While editing MĀ 86, I noticed that it appears to have gone through multiple stages of expansion, judging by its parallels (MN 148 and SĀ 304) and also by its own internal structure. Distinct sections can be discerned that lost coherence as more topics were added to them. It’s relationship with MN 148 and SĀ 304 is not obvious because it underwent a large expansion, so much so that it’s not entirely clear if it started out like those parallels.
MĀ 86, unlike MN 148 and SĀ 304, begins with a back story of Ānanda bringing a group of newly ordained monks to the Buddha and asking how he should teach the Dharma to them. This sets the stage for the Buddha to give Ānanda a lengthy outline of various topics that could serve as a educational program. This back story is absent from the other two parallels, but it would make sense as an addition to an older sūtra that had been expanded into just such a study guide.
The full list of MĀ 86’s topics is as follows (the original and secondary topics in bold and italics):
- The five aggregates
- The inner sense fields
- The outer sense fields
- The Body of Six Awarenesses
- The Body of Six Contacts
- The Body of Six Feelings
- The Body of Six Perceptions
- The Body of Six Intentions
- The Body of Six Cravings
- The Six Elements
- Dependent Origination
- Four Abodes of Mindfulness
- Four Right Abandonments (~Efforts)
- Four Spiritual Abilities
- Four Meditations (jhāna)
- Four Noble Truths
- Four Conceptions
- Four Immeasurables
- Four Ways of Lacking Form
- Four Kinds of Nobility
- Four Fruits of the Ascetic
- Five Concepts the Ripen Liberation
- Five Abodes of Liberation
- Five Faculties
- Five Powers
- Five Elements of Escape
- Seven Kinds of Wealth
- Seven Powers
- Seven Factors of Awakening
- Noble Eightfold Path
- The Summit
This list seems to consist of three sections, but only the last one is explicitly set apart from the rest.
The First Section of MĀ 86
The first section would appear to be the original core of the sūtra and corresponds to subjects found in MN 148 and SĀ 304. The Buddha tells Ānanda to teach the junior monks about the sense fields. The eleven items that follow seem to be the original six sets of six plus five additional topics:
| MĀ 86 | MN 148 | SĀ 304 |
|---|---|---|
| Five Aggregates | ||
| Six Inner Sense Fields | Inner Sense Fields | Inner Sense Fields |
| Six Outer Sense Fields | Outer Sense Fields | Outer Sense Fields |
| Six Awarenesses | Six Awarenesses | Six Awarenesses |
| Six Contacts | Six Contacts | Six Contacts |
| Six Feelings | Six Feelings | Six Feelings |
| Six Perceptions | ||
| Six Intentions | ||
| Six Cravings | Six Cravings | Six Cravings |
| Six Elements | ||
| Dependent Origination |
What’s interesting here is that the version of the six sets of six in MN 148 and SĀ 304 is not the one found in other sources connected to later Abhidharma, which usually present a set of six groups or bodies of contacts, feelings, awarenesses, perceptions, intentions, and cravings analyzed in terms of the six sense fields. This is precisely what we find here in MĀ 86. This same presentation can be found, as an example, in DN 22 and the Abhidhamma Vibhaṅga in the discussion of the third noble truth. (Excepting that in those presentations, vitakka and vicāra are added to make a list of ten types of analysis.)
So, we could say that, assuming MĀ 86 began with the same six sets as its parallels, the development of this section proceeded in two or three steps that added more material:
| Step 1 | Step 2 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Five Aggregates | ||
| Inner Sense Fields | Inner Sense Fields | Inner Sense Fields |
| Outer Sense Fields | Outer Sense Fields | Outer Sense Fields |
| Six Awarenesses | Six Awarenesses | Six Awarenesses |
| Six Contacts | Six Contacts | Six Contacts |
| Six Feelings | Six Feelings | Six Feelings |
| Six Perceptions | Six Perceptions | |
| Six Intentions | Six Intentions | |
| Six Cravings | Six Cravings | Six Cravings |
| Six Elements | ||
| Dependent Origination |
This would assume that the six sets of six were first filled in with perceptions and intentions, and then additional topics were added after that.
Step 3 may well represent the end point of the first expansion of the MĀ 86. The addition of the aggregates and elements presumably brought the presentation into alignment with later Abhidharma texts that typically treated the aggregates, sense fields, and elements as three basic categories. Dependent origination would have been added as a conclusion.
