SUTTA 14

[^205]: Mahānāma the Sakyan was a cousin of the Buddha and the brother of Vens. Anuruddha and Ānanda. He chose to remain a householder and let Anuruddha become a monk. The story is told in Nānamoli, The Life of the Buddha, pp. 80-81.

[^206]: According to MA, Mahānāma had long ago attained the fruit of the once-returner, which only weakens greed, hate, and delusion but does not eradicate them. MA says that he had the mistaken notion that greed, hate, and delusion are eradicated by the path of the once-returner. Thus, when he saw that they still arose in his mind, he realised that they were not abandoned and inquired from the Buddha the cause for their arising. Noble disciples can be mistaken about which defilements are abandoned by which path.

[^207]: From the ensuing discussion on the danger in sensual pleasures, it seems that the "state" (dhamma) unabandoned by Mahānāma was sensual desire, which kept him tied to the home life and the enjoyment of sensual pleasures.

[^208]: The "rapture and pleasure that are apart from sensual pleasures" are the rapture and pleasure pertaining to the first and second jhānas; the states "more peaceful than that" are the higher jhānas. From this passage it seems that a disciple may attain even to the second path and fruit without possessing mundane jhāna.

[^209]: The Niganthas or Jains, followers of the teacher Nigantha Nātaputta (also known as Mahāvīra), stressed the practice of austerities to wear off the accumulations of past evil kamma. The purpose of this passage, according to MA, is to show the escape, which was not shown earlier along with the gratification and the danger in sensual pleasures. The Buddha brings in the Jain practice of asceticism to demonstrate that his own teaching is a "Middle Way" free from the two extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification.

[^210]: The Jains held the view that whatever a person experiences is caused by past kamma. If that were so, the Buddha argues, the severe pains to which they subjected themselves as part of their ascetic discipline would have to be rooted in grave actions of their previous lives.

[^211]: MA: This refers to his own experience of the pleasure of fruition attainment, i.e., the attainment of the fruit of arahantship (arahattaphalasamapatti).