TALK GIVEN TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015, AND AGAIN AT THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE, SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2025

Sammaditthi Sutta

The Discourse on Right View

Majjhima Nikaya 9

Date of Composition: 5th-4^th cent. BCE

The Majjhima Nikaya is the second book of the Sutta Pitaka, after the Digha Nikaya. Although Digha Nikaya means ‘long collection’ and Majjhima Nikaya means ‘medium (length) collection,’ the division into the Digha and the Majjhima is not only about length. In my English edition of the Digha, the average discourse is between twelve and thirteen pages long, whereas the average discourse in the Majjhima is seven pages long. However, eight discourses of the Majjhima Nikaya are at least as long as the average length of the discourses in the Digha Nikaya, whereas six discourses of the Digha Nikaya are shorter than the average length of the discourses in the Majjhima Nikaya. Manné and Bodhi suggest that the Digha Nikaya is an introduction to basic Buddhist thought, whereas the Majjhima is a detailed and thorough compendium of the doctrines and practices of the Buddha. Thus, Bodhi says, the Majjhima Nikaya exhibits greater philosophical depth and range.

Long Discourses of the Majjhima Nikaya

• Sammaditthi Sutta (M 9)
• Mahasihanada Sutta (M 12)
• Alagaddupama Sutta (M 22)
• Ariyapariyesana Sutta (M 26)
• Upali Sutta (M 56)
• Apannaka Sutta (M 60)
• Mahasakuludayi Sutta (M 77)
• Ratthapala Sutta (M 82)

The standard translation of the Sammaditthi Sutta is ‘The Discourse on Right View,’ the first step of the Noble Eightfold Path. We might also translate the title of this discourse as the ‘Discourse on Perfect Wisdom.’ That this is the only discourse that is named after a step of the Noble Eightfold Path is significant because it represents the point where one enters the Path, regarded as a strict causal sequence, thus establishing one as a ‘stream enterer. Interestingly, the Buddha uses the metaphor of the stream to refer equally to the path and to the world.

The discourse is spoken by the ex-Brahman arhant Sariputta, the follower foremost in wisdom, who the Buddha nicknames “general of the dharma,” at Savatthi (Shravasti). With a population of about 900,000 individuals and 57,000 households, Shravasti was one of the six largest cities of India at that time.  Shravasti was a rich commercial centre and the capital of Kosala, one of the sixteen “great states,” ruled by King Pasanedi, a follower of the Buddha, located near the Rapti River in present day Uttar Pradesh. The Buddha spent twenty-four or twenty-five rainy seasons in Shravasti, making this the place where he spent most of his time. Shravasti is also the reputed birthplace of the third Guide of the Jain religion, with which Buddhism was in competition.

Sariputta died about three years before the Buddha. This, and the reference to “Friend,” implies that this discourse was spoken by Sariputta prior to that time, probably during one of the rain retreats in Jeta’s Grove, Anathapindika’s Park, the location of Jetavana, one of the most famous Buddhist monasteries, located to the south of the old city. This park is famous for being bought for the order by Anathapindika, a wealthy householder and the chief lay follower of the Buddha, by covering the ground with millions of pieces of gold. The Buddha passed eighteen or nineteen out of forty-five rainy seasons here, more than at any other place, starting about twenty years after his Enlightenment.

This is a canonical discourse; thus, it is recognized as the word of the Buddha, but the Buddha does not speak it. Over twenty discourses in the Majjhima Nikaya are like this, establishing the principle that the “word of the Buddha” does not refer to the actual historical speech of the Buddha, but rather to words and teachings that are authoritative and true, even if others speak them, because they are consistent with the traditional teachings of the Buddha. This allows for continuity of development rather than strict historical reductionism, based on the fallacy that it is even possible to identify the original teachings of the Buddha.

Sariputta introduces his topic as “one of right view,” specifically, the way that a seeker is one whose view is right, straight, perfectly confident, and true. The discourse is divided into sixteen sub-topics, including teachings on the wholesome and the unwholesome, “food,” the Four Noble Truths, ageing and death, birth, desirous attachment, feeling, contact, the Sixfold Base, mentality-materiality, consciousness, volitional formations, ignorance, and the taints, all of which constitute aspects of Right View. Therefore, this discourse is a kind of catechism or compilation of basic Buddhist beliefs, the understanding of which is considered essential for Right View. Since each topic is identified as “another way in which a noble disciple is one of right view,” it is not clear whether the comprehension of all of them or only one of them is necessary to attain Right View. Assuming that the English translation is accurate, the syntax also allows one to infer that these are essential insights any one of which can trigger this fundamental attainment.

