Is the Girimānanda Sutta Late?

Discussion
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Hi Bhante. I don’t see any disagreement with that. I am extremely scrupulous in trying to avoid the Abhi classifications, especially after being touched by your Mystique of the A many moons ago.

My point was that it is only anusayas that anuseti in the technical sense of SN 12.38 - 40. As such, when MN 18 speaks of saññā nānusenti, I think this was an off-label usage of saññā, and it most likely means intention (ie a sankhāra).

By the way, when I was looking at the EA parallel EA 40.10, I noticed that it has lost its own page, and it is now appended to the tail of EA 40.9.

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It seems counter-intuitive to me that the anusayas should be regarded as sankhāras. They are just sitting there, waiting to be activated. Any thoughts?

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I fully agree Bhante @Brahmali . Were it so, there would be no escape from rebirth.

Maybe we can go back to SN 12.38 and say that an anusaya per se is not a sankhāra. What constitutes a sankhāra for the purposes of Dependant Origination would be that the anusaya must anuseti.

It becomes therefore an occasional event, not something that lurks latent all the time. It must rear its head or be activated before it qualifies as intention.

I keep going back to MN 44’s allowance for certain states where the corresponding anusaya does not anuseti specific feelings within the jhanas. This must suggest that an anusaya anuseti-ing is not inevitable, something alluded to in MN 148 as well.

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But can the meaning of anuseti be divorced from anusaya in this way? It seems to me that if anusaya means “underlying tendency” then anuseti must mean “underlies latently”. In other words, I am not sure anuseti refers to an activity. You refer to MN 44, which says that the underlying tendency to sensual desire (rāga) does not underlie the first jhāna. I understand this to mean that sensual desire cannot arise under any circumstances with jhāna as its object. In other words, the underlying tendency is sort of suspended. For a sensory object, however, the underlying tendency can arise at any time, and it is in this sense that it underlies (anuseti) that experience. But even in this case it is not always activated.

Going back to SN 12.38, I am not sure that anuseti must be a saṅkhāra just because it is used together with ceteti and saṅkappeti. Rather than seeing these three terms as synonyms, I would see an evolution in ideas here. Ceteti means any kind of intention. Saṅkappeti (or pakappeti) is closely related to this, but perhaps refers to a higher order aiming/purpose. Finally, if none of these is operative, there will always be underlying tendencies that will effect rebirth (except if you are an arahant). I would suggest this has nothing to do with saṅkhāra, but simply with the mind being coloured by an underlying attachment and the consciousness being stuck at a certain level.

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Thanks very much Bhante.

I think the position you set out is in conformity with the Pali lexical understanding. I would like to propose something a bit more heretical, to suggest that the Pali understanding might be based on a textual loss.

But first, we have the problem of MN 148, where 2 scenarios are contrasted. The first has feelings at each of the 6 senses engendering the emotional responses, in which case it is said that “tassa ABC anusayo anuseti”. This is contrasted to the situation where the feelings at each of the 6 senses do not engender unwholesome responses, in which case it is said that “tassa ABC anusayo nānuseti”. At the end of that section, it says -

Bhikkhus, that one shall here and now make an end of suffering by abandoning the underlying tendency to lust for pleasant feeling, by abolishing the underlying tendency to aversion towards painful feeling, by extirpating the underlying tendency to ignorance in regard to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, by abandoning ignorance and arousing true knowledge—this is possible.

This to me suggests that in the nānuseti passages, the sutta is not talking about an arahant, but is describing someone who’s applying him/herself to the Noble Eightfold Path.

Which brings me to my heretical suggestion, namely SN 36.6. We have had this discussion before, and you had rightly pointed out a problem with this passage in the text -

Sutavā ca kho, bhikkhave, ariyasāvako dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno na socati, na kilamati, na paridevati, na urattāḷiṃ kandati, na sammohaṃ āpajjati. So ekaṃ vedanaṃ vedayati—kāyikaṃ, na cetasikaṃ.

Seyyathāpi, bhikkhave, purisaṃ sallena vijjheyya. Tamenaṃ dutiyena sallena anuvedhaṃ na vijjheyya. Evañhi so, bhikkhave, puriso ekasallena vedanaṃ vedayati. Evameva kho, bhikkhave, sutavā ariyasāvako dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno na socati, na kilamati, na paridevati, na urattāḷiṃ kandati, na sammohaṃ āpajjati. So ekaṃ vedanaṃ vedayati—kāyikaṃ, na cetasikaṃ. Tassāyeva kho pana dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho samāno paṭighavā na hoti. Tamenaṃ dukkhāya vedanāya appaṭi­gha­vantaṃ, yo dukkhāya vedanāya paṭighānusayo, so nānuseti.

Bhikkhus, when the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling—a bodily one, not a mental one.

Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart, but they would not strike him immediately afterwards with a second dart, so that the man would feel a feeling caused by one dart only. So too, when the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling … he feels one feeling—a bodily one, not a mental one. Being contacted by that same painful feeling, he harbours no aversion towards it. Since he harbours no aversion towards painful feeling, the underlying tendency to aversion towards painful feeling does not lie behind this.

