Book of the Nines

 

1.         This is similar to Book of the Eights, #83—which I have notes on. This one has a different set of steps, however: here we don’t have such a strong root in dependent origination. What are the conditions that “wing to awakening?”

 

Good friends

Virtue & living in the precepts

Listening & obtaining talk which helps open the heart

Perseverance and energy

Development of wisdom

 

Reflection on foul things

Reflection on metta

Mindfulness of breathing

Reflection on impermanence and no-self

 

It seems that the first group of five is long-time stuff, whereas the second group is specific activities that need to be done.

 

3:         Tells the same group of conditions, but in regards to a story of a young monk who wanted to sit in a pretty mango grove, but didn’t realize that his mind would be plagued by troublesome thoughts.

 

4:         The Buddha was prone to backaches!

 

The Buddha outlines four acquisitions which must be evenly balanced:

 

Faith

Virtue

Calm of mind (samatha)

Insight into things (vipassana)

 

Then there are listed five benefits to the giving and hearing of Dhamma talks:

 

a.     The Teacher (Buddha) is esteemed, loved, and reverenced.

b.     One is a partaker in the word and meaning of the Dhamma.

c.     One sees more and more the profound import of the Dhamma.

d.    One’s compatriots revere one more and more.

e.     One aids the monks to obtain the fruits of the holy life.

 

5.         The “bases of sympathy” are very interesting—in esp. that last one, which is “equal treatment.” He says that the best equality is that which exists between stream-enterers…arahants. Seems that it isn’t some vapid “all equal” affair, but more subtle.

 

7-8:     The marks of the arahant have the same first five, but the remaining four differ in these two suttas:

 

doesn’t kill—doesn’t steal—no intercourse—no lying—no savings

#7: not astray through desire, hate, delusion, fear

#8: not disavow Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, training

 

9:         This is simple enough: the standard eight types (stream-enterer..arahant & those on the path to those states) and the everyday man.

 

10:      Changes the ‘everyday man’ of #9 to one who has immediate prospects of becoming one of the eight types.

 

11:      In S iii, 132 Channa “takes his key”. In M iii, 127 it is apparently a key to a cell.

 

In the first four similes (earth, water, fire, wind) the notion is that one of the four might receive foul or fair things (thrown on the earth, dissolved in the water, burnt by the fire, blown upon by the wind) and not feel horror or disgust at foul things or take special pleasure with the fair things.

 

In M I, 423-4 “The Greater Discourse of Advice to Rahula” the Buddha teaches Rahula to develop meditation that is like these four elements, that is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted from what arises.

 

I am here reminded of the story of Hui Neng’s verse in answer to the “prize-winning” verse to become the successor to Hung Jen, the 5^th Patriarch. Shen Hsiu’s verse was:

 

The body is the Bodhi-tree

The mind is like a clear mirror standing.

Take care to wipe it all the time,

Allow no grain of dust to cling to it.

 

Hui Neng’s verse is reactive to this:

 

The Bodhi is not like a tree,

The clear mirror is nowhere standing.

Fundamentally not one thing exists:

Where then is a grain of dust to cling?

 

I find Hui Neng’s response much closer to both Sariputta’s words in this sutra and the Buddha’s advice to Rahula. In M I, 424 the Buddha says: “when you develop meditation that is like the [earth, water, fire, wind], arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain.” In the current sutta, Sariputta says: “even so, Lord, like the [earth, water, fire, wind], I abide with heart, large, abundant, measureless, feeling no hatred, nor ill-will.”

 

Thus in both cases “the clear mirror is nowhere standing” and therefore we don’t have to “take care to wipe it clean all the time.” The Bodhi-mind cannot be defiled by negatives or positives—it is “large, abundant, measureless.”

 

Page 251: the simile of carrying a bowl of fat. In the Visudhimagga, (195-196) there is a discussion on the general foulness of the body, which culminates in some rather amusing verses, given a downright delectable translation by Bhikkhu Ñanamoli:

 

This filthy body stinks outright

Like ordure, like a privy’s site;

This body men that have insight

Condemn, so object of a fool’s delight.

