5:6 Upasīvaâs Questions

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('â', There isnât,â you should cross over the flood. Abandoning sensuality, abstaining from conversations, keep watch for the ending of craving, night & day. Upasīva: One free from passion for all sensuality relying on nothingness, letting go of all else, released in the highest emancipation of perception: Does he stay there unaffected? The Buddha: One free from passion for all sensuality relying on nothingness, letting go of all else, released in the highest emancipation of perception: He stays there unaffected. Upasīva: If, All-around Eye, he stays there, unaffected for many years, right there would he be cooled & released? Would his consciousness be like that?2 The Buddha: As a flame overthrown by the force of the wind goes to an end that cannot be classified,3 so the sage freed from the name-body4 goes to an end that cannot be classified. Upasīva: One who has reached the end: Does he not exist, or is he for eternity free from dis-ease? Please, sage, declare this to me as this phenomenon has been known by you. The Buddha: One who has reached the end has no criterion5 by which anyone would say that—6 for him it doesnât exist. When all phenomena are done away with,7 all means of speaking are done away with as well. vv. 1069–1076 Notes 1. "Nothingness" here denotes the dimension of nothingness, one of the four levels of mental absorption on formless themes. One attains this level, after surmounting the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, by focusing on the perception, "There is nothing." MN 26 tells us that ṅḍṅra Kṅlṅma, the Buddhaâs first teacher when the latter was still a Bodhisatta, had attained this level of mental absorption and had thought that it was the highest possible attainment. The Bodhisatta left him upon realizing that it was not true liberation from stress and suffering. Nevertheless, the dimension of nothingness can be used as a basis for the insight leading to that liberation. On this point, see Sn 5:14, below, and AN 9:36. On the strategy of relying on the formless states to cross over the flood, see MN 52, MN 106, MN 111, and AN 9:36. 2. Reading bhavetha viā±ā±ṅṃaṃ tathṅvidhassa with the Thai edition, interpreting tathṅvidhassa as an elision of tathṅvidhaṃ (of that sort) and assa (his). The Burmese and Sri Lankan editions read cavetha (would fall; would die) instead of bhavetha (would be). Itâs also possible to read tathṅvidhassa as the genitive form of tathṅvidha. Combined with cavetha, this would yield: Would the consciousness of such a one fall? 3. For a discussion of this passage in light of early Buddhist theories of fire, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, chapter 1. 4. Nṅma-kṅya = mental activities of all sorts. 5. For a discussion of the meaning of "criterion" in this passage, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, chapter 1. On the Tathṅgata as being undescribable, see Skill in Questions, chapter 8 and appendix 4. 6. Reading vajjṅ (he would say/one would say), with the Sri Lankan edition. The Thai has vajju, which is irregular; the Burmese, vajjaṃ (they would say). Vajjṅ seems to be the best reading here for at least three textual reasons: (a) It fits into the meter better than vajjaṃ. (b) There has been no mention of any "they" up to this point in the dialogue. (c) The same line appears in SN 1:20, and there all the major editions of the Canon read vajjṅ. From an interpretive standpoint, vajjṅ allows for the Buddhaâs answer to respond both to Upasīvaâs explicit question—does such a person not exist, or is he for eternity free from disease?—and for his implicit one: What has the Buddhaâs own experience been of this state? Reading vajjṅ as meaning "one would say," the answer tells of how the state of the person in question would appear to someone else. Reading it as meaning "he would say," the answer tells of how the person himself would describe the experience of that state. In neither case is there any criterion by which anyone could say, looking from within or without, that such a person doesnât exist or that he exists for eternity free from disease. 7. This is one of the passages in the Canon that treats unbinding, not as a phenomenon (dhamma), but as the end of phenomena. On this point, see AN 3:137, note 1. - --> - - - -