We recognize in ageing and death through to ignorance the twelve causes in the chain of interconnectedness, whereby primordial ignorance “sets in motion,” as it were, the whole “wheel” of samsara, arising continuously in every moment of existence and inherent in its ground. Ignorance or primary ‘not-knowing’ is simply volition without reflexivity and thus objectified. Thus, reality itself creates an illusory mirage of itself as a simulacrum of simulacra that we identify with and experience in time. Even a mirage “exists” in the sense in which  it is experienced, and must be grounded in reality, although perhaps not in the way that we experience it.

The sequence of terms, beginning with the wholesome and the unwholesome and ending with the taints, proceeds from the outermost to the innermost, which we may broadly identify with ethics; “food”; the Four Noble Truths; interconnectedness, consisting of the twelve cause/effects; and finally culminating in the taints or corruptions the cessation of which constitutes emancipation. The whole sequence is thus analogous to the Buddha’s analysis of interconnectedness in “reverse order,” pointing to a series of insights culminating in emancipation. This is consistent with our discussion of the ethical in the first discourse of the Digha Nikaya, in which the Buddha states that ethical considerations are relatively minor, though presumably necessary.

The Wholesome and the Unwholesome

The English translation “wholesome” is sound, yet in English the word has a rather vague, moralistic, and even slightly self-righteous connotation that is inconsistent with the pragmatic ethics of the Buddha based on the Law of Moral Causality. Buddhism identifies the precise ontological mechanism of morality in a way that Western philosophy completely fails to do. Some English synonyms that communicate this sense better are ‘beneficial,’ ‘edifying,’ ‘exemplary,’ ‘fit,’ ‘hale,’ ‘helpful,’ ‘right,’ ‘sound’ ‘strengthening,’ all communicating the practical sense more satisfactorily than ‘wholesome.’ Interestingly, another English synonym of ‘wholesome’ is ‘nutritive,’ which is the topic that immediately follows. To my ear, the word that summarizes this most neatly is ‘effective,’ especially since it includes the notion of the karmic cause/effect dynamic, which is the ontological basis of Buddhist ethics. Thus, to supplement Bodhi’s translation, I would propose: “When, Friends, a noble disciple understands the ineffective and the root of the ineffective, the effective and the root of the effective, in that way he is one of perfect wisdom, whose view is straight, who has perfect confidence in the teaching and has arrived at this true teaching.”

Note that Perfect Wisdom is not attained by faith, though the lowest stage of personal progress is identified as that of the ‘faith follower,’ which is immediately followed by ‘dharma follower.’ Both are subordinate to the path proper. Faith may be an essential first step, but is not sufficient to attain the path and might even be misleading. The only way to arrive at this stage is through right view, i.e., reason. Anything else is just dreaming. In this case, the “way” that leads to Perfect Wisdom is identified with the proper comprehension of the ethical in its relation to the Law of Moral Causality.

The Buddha identifies the unwholesome actions beginning with the first four precepts —not killing; not taking what is not given ; “misconduct in sensual pleasures” (often referred to as sexual misconduct, especially adultery); and false, malicious, and harsh speech and gossip. These four ethical precepts are referred to elsewhere as the Fourfold Restraint. As I have discussed elsewhere, the Fourfold Restraint refers to the original four precepts that the Buddha advocates for the first eight years of his career, excluding drinking alcoholic beverages, which he did not prohibit until a monk embarrassed the order by becoming drunk in public, whereupon the Buddha prohibited drinking for monastics and forbids drinkers from becoming monastics. The fact that Sagata accepted palm wine as an offering shows that prior to this rule monks were not prohibited from drinking alcohol, like some monks of the Roman Church who not only drink but manufacture alcohol. The list of ineffective practices adds covetousness, anger, and wrong view as further ineffective actions.

The Buddha identifies the root or cause of ineffective actions with greed, hatred, and delusion. Similarly, he identifies effective action with abstention from the ineffective actions already cited, and the root cause of effectiveness with the absence of greed, hatred, and delusion. This emphasis on renunciation or abstinence, instead of their positive correlates, is typical of the Pali Canon, which tends to present ethics in negative rather than in positive terms, consistent with its worldly frame of reference, which is of course the frame of reference of its students.

