SUTTA 49

[^499]: The Mūlapariyāya Sutta (MN 1) was also delivered by the Buddha while he was living in the Subhaga Grove at Ukkaṭthā, and the similarity in formulation and theme between these two suttas - perhaps the only two recorded as originating at Ukkaṭthā - is striking. It is even possible to see the present sutta as a dramatic representation of the same ideas set forth by the Mülapariyaya in abstract philosophical terms. Thus Baka the Brahmā may be taken to represent being or personality in its most eminent form, blindly engaged in the activity of conceiving, sustaining itself with its delusions of permanence, pleasure, and selfhood. Underlying being is craving, symbolised by Māra - seemingly inconspicuous in the assembly, yet the real author of all the outpourings of conceiving, the one who holds the entire universe in his grip. The alliance of Brahmā and Māra, God and Satan, an incomprehensible union from the perspective of Western theism, points to the thirst for continued being as the hidden root of all world affirmation, whether theistic or non-theistic. In the sutta the superficial theoretical contest between Baka and the Buddha soon gives way to a gripping deep-level confrontation between Māra and the Buddha - Māra as craving demanding the affirmation of being, the Enlightened One pointing to the cessation of being through the uprooting of delight.

[^500]: A similar encounter between the Buddha and Baka is recorded at SN 6:4/i.142-44, though without the dramatic trappings of this meeting and with an extended exchange in verse. According to MA and MT, he held this eternalist view with regard to both his own individual personality and the world over which he presided. His denial of an "escape beyond" is a rejection of the higher jhāna planes, the paths and fruits, and Nibbāna, none of which he even knows exist.

[^501]: MA: When Māra discovered that the Buddha had gone to the Brahma-world, he became anxious that the Brahmās might be won over to the Dhamma and escape from his control; thus he went there to discourage the Buddha from teaching the Dhamma.

[^502]: MA: Because they considered it to be impermanent, suffering, and not self.

[^503]: MA: In the four states of deprivation. Here, and at §10 and §29, the word "body" (käya) is used to mean plane of existence.

[^504]: MA: They lauded it by speaking praise of it as permanent, everlasting, eternal, etc., and delighted in it by way of craving and views.

[^505]: MA: In the Brahma-world.

[^506]: MA: Māra's intention is to show: "If you do as Brahmā says without overstepping his word, you too will shine with the same splendour and glory as that with which the Brahmā's Assembly shines."

[^507]: MA says that by the first two terms he tries to cajole the Buddha, by the remaining two terms he threatens him. To "hold to earth" is to grasp it by way of craving, conceit, and views. The list of categories here, though condensed, is reminiscent of MN 1.

[^508]: MA: Baka Brahmā was a Brahmā exercising sovereignty over a thousand world-systems, but above him there are Brahmās exercising sovereignty over two, three, four, five, ten thousand, and a hundred thousand world-systems.

[^509]: The body of Streaming Radiance is a realm of rebirth pertaining to the second jhāna, while Baka Brahmā's realm pertains only to the first jhāna. The body of Refulgent Glory and the body of Great Fruit in the next paragraph pertain to the third and fourth jhānas.

[^510]: In the Brahmajāla Sutta (DN 1.2.2-6/ii.17-19) the Buddha shows how Mahā Brahmā gives rise to the delusion that he is the supreme creator God. When the world begins to form again after a period of dissolution, a being of great merit is the first to be reborn in the newly formed Brahmaworld. Subsequently, other beings take rebirth in the Brahma-world and this causes Mahā Brahmā to imagine that he is their creator and master. See Bodhi, The Discourse on the All-Embracing Net of Views, pp. 69-70, 159-166.

[^511]: This passage, parallel in structure to the corresponding passage of MN 1, is a difficult one. The difficulty centres around the verb used in the first four statements regarding earth, about which there is not even certainty as to the correct reading. $\overline{N} m$ prefers the BBS ed. reading apahosim, which he takes to be an aorist of pabhavati, meaning "to produce, to give being to." MA glosses: "I did not grasp earth through the obsessions of craving, conceit, and views." Ñm had rendered ananubhütam as "not co-essential with." This has been replaced by "not commensurate with," following MA's gloss, "not reached by earth" and MT: "Its nature is not shared in common with earth." MA says that what is "not com- mensurate with the earthness of earth" is Nibbāna, which is detached from all that is conditioned.

[^512]: The PTS ed. is surely mistaken in omitting here the $t i$ ending a direct quotation, and this misleads Horner into ascribing the following passage to Baka rather than to the Buddha (MLS 1:392). The BBS and SBJ eds. supply the $t i$.

[^513]: These lines (which also appear as part of a full verse at DN 11.85/i.223) have been a perennial challenge to Buddhist scholarship, and even Ācariya Buddhaghosa seems to founder over them. MA takes the subject of the sentence to be Nibbāna, called "consciousness" in the sense that "it can be cognized." This is obviously a contrived derivation, since nowhere in the Canon is Nibbāna ever described as consciousness. MA offers three explanations of the phrase sabbato pabham: (1) completely possessed of splendour (pabhā); (2) possessing being (pabhütam) everywhere; and (3) a ford (pabham) accessible from all sides, i.e., through any of the thirty-eight meditation objects. Only the first of these seems to have any linguistic legitimacy. Nim, in Ms, explains that he takes pabham to be a negative present participle of pabhavati - apabham - the negative-prefix a dropping off in conjunction with sabbato: "The sense can be paraphrased freely by 'not predicating being in relation to "all,"' or 'not assuming of "all" that it is or is not in an absolute sense.'" As an alternative translation more in keeping with MA, Maurice Walshe renders: "...consciousness [that] is signless, boundless, all-luminous" (Thus Have I Heard, p. 179).

[^514]: The Buddha's disappearance seems to be a "visible" demonstration of his verse. Having extirpated delight in being, he is able to vanish from the sight of Baka, the supreme representative of being and world affirmation. But Baka, bound to being by clinging, cannot transcend the range of the Buddha's knowledge, which encompasses both being and non-being at the same time that it transcends them.

[^515]: This is the same inclination that arose in the Buddha's mind in the period immediately after his enlightenment see MN 26.19. Compare also DN 16.3.34/ii. 112 where Māra attempts to persuade the newly enlightened Buddha to pass away peacefully at once.

[^516]: Tädiso: that is, whether he teaches or not he remains the Tathāgata.