SUTTA 32

[^357]: The four assemblies are those of bhikkhus, bhikkhunīs, men lay followers, and women lay followers. The seven underlying tendencies are enumerated at MN 18.8. Ven. Ānanda was declared by the Buddha to be the pre-eminent disciple among those who had learned much, and his discourses are said to have delighted the four assemblies ( $\operatorname{DN} 16.5 .16 /$ ii.145).

[^358]: Yatha sakam paṭibhānam. This phrase might also be rendered "according to his own intuition" or "according to his own ideal." Nm renders "as it occurs to him"; Horner, "according to his own capacity."

[^359]: Ven. Revata was declared the pre-eminent disciple among those who are meditators.

[^360]: Ven. Anuruddha was the pre-eminent disciple among those who possessed the divine eye.

[^361]: Mahā Kassapa was the pre-eminent disciple among those who observed the ascetic practices.

[^362]: Abhidhamma. Though the word cannot refer here to the Pitaka of that name - obviously the product of a phase of Buddhist thought later than the Nikāyas - it may well indicate a systematic and analytical approach to the doc- trine that served as the original nucleus of the Abhidhamma Pitaka. In a careful study of the contexts in which the word "Abhidhamma" occurs in the Sutta Pitakas of several early recensions, the Japanese Pali scholar Fumimaro Watanabe concludes that the Buddha's own disciples formed the conception of Abhidhamma as an elementary philosophical study that attempted to define, analyse, and classify dhammas and to explore their mutual relations. See his Philosophy and its Development in the Nikayas and Abhidhamma, pp. 34-36.

[^363]: While the replies of the disciples hold up as the ideal a bhikkhu who has already achieved proficiency in a particular sphere of the renunciant life, the Buddha's reply, by focusing on a bhikkhu still striving for the goal, underscores the ultimate purpose of that life itself.