SUTTA 148

[^1328]: This string of epithets, usually descriptions of the Dhamma as a whole, here serves to emphasise the importance of the discourse the Buddha is about to deliver.

[^1329]: The last two clauses in this sequence are also found in the standard formulation of dependent origination, which is thus implicitly incorporated into this discourse on the six sets of six.

[^1330]: The verb upapajjati (the PTS ed. reading, uppajjati, is an error), normally means "reappears" or "is reborn," but it also has a special usage in logic whereby it means "to be tenable, to be acceptable," as it does here.

[^1331]: The argument derives the principle of non-self from the verifiable premise of impermanence. The structure of the argument may be briefly set out thus: Whatever is self must be permanent; X is directly perceived to be impermanent, i.e., marked by rise and fall; therefore X is not self.

[^1332]: The full argument of the previous paragraph is repeated for each of the remaining five terms in each set of six.

[^1333]: MA explains that this passage is stated to show two noble truths - suffering and its origin - by way of the three obsessions (gäha). The truth of suffering is shown by the term "personality," elsewhere explicated as the five aggregates affected by clinging (MN 44.2). The three obsessions are craving, conceit, and views, which respectively give rise to the notions "mine," "I am" and "my self." The two truths together constitute the round of existence.

[^1334]: MA: This passage is stated to show the other two noble truths - cessation and the path - by the repudiation of the three obsessions. These two truths constitute the ending of the round.

[^1335]: MA: This passage shows the round of existence once again, this time by way of the underlying tendencies. On the underlying tendencies and their correlation with the three types of feeling, see MN 44.25-28.

[^1336]: MA: The first-mentioned ignorance is only the lack of understanding of the origination, etc., of neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. The second-mentioned is the ignorance that is at the root of the round.

[^1337]: MA: There is nothing wonderful in the fact that sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship when the Buddha first taught this sutta. But each time Sāriputta, Moggallāna, and the eighty great disciples taught it, sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship. In Sri Lanka the Elder Maliyadeva taught this sutta in sixty places, and each time sixty bhikkhus attained arahantship. But when the Elder Tipitaka Cūlanāga taught this sutta to a vast assembly of humans and gods, at the end of the discourse a thousand bhikkhus attained arahantship, and among the gods only one remained a worldling.