SUTTA 72

[^718]: The view that the soul (jiva) and the body are the same is materialism, which reduces the soul to the body. The following view that the soul and the body are different is an eternalist view, which regards the soul as a persisting spiritual principle that can exist independently of the body.

[^719]: The view that a Tathāgata exists after death is a form of eternalism that regards the Tathāgata, or spiritually perfect individual, as possessing a self that attains eternal deliverance after the death of the body. The view that a Tathāgata does not exist after death also identifies the Tathāgata as self, but holds that this self is annihilated upon the death of the body. The third view attempts a synthesis of these two, which the Buddha rejects because both components involve a wrong view. The fourth view seems to be a sceptical attempt to reject both alternatives or to avoid taking a definite stand.

[^720]: In the Pali a word play is involved between ditthigata, "speculative view," which the Tathāgata has put away, and dittha, what has been "seen" by the Tathāgata with direct vision, namely, the rise and fall of the five aggregates.

[^721]: MA says that "does not reappear" actually does apply, in the sense that the arahant does not undergo a new existence. But if Vacchagotta were to hear this he would misapprehend it as annihilationism, and thus the Buddha denies that it applies in the sense that annihilation is not a tenable position.

[^722]: MA says this is the material form by which one would describe the Tathāgata as a being (or self) possessing material form. MT adds that the material form has been abandoned by the abandonment of the fetters connected with it, and it has thus become incapable of arising again in the future.

[^723]: This passage should be connected with the simile of the extinguished fire. Just as the extinguished fire cannot be described as having gone to any direction, so the Tathāgata who has attained to final Nibbāna cannot be described in terms of the four alternatives. The simile concerns solely the legitimacy of conceptual and linguistic usage and is not intended to suggest, as some scholars have held, that the Tathāgata attains to some mystical absorption in the Absolute. The words "profound, immeasurable, unfathomable" point to the transcendental dimension of the liberation attained by the Accomplished One, its inaccessibility to discursive thought.