You rightly note that Trainees still have not expunged the anusayas, so how can it be that this sutta suggests that it is possible for the anusaya not to anuseti in the case of a Trainee? It is here that I suggest that SN 36.6 has suffered a textual loss which changes the meaning of anuseti. Comparing this to the Chinese parallel SA 470, we get -

多聞聖弟子身觸生苦受，大苦逼迫，乃至奪命，不起憂悲稱怨、啼哭號呼、心亂發狂，當於爾時，唯生一受，所謂身受，不生心受。

「譬如士夫被一毒箭，不被第二毒箭，當於爾時，唯生一受，所謂身受，不生心受。為樂受觸，不染欲樂，不染欲樂故，於彼樂受，貪使不使。

The instructed noble disciple touches arisen painful feeling etc does not give rise to grief and lamentation, crying and wailing, with a mind scattered and mad, at that time , only one feeling arises, that is the bodily feeling and not the mental feeling.

Just as man shot with a poisoned arrow, but is not shot by a second poisoned arrow, at that time , only one feeling arises, that is the bodily feeling and not the mental feeling. When touching a pleasant feeling, he is not yoked to sensual desire; by reason of not being yoked to sensual desire, with reference to that pleasant feeling, the tendency of lust does not anuseti.

What has been lost from the Pali, it seems is tasmiṃ samaye (on that occassion/於爾時). Now, I’ve not surveyed all occurence of 當於爾時 in the SA, but I would like to propose that the word 當 (should) is actually a Chinese rendering for an optative. I cannot be sure, but perhaps the optative here would be a BHS equivalent to siyā, the hypothetical optative.

If I am correct, this might resolve the difficulty with SN 36.6 and suggest a different trajectory for understanding anuseti. Yes, read literally it means “lies beneath”, but I would suggest that it carries an idiomatic sense of “awakes”. My understanding goes back to the post-canonical explanation of latency versus the active obsession (ie pariyuṭṭhāna) (making an appearance in MN 48).

How heretical does this sound?

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I think you will escape burning at the stake … just! :slight_smile: Actually, I think a bit of heresy is good. The question is: Is the heretic right?

The same sutta, SN 36.6, also says: “This, bhikkhus, is called a noble disciple who is detached from birth, aging, and death; who is detached from sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair; who is detached from suffering, I say.” This to me seems to indicate an arahant, not just a sekha. So perhaps the word ariyasāvaka, “noble disciple”, is here used to mean arahant? Would this be a simpler explanation, whereby we might invoke Occam’s razor?

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Thanks Bhante. Occam’s Razor would dictate that you are correct. It seems that visaññutta/ visaṃyutta is only ever used for arahants, based on a quick search of the suttas.

Still, I am grappling with how anuseti and nānuseti are employed in MN 44 and 148, as well as SN 12.38. If for MN 44 we say that the anusaya is suspended, won’t that suggest that the rest of the time the anusaya is not really latent but operating constantly in the background? Now I accept that language here probably fails to describe the situation properly, but if anuseti is taken to mean “lies latent”, won’t nānuseti imply “does not lie latent”? I understand that this is the source of sectarian disputes on the latency or otherwise of the anusayas (Jaini, Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies, p.223 onwards).

Now, it appears that the pariyuṭṭhāna model may have been earlier and much more common than the anusaya model than I had originally expected, once I searched for pariyuṭṭh. What does Bhante think about AN 5.193? It does lend credence to the understanding that an anusaya anuseti-ing is what is meant by pariyuṭṭhāna, so that when the anusaya does not anuseti, one is not obsessed by/with a defilement.

In the meantime, may I trouble Bhante on a grammatical point. For MN 44’s -

Sukhāya … vedanāya rāgānusayo anuseti

The anusaya is in the nominative, so that is the “agent” doing the anuseti-ing. What about vedanā? I can’t tell if it should be read in the ablative, dative, genitive or locative (discounting the instrumental). The Chinese parallel to SN 36.6 appears to have it in the locative, which I read as a locative of reference.

Thanks!

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I am not sure if I understand your argument here. It seems to me that when the defilements obsess (pariyuṭṭhāna) the mind, then the anusayas have been activated. If they do not obsess the mind, the anusayas are not activated, but dormant. In both cases I would say the anusayas anuseti (“the underlying tendencies underlie”) the experience. The exception would be if kāmacchanda has been properly removed by a deep state of samādhi, in which case the anusayas are temporarily incapacitated. It’s almost seems as if there are two levels of anuseti: the normal anuseti which underlies ordinary, defiled consciousness, and the deeper anuseti which is temporarily incapable of being activated. In the latter case, which may be brought about by the attainment of samādhi, the anusayas still exist, but they don’t underlie that particular experience. I do not know of any basis for this twofold division from the suttas, but perhaps it can be inferred?

Yes, vedanā is a feminine noun, and as such it could be any of those cases. I think the locative case is a good guess, but it could just be an ordinary locative. You may be able to find a solution by searching for other uses of this expression.

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Thanks Bhante. My thinking -

For me, when a defilement pariyuṭṭhāti (“obsesses”, although I might prefer “grips”), I would say that there and then, the anusaya responsible anuseti. On the flip side, when one dwells not obsessed by/gripped by a defilement ( na ABCpari­yuṭ­ṭhi­tena cetasā viharati), then that would be the situation when the anusaya does not anuseti, but only at that moment.

So, I think the solution which you propose -

makes eminent sense. That was the point of my argument, namely an anusaya anuseti-ing is a phenomenon measured against each experience, and it is not inevitable to each and every experience.

I wonder if this anusaya business is something more developed in the Nikayas than the Agamas. When looking up this subject, my comparison of the Pali texts with their Chinese parallels show that the latter do not use the terms anusaya or anuseti that often. For example, when MN 64 talks about the sectarian view about an anusaya anuseti-ing an infant, the Chinese does not have the verb at all.