 

A tumor where nine holes abide

Wrapped in a coat of clammy hide

And trickling filth on every side,

Polluting the air with stenches far and wide.

 

If it perchance should come about

That what is inside it came out,

Surely a man would need a knout

With which to put the crows and dogs to rout.

 

13:      The questions are about karma—may karmic results ripen in various ways. At M ii, 220 the Buddha goes through these questions with the Jains, who say you can’t delay or change karmic action. The Buddha goes through this and points out how this makes their position almost intolerable, and doesn’t allow possibility of growth. Thus the Buddha’s message could never be the immutability of karma. It seems almost as if Mahkohittha has been asking him if he teaches as a Jain. His reply, of course, is that he teaches the Four Noble Truths.

 

14:      In this question-answer session, Sariputta appears to be examining his pupil Sanriddhi. The subject has a dependent origination nature to it.

 

15:      The description of the body recurs at S iv, 83 but without the “nine gaping wounds” (but with craving identified as the ‘tumor’s root.’) At M I, 500, the Buddha points out that “it should be regarded as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as a tumor, as a dart, as a calamity, as an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as void, as not self.”

 

At M ii, 17 the Buddha points out that one should think of the body that “this consciousness of mind is supported by it and bound up with it.”

 

20:      Wending to the end of the sutra we discover that even the tiniest moment, a finger-snap, of knowledge of impermanence, is worth more than even fantastically rich almsgiving, if that does not have these thoughts of impermanence.

 

It’s also worth noting that in this sutta the same distinction between arahant, paccekabuddha, and Buddha (Tathāgata) that one finds throughout the Lotus Sutra.

 

While it’s true enough that iv, 395 (top of 265) this sounds almost like a pep-talk to encourage Anathāpindika towards the founding of a monastery, a note that the sutta is placed in Jetavana—so it was already built. Thus he was using it as an example, presumably.

 

And then he goes on to say how much better if the precepts are taken and kept, had a moment of metta, and finally just seen the barest glimmer of impermanence. Even the creation of Jetavana was nothing in comparison.

 

This sutta helps to understand the relationship between the Buddha and Anathāpindika; it seems clear that he wasn’t treated only as a convenient ‘angel.’

 

21:      Apparently only in Jambudipa do paccekabuddhas and Buddhas arise, thus bringing the teaching. Points of Controversy 73 discusses this. Why would only one of the four continents be places for Buddhas?

 

23:      Another linked set.

 

Craving - pursuit - gain - decision - passion and desire to do - tenacity - possession - avarice - hoarding - many (blows, slanders, etc.)

 

27:      The “four possessions of the Streamwinner” appear to be the “mirror of Dhamma”—but I didn’t find them in the passage listed.

 

However, in A iii, 211 they are listed as:

 

1. Faith in the Buddha

2. Faith in the Dharma

3. Faith in the Sangha

4. Ariyan (noble) virtue

 

This set is also listed in this sutra.

 

The fivefold dread and hatred is that which results from not observing the precepts—breaking each brings dread and hatred into this world and the next.

 

29:      Note that among the nine bases of strife are those in which someone aids your enemy—all the others (6) are about hurting you or a loved one.

 

The First Noble Truth gives an example of suffering as being obliged to suffer the presence of someone we dislike. It isn’t that we do away with the person—or our presence. We do away with the craving (in regards what would be ‘right’ about our absence or the other’s.)

 

30:      In dispelling the bases of strife, the idea of “what’s the gain to him from this” is stated in D iii, 262 as “what good would it do [to harbour malice]?” So the actual original is given in A v, 150:

 

Kut’ettha labbha (= sakkā)

 

Which could possibly be translated as “it can’t be helped” or, “But how can that be?”

 

It almost sounds to me as though the overall sense of the phrase is: “so what?”

 

31:      “Nine gradual endings” is rendered “succession cessations” in D iii, 266.

 

It’s interesting that the fourth jhana involves the cessation of (I guess observable) respiration.

 

32:      This is an excellent source for a basic description of the jhanas and the four spheres—together with the complete surmounting of them all.