The Buddha says that understanding itself leads to the abandonment or renunciation of the karmic predispositions to lust, aversion, ego, and ignorance, the root or “first cause” of interconnectedness. This results in the “arousing” of “true knowledge…here and now.” Thus, Perfect Wisdom or Right View is itself identified with the end of suffering and emancipation itself. How is this knowledge or wisdom “aroused”? It seems to be through the cultivation of wisdom itself. I have emphasized how the Pali Canon identifies awakening, emancipation, illumination, enlightenment—all cognate terms—with the cultivation and attainment of Perfect Wisdom. Therefore, Perfect Wisdom may be distinguished from ethics and meditation, which are merely subordinate methods or “skilled means.” The Buddha does say, however, that a minimum of one week of meditation is necessary to attain emancipation following the opening of the Dharma Eye, which is a transmission clearly not conferred by meditation itself. Moreover, “true knowledge” is not based on past or future. It occurs in the present moment, the “here and now.” Thus, “true knowledge” is the radical insight into the essential nature or “phenomenology” of instantaneity, the present moment singularity that alone is real, as against time, which posits a succession of moments and is the root of the world/moral causality.

This concludes our discussion of the wholesome and the unwholesome.

“Food”

“You are what you eat.” Similarly, the original Vedic insight is that “life eats life.” We construct our existence by objectifying and then appropriating the existence of others. Similarly, in the Digha Nikaya divine beings discover the pleasure of ingesting lower vibrational energy, the “earth-sap,” and thus become the spiritual ancestors of humans. In the European Middle Ages, people believed that the earth was the centre of the universe. The authorities, whose power depended on the belief in geocentricity, reviled anyone who dared to deny the doctrine of geocentricity. Similarly, today we have simply transposed “earth” to matter and declared that the matter that we experience with our senses, especially the body, is the “centre of the universe,” and anyone who denies this doctrine of egocentricity is reviled, because the power of the corporations depends on egocentricity. In the Buddhist worldview, the earth or matter is merely a range of energy-information-vibration, with frequencies above and below ours that are invisible to us due to the limited sensitivity of our senses—including the body, which is itself nothing more or less than the sum of the vibratory frequencies of the subatomic “particles” of which it is composed.

“Food” is that which sustains the body and the senses in its current configuration. One literally is what one eats. Sariputta identifies four types of “food”:

1. Physical food, gross or subtle;
2. Contact;
3. Mental volition; and
4. Consciousness.

Each of these types of “food” constructs four “dimensions” of our vibrational configuration. Physical food constructs the physical body. Contact constructs the environment. Mental volition constructs the karmic complex that creates our identity. Finally, consciousness gives life to the whole project. This construction is the “baited hook” that involves and perpetuates involvement in the experiential net.

It follows from the foregoing that if one modifies any or all of these “foods,” one will modify one’s experience of the world, including, since the world itself is essentially transitory and illusory, complete emancipation. “Purification comes about through food.”  Thus, greed, aversion, egoity, and ignorance are again transcended by arousing true knowledge or “gnosis” in the experience of the singular instantaneity of “now,” which is the simple act of reflexive attention. This attainment is also identified with Perfect Wisdom.

Before leaping to the conclusion that the Buddha is advocating starving oneself to death, consider the range of meanings. Although gross physical food is included, four other aspects of “food” that are mental in whole or in part, viz., subtle physical “food,” contact, mental volition, and consciousness, are also referred to. The cessation of contact, mental volition, and consciousness clearly refers to the experience of meditation. The Buddha says that the way leading to the cessation of “food” is the Path.

Many committed meditators also reduce their food intake to a functional minimum as part of their practice, and there are possibly apocryphal stories and legends of great saints, like Milarepa, who subsisted on nearly no food. Although the Buddha clearly teaches that food should be reduced to a healthy minimum, he forbids the extremes of killing and even the practice of vegetarianism by monastics. The Buddha also permits the satisfaction of hunger as an aspect of reducing suffering.

The singular importance of food in the Buddhist scheme recalls the original food of the gods, amrita, identified with the soma sacrifice in the Vedic tradition. This food also transforms those who consume it into a being of the same energy configuration as the food they consume. Similarly, in the fairy faith of the ancient Celts a person who is kidnapped by the fairy folk must not eat their food, or must retain some human food, or they will disappear from the human into the fairy realm forever. Other traditions also speak of divine food, such as the manna of the Hebrews. Examples abound.

