Right View Sammṅdiṭṭhi Sutta (MN 9) · 莲华归心开放中文佛学资料库

- suttas - - evening talks - short morning talks - lectures - guided meditations - talk collections - other themes - chants - - - - à¹à¸à¸¢ - Franā§ais - Espaā±ol - - Portuguāªs - Ð ÑÑÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹ - - - Ð£ÐºÑÐ°ÑÐ½ÑÑÐºÐ° Submit Search - Home - Suttas - MN - MN 9 Right View ## Browse Suttas Go to Majjhima Nikṅya index MN index Show outline show outline ## Outline - (Top) - Introduction - Skillful & Unskillful - Nutriment - Stress - Aging & Death - Birth - Becoming - Clinging - Craving - Feeling - Contact - Six Sense Media - Name-&-Form - Consciousness - Fabrication - Ignorance - Effluents const prefersTocHidden = window.sessionStorage.getItem('user-prefers-toc-hidden') ?? window.localStorage.getItem('user-prefers-toc-hidden') ?? false; if (prefersTocHidden) { const tocToggleButton = document.getElementById("tocToggle"); const bookToc = document.getElementById("bookToc"); bookToc.classList.remove("show"); tocToggleButton.setAttribute("aria-expanded", false); tocToggleButton.querySelectorAll("[data-show-text]").forEach(el => { el.setAttribute("data-hide-text", el.innerText); el.innerText = el.getAttribute("data-show-text"); }); } ## Right View Sammṅdiṭṭhi SuttaÂ Â (MNÂ 9) ## Introduction Right view is normally explained in terms of the four noble truths. In this discourse, Ven. Sṅriputta expands the discussion in several directions. He begins by focusing on two concepts that underlie the structure of the four noble truths: the dichotomy of skillful and unskillful action, and the concept of nutriment. Focusing on the dichotomy of skillful and unskillful action draws attention to a general principle of cause and effect—the fact that actions give results—and to the particular role of action in determining oneâs experience of pleasure and pain: Unskillful actions lead to pain, skillful actions to pleasure. The search for the root of skillful and unskillful actions leads ultimately to the mind, because the presence or lack of skill in any action is determined by the mental state motivating it. Thus the issue of skillful and unskillful action provides in a nutshell some of the basic principles of the four noble truths in terms of causality, wise and unwise uses of causality, and the dominant role of the mind in the causal chain leading to happiness or pain. The image of "root" carries further implications. Because the function of roots is to draw nourishment from the soil, the natural question is: Where do the roots of skillful and unskillful behavior draw their nourishment? This is why the next topic in the sutta is nutriment, which is of two sorts, physical and mental. And implicit in the idea of nutriment is the possibility for a strategy to use nutriment skillfully: If the mental state being nourished is unskillful, it can be overcome by depriving it of nutriment; if itâs skillful, it can be fostered by feeding it more (see, for example, SNÂ 46:51). This points to the possibility of training the mind through a strategy of selective feeding and starving, while the analysis of mental nutriment shows precisely which events are most basic in the mental food chain: contact, intellectual intention, and consciousness. Ven. Sṅriputta combines the issues of skillfulness and nutriment by approaching the topic of nutriment with a fourfold framework: nutriment, its origination (nutriment, in turn, has its own food), its cessation (the possibility of starving it of that food), and the path of practice leading to its cessation (the way to starve it). This line of thinking leads naturally to the next topic, in which this same framework is applied to the focal issue of the Buddhaâs teaching—suffering and stress—yielding the four noble truths. In this way, Ven. Sṅriputta shows how the four noble truths derive from the two topics of skillful/unskillful and nutriment. Itâs interesting to note that both these topics figure prominently in discourses directed at young people. The Buddhaâs instruction to Rṅhula in MNÂ 61 focuses on skillful and unskillful behavior; the first of the Noviceâs Questions (KhpÂ 4), on nutriment. Seeing how basic these concepts are to understanding the role of causality in putting an end to suffering, the Buddha taught them to young people as an entry into the Dhamma. In this sutta, Ven. Sṅriputta shows how these topics can perform the same function for adults. And perhaps he is also showing us the line of reasoning through which his own first glimpse of the deathless followed upon a simple statement of a causal principle: Whatever phenomena arise from cause: their cause and their cessation. Such is the teaching of the Tathṅgata, the Great Contemplative. (Mv.I.23.5) The remainder of this sutta expands on the four noble truths with a reverse-order analysis of dependent co-arising. Two features of this section stand out. To begin with, Ven. Sṅriputta points out that understanding the relationship between any two adjacent factors in the pattern of dependent co-arising provides enough discernment to abandon unskillfu