SUTTA 54

[^567]: Translated literally the Pali reads simply "no rapacious greed." Since, in the English idiom, it is difficult to see how the mere absence of an evil can serve as a support, I have added the phrase "refraining from" here and in the next two cases, which are also expressed as simple negatives in the Pali.

[^568]: MA: Although the killing of living beings is not included among the ten fetters and five hindrances, it may be called a fetter in the sense of binding one to the round of rebirths and a hindrance in the sense of obstructing one's true welfare.

[^569]: MA: Killing and taking what is not given are to be abandoned by bodily virtue; false speech and malicious speech, by verbal virtue; rapacious greed, angry despair, and arrogance, by mental virtue. Spiteful scolding (which can include violent reprisals) is to be abandoned by both bodily and verbal virtue.

[^570]: These similes for the dangers in sensual pleasures are alluded to at MN 22.3, though this sutta does not elabo- rate on the last three similes mentioned there.

[^571]: According to MA, the "equanimity that is based on diversity" is equanimity (i.e., apathy, indifference) related to the five cords of sensual pleasure; the "equanimity that is based on unity" is the equanimity of the fourth jhāna.

[^572]: In Ms, Nm had followed the gloss of MA in rendering äjänīya as "those who know" (taking the word as derived from äjänäti); it seems far preferable, however, to understand the word here as a metaphorical expression in its literal meaning "thoroughbred." See MN 65.32 for assājänīya, "thoroughbred colt", and for purisājänīya, "thoroughbred man" (i.e., an arahant), see AN 9:10/v, 324.