"If One Should Wish" (sutra and definitions)

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, Akankheyya Sutra (MN 6) "If One Desires"; BuddhaSutra.com

(Aidan McRae Thomson/flickr.com)

1. Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was living in the monastic park offered by Anathapindika in Jeta’s Grove in the city of Savatthi. There the Blessed One addressed the ascetics (intensive-meditators, monastics, recluses):

 

2. O, ascetics! Abide endowed with virtue, honoring the code of discipline (the Patimokkha or "Path to Liberation"), restrained by the restraint of the code of discipline, full of respect and reverence [properly comporting oneself to benefit both oneself and the monastic Order as a long-lived institution], seeing danger in the slightest fault, observing the training precepts.

 

3. If one should wish to be popular, beloved, pleasant, and respected among one's companions in the high life, complete in virtues for internal appeasement, without neglecting the ecstatic meditative-absorptions (jhanas), endowed with insight-wisdom, and dwelling apart [for the sake of successfully cultivating serenity-and-insight].

 

4. If one should wish to gain clothes, food, resting place, and healing requisites when ill, abide endowed with virtue, honoring the code of discipline, restrained by the restraint of the code of discipline, full of respect and reverence, seeing danger in the slightest fault, observing the training precepts.

 

5. If one should wish great karmic benefits [physical fruits and mental resultants] for givers of clothes, food, resting place, and healing requisites -- thinking, May it greatly benefit these givers karmically -- abide endowed with virtue...

 

6. If one should wish to be of great karmic benefit to relatives who have passed away and gone to other worlds who recall one with confident (saddha) hearts/minds, abide endowed with virtue...

 

Afghan (BBC.co.uk)

7. If one should wish to be victorious over aversion and attachment (anger and lust, discontentment and delight) rather than being overcome by aversion, subduing and overcoming every danger and dismay, abide endowed with virtue...

 

8. If one should wish to be victorious over spiritual danger and dismay (fear and dread), that neither danger nor dismay should overcome one but rather that one master and subdue every danger and dismay, overcoming all fears that arise, abide endowed with virtue...

 

9. If one should wish to enter the ecstatic (first four material) absorptions at will, quickly and easily, those pleasant (blissful) abodes here and now, abide endowed with virtue...

 

10. If one should wish to experience with the body and remain in those stages of deliverance that are the formless attainments (immaterial absorptions) passing beyond the phenomenal, abide endowed with virtue...

  

11. If one should wish to become, with the destruction of the first three fetters [self-view, skeptical doubt, and the belief that rites and rituals could ever result in enlightenment], a stream enterer -- never falling back, no longer liable to be reborn in [one of the four] miserable rebirth destinations (apāya-bhūmi), instead destined for enlightenment and complete freedom, abide endowed with virtue...

Golden Buddha, Burma (Nicolas-Jouhet/flickr)

12. If one should wish to become -- having destroyed the first three fetters and lessened greed, hatred, and delusion -- a once returner who then makes a complete end of suffering, abide endowed with virtue...

 

13. If one should wish to become, having destroyed the five lower fetters [the aforementioned three plus sensual desire and ill will], a non-returner reborn spontaneously in the Pure Abodes [see cosmological map], never to fall from those rarefied planes, but there gaining complete liberation from all rebirth and suffering (nirvana), abide endowed with virtue...

  

14. If one should wish to exercise various supernormal powers -- being one becoming many and being many again becoming one, appearing and disappearing, going unhindered through walls and mountains as if traveling through space, diving into earth and coming out as if it were water, walking on water as if it were earth, traveling in space cross legged like a bird, touching and stroking by hand the mighty moon and sun, exercising bodily mastery as far as the Brahma plane -- abide endowed with virtue...

 

15. If one should wish to hear with the purified ear element sounds both divine and human whether far or near, abide endowed with virtue...

  

16. If one should wish to penetrate and know the minds/hearts of others -- to know the greedy mind/heart and the one free of greed, to know the angry one and the one free of anger, to know the deluded one and the one free of delusion, to know the contracted one as contracted and the distracted one as distracted, to know the developed as developed and the undeveloped as undeveloped, to know the surpassed as surpassed and unsurpassed as unsurpassed, to know the concentrated as concentrated and the unconcentrated as unconcentrated, to know the liberated heart/mind as liberated and the unliberated one as unliberated -- abide endowed with virtue...

The Buddha victorious under the Bodhi tree with the destroyer Mara (chuadonghung.com)

  

Fearless (sumuizoom.com)

17. If one should wish to recollect previous births -- one birth, two, three, four, five, ten, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 births, 1000 births, 100000 births, many expanding cycles [aeons] of births, many contracting cycles of births, many expanding-and-contracting cycles of births: There I was [reborn] with such a name, of such a family, of such appearance, of such nutriment, experiencing such pleasure and pain, of such a lifespan, and disappearing from there I reappeared [was reborn] elsewhere of such name, family, appearance, nutriment, experiencing such pleasure and pain, with such a lifespan, and disappearing from there, I was reborn here, thus recollecting manifold past lives in detail -- abide endowed with virtue...

 

18. If one should wish to see with the purified divine eye surpassing the ability of human eyes -- seeing beings disappearing and reappearing, exalted and unexalted, comely and repulsive, fortunate and unfortunate, understanding how beings fare [wander incessantly] in accordance with their karma (skillful and unskillful actions of body, speech, and mind): these worthy beings [a polite expression that may refer to any ordinary persons] misconducting themselves bodily, verbally, and mentally, blameworthy, reviling Noble Ones, holding wrong views, engaged in misguided actions [in accordance with those wrong views], after death have been reborn in unfortunate destinations, states of deprivation, in perdition, even in hell(s), whereas these [other] worthy beings well conducting themselves in body, speech, and mind, blameless, not decrying the Noble Ones, holding right views, engaged in right actions [in accordance with those right views], after death reborn in profitable states, in [sensual and supersensual] heaven(s) -- abide endowed with virtue...

 

The Buddha (center) and his "chief disciples," either the nuns Uppalavanna and Khema or the monks Maha Moggallana and Sariputra, all four of having wished for the designation, at Wat Yai Chai Mongkol (Mongkhon) in Ayutthaya, Thailand (Rainer Lott Steffi Esch/flickr)

 
19. If one should wish for emancipating wisdom -- direct knowledge, liberating insight, with the destruction of the taints [craving, clinging, wrong views, ignorance] -- and the heart/mind's liberation, liberated by wisdom, taintless with the destruction of the taints, here and now, in this very life, known for oneself with complete certainty -- abide endowed with virtue, honoring the code of discipline, restrained by the restraint of the code of discipline, full of respect and reverence, seeing danger in the slightest fault, observing the training precepts.*

 

20. Ascetics, if it was said, abide endowed with virtue, honoring the code of discipline, restrained by the restraint of the code of discipline, full of respect and reverence, seeing danger in the slightest fault, observing the training precepts, it was said on account of this.

21. This is what the Buddha said, and the ascetics delighted in the words of the Blessed One.

*According to the commentary on the Middle Length Discourses: In this passage "mind" and "wisdom" signify, respectively, the concentration and wisdom associated with the fruit of [full enlightenment]. Concentration is called "deliverance of mind" because it is liberated from lust; wisdom is called "deliverance by wisdom" because it is liberated from ignorance. The former is normally the result of serenity, the latter the result of insight. But when they are coupled and described as taintless (an-asava), they jointly result from the destruction of the taints by the supramundane path of [full enlightenment called] arahantship.  

Explanation provided by Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (Note 83, p. 1178), Wisdom Publications.