration as object (arammana). Path-knowledge performs four functions regarding the four truths: it fully understands the truth of suffering, abandons the origin of suffering, realises the cessation of suffering, and develops the way to the cessation of suffering.

[^42]: The path of stream-entry has the function of cutting off the first three fetters binding to samsāra. MA says that personality view and adherence to rules and observances, being included in the taint of views, are taints as well as fetters, while doubt is (ordinarily) classified as only a fetter, not a taint; but because it is included here among the "taints to be abandoned by seeing," it may be spoken of as a taint.

[^43]: If abandonment of the taints is understood in the strict sense as their ultimate destruction, then only two of the seven methods mentioned in the sutta effect their abandonment - seeing and development - which between them comprise the four supramundane paths. The other five methods cannot directly accomplish the destruction of the taints, but they can keep them under control during the preparatory stages of practice and thereby facilitate their eventual eradication by the supramundane paths.

[^44]: The primary factor responsible for exercising this restraint over the sense faculties is mindfulness. A fuller formula for sense restraint is given in many other suttas e.g., MN 27.15 - and analysed in detail at Vsm I, 53-59.

MA explains "fever" (parilāha) in the above passage as the fever of defilements and of their (kammic) results.

[^45]: The passages that follow here have become the standard formulas that bhikkhus use in their daily reflections upon the four requisites of the holy life. They are explained in detail at Vsm I, 85-97.

[^46]: Unsuitable seats are the two kinds mentioned in the Pātimokkha - sitting with a woman on a screened seat convenient for sexual intercourse, and sitting alone with a woman in a private place. Various kinds of unsuitable resort are mentioned at Vsm I, 45.

[^47]: The first three types of unwholesome thought - of sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty - constitute wrong thought or wrong intention, the opposite of the second factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. The three types of wrong thought and their opposites are dealt with more fully in MN 19.

[^48]: These are the seven enlightenment factors (satta bojjhangā) included among the thirty-seven requisites of enlightenment, and treated more extensively below at MN 10.42 and MN 118.29-40. The present section explains the seven enlightenment factors specifically as aids for developing the three higher supramundane paths, by which the taints that escaped eradication by the first path will be eradicated. The terms "seclusion" (vive$k a$ ), "dispassion" (viräga), and "cessation" (nirodha) may all be understood as referring to Nibbāna. Their use in this context signifies that the development of the enlightenment factors is directed to Nibbāna as its goal during the preparatory stages of the path, and as its object with the attainment of the supramundane paths. MA explains that the word vossagga, rendered as "relinquishment," has the two meanings of "giving up" (pariccaga), i.e., the abandonment of defilements, and "entering into" (pakkhandana), i.e., culminating in Nibbāna.

[^49]: The taint of sensual desire is eradicated by the path of non-returning, the taints of being and of ignorance only by the final path, that of arahantship.

[^50]: The ten fetters that must be destroyed to gain full deliverance have been enumerated in the Introduction, pp. 42-43. Conceit, at the most subtle level, is the conceit "I am," which lingers in the mental continuum until the attainment of arahantship. The "penetration of conceit" (mānäbhisamaya) means seeing through conceit and abandoning it, which are both accomplished simultaneously by the path of arahantship. The bhikkhu has "made an end of suffering" in the sense that he has put an end to the suffering of the round of samsāra (vaṭtadukkha).