 

Christopher Titmuss refers to the Four Jhanas as:

 

1. Inner happiness

2. Sublime joy

3. Equanimity

4. Neither pleasure nor pain.

 

34:      It’s interesting that for a person engaged in the four jhanas or the four formless realms, any kind of sense-desire thoughts that come up are to be viewed as a disease. From the point of view of these higher meditative absorptions, this is absolutely true.

 

This may help to explain some of the vividness and intensity which seems to so often accompany descriptions of the sense desires: the author (or re-teller) is speaking from the meditative standpoint, whereas we may be reading it with a non-meditative mind.

 

35:      I’m struck with how clearly this defines the object of meditation—that whatever it is, the image needs to be extremely clear. If it isn’t, then absorptions and formless realms are not possible.

 

In the Visudhimagga, the creation of the kasina is important—it appears to be some sort of drumlike or disk-shaped object made of clay, which is used as an object of meditation.

 

37:      This one is almost Zen-like in the question: how can he be percipient and yet sense not the sphere?

 

Ananda’s answer is a bit clearer than your average Zen master. He points out that passing beyond form perception is the key here: there is the seeing of the ‘sphere’ as a form, as a label, as an inherent thing—but when one abides mentally in the formless realms, he is fully percipient but does not see in the crude “form” way asked by Udayin.

 

Christopher Titmuss says: “The realm of limitless space takes the form out of form, the thingness out of things.”

 

38:      There is another version of this at S iv, 93 (IV: 116 (3) – Going to the End of the World).

 

Bhikkhus, I say that the end of the world cannot be known, seen, or reached by traveling. Yet, bhikkhus, I also say that without reaching the end of the world there is no making an end to suffering,…That in the world by which one is a perceiver of the world, a conceiver of the world—this is called the world in the Noble One’s discipline…

 

Notes on this: the world of the Buddha’s teaching is “the world of experience,” identified with the six sense bases, because they are a necessary condition (internal) for experience and thus for the presence of a world. Thus as long as the six sense bases persist, the world is always spread out before us as the range of our perception.

 

You carry the six senses with you wherever you go—and so you cannot reach the end of the world by traveling. So the only way to arrive at the end of the world is to bring an end to the six sense bases. Because they are conditioned, they are part of the chain of causation which has arisen from ignorance and craving.

 

So the end of the world can be reached by the Noble Eightfold Path.

 

In S I, 62 (2:6) the young deva Rohitassa says to the Buddha:

 

How well this was stated by the Blessed One: ‘As to that end of the world, friend, where one is not born, does not age, does not die, does not pass away, and is not reborn—I say that it cannot be known, seen, or reached by traveling.”

 

The Buddha responds to this:

 

However, friend, I say that without having reached the end of the world there is no making an end to suffering. It is, friend, in just this fathom-high carcass endowed with perception and mind that I make known the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.

 

The world’s end can never be reached

By means of traveling [through the world],

Yet without reaching the world’s end

There is no release from suffering.

 

Therefore, truly, the world-knower, the wise one,

Gone to the world’s end, fulfiller of the holy life,

Having known the world’s end, at peace,

Longs not for this world or another.

 

Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses this and points out:

 

“The Buddha shows; ‘I do not make known these four truths in external things like grass or wood, but right here in this body composed of the four great elements.” Bodhi says of this: “…it may well be the most profound proposition in the history of human thought.”

 

See Ñanananda, SN-Anth 2:70-83 (Wheel 183-185).

 

Returning to the AN, we see that the Buddha points out that even the attainment of the formless realms is insufficient to completely reach ‘the end of the world.’ It is only when we pass completely beyond the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, abide in the complete ending of perception and feeling, cankers completely destroyed, that we can be said to come to the world’s end.

 

39:      This sutta adds a notion to the principle of refuge—that the four jhanas and the four formless realms also constitute refuge, which makes sense. It is in these states that we are able to draw near the Unconditioned.

 

40:      Here is a good description of the need for solitude—the metaphor of the forest elephant bothered by the others.

 

41:      A I, 26 mentions that Tapussa (or Tapassu as he is called there) was a merchant.

 

There are several interesting aspects to this sutta. The first is that the Buddha did not really accept the renunciation of the material life of sensual pleasures until he was fully enlightened. The second—stemming from the first—is that sensual pleasures and desires therefore distracted him all the way through achieving the four absorptions and the four formless realms.