The Second Section of MĀ 86
After the topic of dependent origination, the numerical list restarts with the four abodes of mindfulness and continues until the end of the list at the noble eightfold path. These are also the first and last parts of the thirty-seven factors of the path, all of which are present in the list:
- Four Abodes of Mindfulness
- Four Right Abandonments (or Efforts)
- Four Spiritual Abilities
- Five Faculties
- Five Powers
- Seven Factors of Awakening
- Noble Eightfold Path
I would propose that the first version of this section of the sūtra consisted of these seven topics. Twelve more topics were added to these seven while keeping to a numerical organization. This resulted in the original topic of the thirty-seven factors becoming obscured as other topics were interleaved into it.
These addition topics were:
- Four Meditations
- Four Noble Truths
- Four Conceptions
- Four Immeasurables
- Four Ways of Lacking Form
- Four Kinds of Nobility
- Four Fruits of the Ascetic
- Five Concepts the Ripen Liberation
- Five Abodes of Liberation
- Five Elements of Escape
- Seven Kinds of Wealth
- Seven Powers
It’s more difficult to speculate about the history of how these topics were added: Was it all at once or gradually over time? Either could be the case.
What we can say is that these topics are also found in the Saṅgiti Sūtra, making this section appear to be a smaller version of that collection of teachings. Was MĀ 86 inspired by or the inspiration for the Saṅgiti Sūtra? Again, it’s difficult to say. Either is possible to me, but the relationship is quite clear when we compare this section to Xuanzang’s translation of the Abhidharma Saṅgītiparyāya’s listing of topics:
| MĀ 86 | T1536 Saṅgītiparyāya |
|---|---|
| Four Abodes of Mindfulness | 4-1 |
| Four Right Abandonments | 4-2 |
| Four Spiritual Abilities | 4-3 |
| Four Meditations | 4-4 |
| Four Noble Truths | 4-5 |
| Four Conceptions | 4-6 |
| Four Immeasurables | 4-7 |
| Four Ways of Lacking Form | 4-8 |
| Four Kinds of Nobility | 4-9 |
| Four Fruits of the Ascetic | 4-10 |
| Five Concepts the Ripen Liberation | 5-18 |
| Five Abodes of Liberation | 5-19 |
| Five Faculties | 5-20 |
| Five Powers | 5-21 |
| Five Elements of Escape | 5-24 |
| Seven Kinds of Wealth | 7-4 |
| Seven Powers | 7-5 |
| Seven Factors of Awakening | 7-1 |
| Noble Eightfold Path | 8-1 |
We can see here that the first ten of these topics are also the first ten topics in the Saṅgītiparyāya’s section of fours. The next five topics also occur in almost the same order as they do in the Saṅgītiparyāya. The relationship then is strong—at the very least, these texts were copying from a similarly organized source (if not from each other).
The addition of this second section to MĀ 86 probably represented a new version of the text that now has been turned into a more general teaching manual compared to the previous iteration.
The Third Section of MĀ 86
The third section of this sūtra is the most obvious addition to the text because the narrative introduces it as such. When Ānanda praises the Buddha’s teaching of the thirty topics listed above, the Buddha prompts him to ask about the summit. Ānanda does, and he and monks accept the teaching as a second discourse added to the end of MĀ 86.
The summit was one of four stages of practice devised by Sarvāstivādins to describe a monk’s progression towards awakening: The four stages were warmth, the summit, acceptance, and the highest worldly state.
Briefly, the four stages can be summarized in this way:
- Warmth describes a monk who has faith in the Dharma and becomes enthusiastic about the practice. Another interpretation was that the wisdom acquired in this stage “burns up” defilements, allowing the practitioner to make progress.
- The summit, as described here in MĀ 86, is reached when a monk observes and contemplates things through the lenses of impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and not being self. This causes him to gain acceptance, comfort, and desire, and he desires learning, mindfulness, and contemplation.
- The stage of acceptance is so-called because a monk has fully accepted the four noble truths. At this point, he is not at risk of regressing, which is still quite possible in the stage of the summit. In this stage of practice, the monk meditates specifically on each the four noble truths.
- The final stage, called the highest worldly state, is the one in which direct knowledge of the four noble truths is realized, which is also called “seeing the path.” At this point, the practitioner is an arya and won’t regress back to being an ordinary person.
Thus, we can see that the final section that was added to MĀ 86 is only one part of a larger model of progress toward liberation. It was chosen perhaps because it was considered the pivotal stage that determines whether a practitioner can penetrate the four noble truths or not.
Conclusion
Despite the huge amount of additional material that was added to MĀ 86, it is quite possible that it had a starting point that was similar, if not identical, to MN 148 and SĀ 304. While it’s an extreme case, there are other examples in MĀ of smaller or simpler sūtras with parallels in AN or SĀ that were expanded into larger and more comprehensive texts.