This concludes our discussion of food.

The Four Noble Truths

Sariputta continues in this vein with respect to the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths are often identified with Right View. However, in this account Sariputta starts with ethics and food before proceeding to the Four Truths, which are still relatively “outer” or exoteric in the sequence. The Four Noble Truths appear as a way leading to the Eightfold Path that is an alternative to food, which also leads to the Path.  In fact, desirous attachment, the cause of suffering, with its three objects of sensual pleasures, being, and non-being, seems to involve all of contact-volition-consciousness. We will not discuss the Five Aggregates Affected by Clinging in the context of interconnectedness, since they are not itemized here.

This concludes our discussion of the Four Noble Truths.

Interconnectedness

The next twelve “ways” associated with Right View constitute the structure commonly called “interdependent origination.” The elements of this structure consist of a causal sequence, each of which is the effect of the one before it and the cause of the one after it in their natural (i.e., entropic) order. Thus, this structure exhibits the operation of the Law of Moral Causality in Time. The order in which they are presented in the discourse is their reverse (i.e., analytical or negentropic) order, which also corresponds to the order of attainment, starting with what is immediately present, i.e., ageing and death, and proceeding through the same process of analysis and introspection that the Buddha followed. In this way, the Buddha begins with what we know, with what is immediately intuitively apprehended, much as in the phenomenology of Husserl but completely contrary to the metaphysical cosmological orientation of the ancient Vedic tradition and most religions. In this way, the Buddha anticipates modern philosophy by over two thousand years.

The twelve causes are:

1. Aging and Decay (jaramarana)
2. Rebirth (jati)
3. Becoming (bhava)
4. Clinging (upadana)
5. Desire (tanha) or “addiction”
6. Sensation (vedana)
7. Sensory Contact (phassa)
8. The Six Sense Bases (salayatana)
9. Name and Form (namarupa)
10. Consciousness (vinnana)
11. Mental Formations (sankhara)
12. Ignorance (avijja)

Implicit in this structure one can discern another, fivefold structure, called the Aggregates of Clinging, which are identified with suffering or “angst” in the Four Noble Truths:

• Form (rupa) or Physical Form
• Sensation (vedana) or Feeling-tone
• Perception (sanna)
• Mental Formations (sankhara) or Volitional Formations
• Consciousness (vinnana) or Awareness

The two structures are clearly closely related.

In other Pali discourses, we learn of principles higher than these: proliferation, differentiation, the mind-stream, the clear light, and the trans-dual void or emptiness of reality itself, developed further in the Mahayana.

If I had to explain the ultimate metaphysical view of the Buddha, I would have to say that it is unconscious sentience as the primordial reality seeking and thereby self-creating through volitional intention its own meaning through the infinite, beginningless differentiation, proliferation, and objectification of information in an endless illusory mirage of its own becoming. This description is like certain theories of modern science, beginning with Einstein right up to digital or information physics.  This primary scenario gives rise to everything we know as the teaching, starting with the essential unsatisfactoriness of existence, and culminating in reflexive realization.

This process works itself out through three “kinds of being,” in Bodhi’s translation, which may also be conceptualized as vertical planes or dimensions of existence: ‘sense-sphere being,’ characterized by the perception of “matter”; ‘fine-material being,’ characterized by the perception of energetic patterns; and non-local, ‘immaterial being,’ which is characterized by information only. These correspond to the three bodies of the Buddha. The fine-material world is the realm of the divine beings, luminous aerial beings that also appear in our own sense-sphere, which includes planes “higher” or  more subtle than the plane of nature inhabited by humans, animals, earthbound divine beings, ghosts, and by some denizens of the realm of the Four Great Kings and perhaps even antigods. If Buddhism says anything about our world, it is that it is filled with an enormous variety of diverse forms of life, even beyond what we see or know.

Clinging includes clinging to sensual pleasures, views, rules, observances, and the self or soul-doctrine that arises out of egoity. The Pali word refers to fuel, the material substratum that keeps a process alive (or “alight”). This is the fuel that is “burnt out” in  emancipation. Clinging to views and observances includes vain speculations, heresies, and sectarianism, all referred to elsewhere in the Pali Canon, but in essence attachment to views lies in the fanaticism, intolerance, and closed-mindedness with which such views are defended.