 

42:      Pañcālacanda was a young deva. In S I, 48 (S 2:7) his verse appears. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation is quite different:

 

The one of broad wisdom has indeed found

The opening in the midst of confinement,

The Buddha who discovered jhana,

The withdrawn chief bull, the sage.

 

There are two kinds of confinement: by the five hindrances and by the five cords of sensual pleasures. IN S I, 48 it appears that the hindrances have been referred to (according to one of the commentaries although I see no reason to suspect that), but in the sutta it is definitely the five cords—Ananda describes them quite carefully.

 

But the opening in the cords is the jhana—and then the further openings the remaining absorptions and then the formless realms. Once we reach past the final formless realm we have escaped—found the full opening and used it.

 

The deva Pañcālacanda had obtained the first jhana in a previous existence. In D iii, 205 he is called a yakkha, who are often seen as tormentors, or malevolent. This could be a different entity in D iii, 205—or else he’s a non-tormenting yakkha, or else he is but this is catching him in a more philosophic mood.

 

43 – 61: This is an extraordinary chanting set, going through the four absorptions and four formless realms, each with its own specific advantage.

 

62:      This is part of a longer list which is found at A iv, 148—there are such as pride, arrogance, indolence as well as these.

 

63:      This is a mini-guide to practice. The five lay precepts are called “five sources of weakness”, which upon working on putting them away, you then cultivate the four foundations of mindfulness.

 

Note that this places sila as a prerequisite to samadhi. That is often the case, I’ve noticed. Hsing Yun in “Lotus in a Stream” (page 51):

 

The Buddha taught that all growth towards higher consciousness depends on three things: morality, meditation, wisdom. Generally speaking, meditation is based on morality and wisdom is based on meditation. Morality is the necessary foundation for meditation and wisdom.

 

64:      Here the hindrances are to be put away, then the four foundations of mindfulness may arise.

 

65:      Now the five strands (cords) of sense-desire are to be put away, then come the four foundations.

 

66:      And now the five skandhas are to be put away, then arise the four foundations.

 

67:      Five lower fetters:

 

Individuality-group view (false view of individuality)

Perverted ideas about rite & ritual

Doubt

Sensuality

Malevolence

 

68:      Five courses (modes or realms) of existence:

 

Hell

Animals

Petas

Human

Devas

 

69:      Five forms of meanness. Buddhaghosa Visudhimagga 683 calls these: five kinds of avarice—about dwellings, families, gain, Dhamma, and praise: the inability to share any of these things.

 

70:      Upper fetters:

 

Passion for form

Passion for formless

Pride

Agitation

Ignorance

 

Note: S v, 192 says: “The four establishments of mindfulness are to be developed for direct knowledge of these five higher fetters, for the full understanding of them, for their utter destruction, for their abandoning.”

 

This applies to all of these suttas, I should think. It implies that the four foundations aren’t just afterwards, but take part in the process of letting go the list of five <somethings> that these suttas discuss. See sutta #36, which states this dependence.

 

71:      At M I, 101 there is a somewhat more complete way of describing this mental barrenness (or probably it’s a better translation):

 

…a bhikkhu is doubtful, uncertain, undecided, and unconfident about the [Teacher, Dhamma, Sangha, training]…

 

At D iii, 238 the translation is:

 

…a monk has doubts and hesitations about the [Teacher, Dhamma, Sangha, training], is dissatisfied and cannot settle his own mind.

 

A iii, 248 is the same as the “five mental barrenness” part of this sutta.

 

A v, 17 gives yet another slightly different rendering:

 

…a monk has doubts and waverings about the [Teacher, dhamma, Sangha, training]. He is not drawn to [him, it], he is not sure about [him, it].

 

72:      M I, 101 helps make clear that there is a distinction between lust for the body (one’s own) and lust for forms (others bodies and other physical things.)

 

The bondage of wanting to become a deva is interesting—I should think that this would be commonly considered a goal in the Brahmanical circles. That is, practice with a specific view of achieving some kind of fortunate rebirth.