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Saṁyutta Nikāya — The Connected Discourses

SN28: Connected Discourses with Sāriputta

SN28:7 The Base of Nothingness

1At Sāvatthī … . as above … The Venerable Ānanda saw the Venerable Sāriputta coming in the distance and said to him: "Friend Sāriputta, your faculties are serene, your complexion is pure and bright. In what dwelling has the Venerable Sāriputta spent the day?"

"Here, friend, by completely transcending the base of the infinity of consciousness, aware that ‘there is nothing,’ I entered and dwelt in the base of nothingness.

Yet, friend, it did not occur to me, ‘I am attaining the base of nothingness,’ or ‘I have attained the base of nothingness,’ or ‘I have emerged from the base of nothingness.’" sn.iii.238

"It must be because I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit have been thoroughly uprooted in the Venerable Sāriputta for a long time that such thoughts did not occur to him."[n.276] See II, n. 340 which appears next. [II, n.340] Spk: In regard to this body with consciousness (imasmiṁ saviññāṇake kaye): he shows his own conscious body. And in regard to all external signs (bahiddhā ca sabbanimittesu): the conscious body of others and insentient objects. Or alternatively: by the former expression he shows his own sentient organism and that of others (reading with Se attano ca parassa ca saviññāṇakam eva); by the latter, external form not bound up with sense faculties (bahiddhā anindriyabaddharūpaṁ). (The compound) ahaṅkāramamaṅkāramananusayā is to be resolved thus: I-making (ahaṅkāra), mine-making (mamankāra), and the underlying tendency to conceit (mānānusayā). (So the text in Be and Se, but if, as seems likely, the plural termination derives from the asamāhāra compound, after resolution the last member should be mananusayo.) "I-making" is regarded as the function of wrong view (the view of self), "mine-making" of craving. The root conceit is the conceit "I am" (asmimāna), so conceit is also responsible for "I-making."

1Sāvatthinidānaṁ. Atha kho āyasmā sāriputto … pe …

"Idhāhaṁ, āvuso, sabbaso viññāṇañcāyatanaṁ samatikkamma, natthi kiñcīti ākiñcaññāyatanaṁ upasampajja viharāmi … pe … vuṭṭhitoti vā"ti.


Sattamaṁ.