The Pali word atta is literally ‘breath.’ It is described in the Upanishads as a small creature, in shape like a person, dwelling in the heart. By inference, then, the Buddhist view of the self rejects the ego identification with any identifiable object or quality, thus hypostasizing the mind-stream in terms of worldly phenomena. This is not the same thing as saying that the self does not exist. Clearly, a self exists—the point is not that we do not exist—an absurd self-contradiction—but rather that we do not exist in any of the forms in which we think we do, including the religious notion of a substantial soul that goes to heaven and enjoys a life of eternal bliss after death, usually as a result of the favour of some “god.” The Buddha refers to the self as often as he denies its existence. When the Buddha attained enlightenment, he did not cease to exist, neither did the world become enlightened. He was still an individual. The Pali Canon refers to the mind-stream; clearly, the Buddha identifies the goal of emancipation in the Pali Canon as “the deathless,” a term for amrita that clearly means ‘timelessness.’

Six causes—craving, feeling, contact, the sixfold base, mentality-materiality, and consciousness—are all classified in terms of the six senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, tactility, and mind. Note also that the appearance of sensory consciousness precedes, rather than follows, the development of the sense organs or “bases.” Mentality-materiality includes the six senses by including contact, the seventh cause, in its list of feeling, perception, volition, contact, and attention, which make up the psychosomatic polarity of name and form. These five qualities closely correspond to the Five Aggregates. Elsewhere in the Pali Canon, name and form is identified with the Five Aggregates.  One can see that the causes are not mutually exclusive. They interpenetrate. They overlap. Aspects of each are reflected in the others. The causes are less like a linear sequence than a hologram, in which every part is intervolved with every other part.

The karmic potentials arise out of volitional intention, rooted in attachment, and create complex concatenations of causes and effects that work themselves out collectively in the quality of experience depending on the availability or non-availability of conditions conducive to their appearance. There is no cause without an effect, and no effect without a cause. Therefore, in infinite time, every cause must have an effect, and the sum of those causes that have not yet resulted in an effect constitutes the complex of karmic potentials. These manifest through or are experienced by the body as actions, speech as language, and mind as intentions, a familiar threefold formula.

This concludes our discussion of interconnectedness.

The Taints

The outflows and inflows of the taints intoxicate and toxify the mind. The taints are a function of ignorance. That is, they represent a cognitive dysfunction, a “mental illness” of you like. If ignorance ceases, then so do the taints. Since ignorance is destroyed by wisdom, so are the taints. Freedom from the ‘taints,’ ‘corruptions,’ or ‘defilements’ constitutes emancipation. The taints referred to are sensuality, becoming, and ignorance or ‘not knowing.’ The reference to ‘inflows’ and ‘outflows’ suggests how the senses “flow out” into the objects that they project, from which they receive in return information concerning the sensory patterns that they perceive and thus create the objective sensory experience that arises out of this dyadic interactivity. Sensuality results from the interactivity of pleasure and pain.  Becoming results from the interactivity of past and future, birth and death. Ignorance results from the interactivity of not-knowing and volition.

This concludes our discussion of the taints.

Conclusion

Right View is the first step in the Noble Eightfold Path. Thus, it is the point of entry into the path itself, also called the stream. Right View is characterized by truth and engenders perfect confidence. According to the discourse, one has Right View in sixteen “ways.” These ways correspond to the essential insights that constitute Right View, and how it can be realized. Thus, as with the four grades of stream entry, etc., there are two phases, the path and the fruit. These ways, proceeding in order from the outermost to the innermost, include realization through understanding the Law of Moral Causality, “food,” the Four Noble Truths, interconnectedness, and the taints. Therefore, the cultivation of perfect wisdom or understanding is the primary means of entry to the path, and the essential salvific principle.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, January 18, 2025

Notes

1. One can infer from these numbers that the average household included 15 or 16 members at that time (three generations?). Kosala itself comprised 80,000 villages and was 300 leagues (?) in extent. Kosala corresponds to present-day Avadh (Awadh).
2. Based on Schumann’s chronology, adjusted for the increasingly prevalent view that the Buddha died circa 400 BCE.
3. For a fascinating insight into what this might mean for the theory of reality see Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception (1979; rpt. Brisbane: Daily Grail, 2008), pp. 237-45.