SUTTA 18

[^226]: Daṇḍapāni, whose name means "stick-in-hand," was so called because he used to walk around ostentatiously with a golden walking stick, even though he was still young and healthy. According to MA, he sided with Devadatta, the Buddha's arch foe, when the latter attempted to create a schism in the Buddha's following. His manner of asking the question is arrogant and deliberately provocative.

[^227]: The first part of the Buddha's reply directly counters Daṇḍapāni's aggressive attitude. MA quotes in this connection SN 22:94/iii.138: "Bhikkhus, I do not dispute with the world, it is the world that disputes with me. A speaker of Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world." The second part may be taken to mean that, for the arahant (spoken of here as "that brahmin" with reference to the Buddha himself), perceptions no longer awaken the dormant underlying tendencies to defile- ments, to be enumerated in §8.

[^228]: This response seems to be an expression of frustration and bewilderment.

[^229]: The interpretation of this cryptic passage hinges on the word papañca and the compound papañca-saññā-sankhā. Nim had translated the former as "diversification" and the latter as "calculations about perceptions of diversification." It seems, however, that the primary problem to which the term papañca points is not "diversification," which may be quite in place when the sensory field itself displays diversity, but the propensity of the worldling's imagination to erupt in an effusion of mental commentary that obscures the bare data of cognition. In a penetrative study, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhism, Bhikkhu Nānananda explains papañca as "conceptual proliferation," and I follow him in substituting "proliferation" for Nm's "diversification." The commentaries identify the springs of this proliferation as the three factors - craving, conceit, and views - on account of which the mind "embellishes" experience by interpreting it in terms of "mine," "I" and "my self." Papañca is thus closely akin to the maññanā, "conceiving," of MN 1 - see n.6. The compound papañca-saññā-sankhā is more problematic. Ven. Nānananda interprets it to mean "concepts characterised by the mind's prolific tendency," but this explanation still leaves the word sañña out of account. MA glosses sankhā by kotthāsa, "portion," and says that sañña is either perception associated with papañca or papañca itself. I go along with Ven. Nānananda in taking sankhā to mean concept or notion (Nm's "calculation" is too literal) rather than portion. My decision to treat saññā-sankhā as a dvanda compound, "perceptions and notions," may be questioned, but as the expression papañca-saññā-sankhā occurs but rarely in the Canon and is never verbally analysed, no rendering is utterly beyond doubt. On alternative interpretations of its components, the expression might have been rendered "notions [arisen from] the proliferation of perceptions" or "perceptual notions [arisen from] proliferation." The sequel will make it clear that the process of cogni- tion is itself "the source through which perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation beset a man." If nothing in the process of cognition is found to delight in, to welcome, or to hold to, the underlying tendencies of the defilements will come to an end.

[^230]: Ven. Mahā Kaccāna was declared by the Buddha to be the most eminent disciple in expounding the detailed meaning of a brief saying. MN 133 and MN 138 were also spoken by him under similar circumstances.

[^231]: Cakkhubhūto ñānabhūto dhammabhūto brahmabhūto. MA: He is vision in the sense that he is the leader in vision; he is knowledge in the sense that he makes things known; he is the Dhamma in the sense that he consists of the Dhamma that he utters verbally after considering it in his heart; he is Brahmā, the holy one, in the sense of the best.

[^232]: This passage shows how papañca, emerging from the process of cognition, gives rise to perceptions and notions that overwhelm and victimise their hapless creator. Ms contains a note by Ñm : "The meeting of eye, form, and eye-consciousness is called contact. Contact, according to dependent origination, is the principal condition of feeling. Feeling and perception are inseparable (MN 43.9). What is perceived as 'this' is thought about in its differences and is thus diversified from 'that' and from 'me.' This diversification - involving craving for form, wrong view about permanence of form, etc., and the conceit 'I am' - leads to preoccupation with calculating the desirability of past and present forms with a view to obtaining desirable forms in the future." Perhaps the key to the interpretation of this passage is Ven. Mahā Kaccāna's explanation of the Bhaddekaratta verses in MN 133. There too delight in the elements of cognition plays a prominent role in causing bondage, and the elaboration of the verses in terms of the three periods of time links up with the reference to the three times in this sutta.

[^233]: The Pali idiom phassapañāattim paññāpessati, in which the verb takes an object derived from itself, is difficult. $\overline{N m}$ originally rendered "that one will describe a description of contact." "To point out a manifestation" is less literal, but it should do justice to the meaning without jeopardising intelligibility. MA says that this passage is intended to show the entire round of existence (vatiṭa) by way of the twelve sense bases; §18 shows the cessation of the round (vivaṭta) by the negation of the twelve sense bases.

[^234]: A large sweet cake or a ball made from flour, ghee, molasses, honey, sugar, etc. See also AN 5:194/iii. 237.