MĀ 159 is a fairly brief sūtra without a known parallel in the chapter on priests in the Madhyama Āgama. After spending time drafting it, I thought it would make a good subject for an essay here, given how much these types of texts still seem to go unnoticed as everyone rehashes the Pali canon endlessly. Also because it’s one of those texts that challenges some modern views about Nirvana that seem to have become a consensus.
The sūtra is a fairly simple one. The Buddha reduces a superficial subject (in this case the brahmin scriptures, presumably Vedas) to its spiritual basis (in this case nirvāna). The path taken from beginning to end passes through a serious of cosmological steps along the way.
Aggilāyana or Agrahana?
Before I jump into the content of the sūtra, though, I want to address the first problem MĀ 159 presented me and anyone else who attempts to translate it: The priest’s name. It’s transliterated as 阿伽羅訶那, which was probably pronounced “a-gɪă-la-ha-na” in Early Middle Chinese. When I consult the translation published by BDK, I find that they have converted this transliteration to Aggilāyana. As far as I can tell, this is a “Palinization” of Sanskrit Agnilāyana, which would consist of aggi (“fire”) and lāyana (“cutting”) in Pali. While I can find Agnilayana in a couple sources on the Internet, it seems completely obscure in the usual references.
If anyone knows of an attestation of this name anywhere, I’d love to know the reference for it.
There are a couple problems with this back-transliteration, though. First, there’s no vowel “i” present that could support “agi” as a reading of 阿伽 (a-gɪă). 伽 typical transliterates the Indic sounds “ga” or “ka.” The second problem is that there is no “y” in the transliteration. Rather, there is an “h.” As a result, Aggilāyana doesn’t fit the pronunciation perfectly. It’s not impossible, but let’s consider another possibility that would be a better fit.
It’s quite possible that 伽羅 represents a consonant combination like gra or gṛ. If it were gṛ, I would expect an “i” to follow the “r” for a Prakrit pronunciation of “ṛ”, which in Chinese is usually represented with “li” (typically, 利). Instead, what we have here is a “la” or “ra” syllable.
When I consult a Sanskrit dictionary, I notice there are two words of basically the same meaning that fit the transliteration fairly well: grahana and gṛhana. They both mean someone with a house. This word apparently is negated to arrive at Agrahana (“someone without a house”). This is my working guess for the priest’s name in this sūtra.
The Earth Series of Bases
The priest asks the Buddha what place or abode is the basis for the priestly scriptures. This leads to a Q&A that traces scriptures back to empty space, which is the ultimate basis of the Earth that itself has no basis.
Basis of the Earth | Ch. | |
---|---|---|
Priestly Scriptures | 梵志經典 | |
Humans | 人住 | |
Grain | 稻麥住 | |
Earth | 地住 | |
Water | 水住 | |
Air | 風住 | |
Space | 空住 |
This series has a downward trajectory, traveling through the earth and the layers of elements that it rests on. At the end, we reach the empty space below the wind that holds up the water that holds up the earth that supports the agriculture that supports the people who support the scriptures (by reciting them, presumably).
The Heavenly Series of Bases
The priest asks the Buddha what the basis of this empty space is, and he replies that it has no basis. It exists only because of the sun and moon (空無所依。但因日月故,有虛空). This point represents the pivot to the next series about the basis of the heavens that’s parallel to the basis of the earth.
The trajectory of this series is upwards, meaning that the higher heavens are the basis of the lower heavens.
Basis of the Heavens | Ch. | |
---|---|---|
Sun and Moon | 日月 | |
Heaven of the Four Kings | 四王天住 | |
Heaven of the Thirty-Three | 三十三天住 | |
Yama’s Heaven | 㷿摩天住 | |
Tuṣita Heaven | 兜瑟哆天住 | |
Nirmāṇarati Heaven | 化樂天住 | |
Paranirmāṇarati Heaven | 他化樂天住 | |
The Brahma World | 梵世住 | |
Mahābrahmā | 大梵住 | |
Patient Gentleness | 忍辱溫良住 | |
Nirvāṇa | 涅槃住 |
When the priest asks what the basis of Nirvāṇa is, the Buddha replies:
「梵志,意欲依無窮事。汝今從我受問無邊,然涅槃者無所依住。但涅槃滅訖;涅槃為最。梵志,以此義故,從我行梵行。」
“Priest, you want the basis for something that has no end. You could put questions to me that are limitless, but nirvāṇa has no place that’s its basis. Only nirvāṇa is the end of cessation; nirvāṇa is the highest. Priest, the religious life is practiced under me for this goal.”
At this point, the priest takes refuge and asks to be a layman in the Buddha’s teaching.
Heaven vs. Earth, Spiritual Development vs. Scripture
There’s a couple things to note: The first three (scriptures, people, and grain) and last two items (patient gentleness and Nirvāṇa) of the entire series are not cosmological items. The first three are the material basis of religion (texts, people, and food), and the last items are the spiritual basis of religion (good qualities and the place of liberation). Everything sandwiched between these two dimensions of religion is a tour-de-force of Heaven and Earth.
The earth, though, is decidedly material in nature, representing the elemental basis of the land on which we stand. There is no mention of the spiritual opposites of the heavens: hell, hungry ghosts, and animals. So, we might say that the cosmological series continues the materialistic point of view that it begins with: texts instead of meaning.
The Role of Nirvāṇa
This presentation of the heavens has it’s own curiosity: There is no formless realm. Or, perhaps there is! Perhaps Nirvāṇa represent the formless realm in this model of the heavens. This sūtra makes me wonder: The formless realm seems peculiar to Buddhist cosmology. Perhaps it was a later development that inserted a kind of heavenly “asymptote” that approaches but never reaches Nirvāṇa.
We should note too that while the Buddha says Nirvāṇa is the ultimate end goal, he doesn’t put this point in the context of ending rebirth, but rather in the context of the basis of the heavens. In fact, it could even be argued that this sūtra presents Nirvāṇa as an apex of rarefied heavenly existence akin to empty space that the earth rests upon.
Setting that aside, though, it’s also quite interesting to me that Nirvāṇa is presented as the basis for good qualities like “patient gentleness,” which support the existence of Brahmā when people develop them. The implication is that it would be impossible for such virtues to be cultivated without Nirvāṇa. This makes it a positive basis for spirituality and the higher development of human beings in general.