The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning

Nine short recitations, each given back its story: a twelve-year quarrel, a city in plague, ghosts wailing in a palace.

Pali, the original language

Original title: Paramatthajotikā I
Original language: Pali

Overview

Nine short pieces make up the Khuddakapāṭha, the "short readings" that open the Minor Collection of the Pāli scriptures: the formula for taking refuge, the ten training rules of a novice, the thirty-two parts of the body, a novice's catechism, and five discourses, among them those on blessings and on loving-kindness. The Paramatthajotikā I, "illustrator of ultimate meaning", is the Pāli commentary on them, ascribed to Buddhaghosa by tradition and dated to the fifth century, though scholars such as Oskar von Hinüber doubt that the commentaries on the Minor Collection are his. Helmer Smith edited the commentary with the readings for the Pali Text Society in 1915, and Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli's English translation of both, The Minor Readings and The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning, appeared from the same society in 1960. Where a reading is short, the commentary supplies its occasion. The discourse on blessings, it says, answered a dispute that had run for twelve years among men, gods and Brahmās over whether a good omen is something seen, something heard or something sensed. It sets the Jewel Discourse in Vesālī, a city struck at once by famine, by spirits drawn in by the stench of the unburied dead, and by plague, until two princes of the Licchavis, its ruling clan, went to Rājagaha and brought the Buddha back with King Bimbisāra's leave. It ties the verses on the dead who stand outside the walls to the same king: his relatives, reborn as hungry ghosts, cried out in his palace at night because he had dedicated a gift to no one, and the Buddha told him to give in their name.

Key concepts

What counts as a blessing in the discourse on blessings?

A blessing, maṅgala, is whatever leads to happiness and good rebirth, and the commentary insists these are deeds, not omens. Keeping religious observances, serving others, planting groves and building bridges are blessings because of where they lead. The discourse thereby answers people who looked for good luck in things seen, heard or sensed, and moves the question from signs to conduct.

What does it mean to take refuge?

Taking refuge is going to the Buddha, his teaching and the community of his disciples as one's protection and guide. The commentary explains it as a decision of the mind, made with confidence and with the Three Jewels as its object, not a ritual phrase. It is the first of the short readings because every later commitment, of a layperson or a novice, rests on it.

What is the difference between a natural wrong and a wrong by rule?

A natural wrong is an act harmful in itself, rising from greed, hatred or delusion, such as killing or stealing: it is wrong for anyone, whether a rule forbids it or not. A wrong by rule is an act that is wrong only for someone who has accepted a rule against it, such as a novice eating after noon. The ten training rules contain both, which is why some are shared with lay followers and some are not.

What is the contemplation of the thirty-two parts of the body?

It is a meditation that goes through the body part by part, hair of the head, body hair, nails, teeth, skin and on to the organs and fluids, and sees each as it is. Each part is examined by colour, shape, smell and where it comes from. Hair found in food makes the food repellent at once: the practice turns that ordinary reaction on the body one takes to be oneself.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What Each Reading Answered

The short readings are recited for protection and blessing, often with no hint of why they were first spoken. Knowing the trouble each one answered changes what a listener hears in it.

Where a reading is a few lines long, the commentary supplies the crisis behind it. A twelve-year quarrel over whether a good omen is something seen, heard or sensed ends in a list of blessings that are all deeds, not signs. Vesālī, struck by famine, spirits and plague, receives the Jewel Discourse. Monks frightened out of the forest by the tree spirits they had displaced are sent back with loving-kindness. Hungry ghosts wailing in a king's palace teach that the dead depend on gifts given in their name.

auspiciousness
merit
giving
generosity
loving-kindness
karma
rebirth
buddha
scriptural interpretation

Enter a dialogue

Refuge, Rules and the Body

The first readings a novice learns are a refuge formula, ten rules and a list of the body's parts. What it means to commit, to abstain and to look at one's own body without illusion is decided in these few lines.

Buddhaghosa takes the beginner's texts as seriously as any discourse. Refuge can be kept or broken, and he says how each happens. The ten rules divide into acts wrong by nature and acts wrong only because a rule forbids them, and taking several together counts as a single intention. The thirty-two parts of the body, from hair to urine, are each examined by colour, shape, smell and source, until a restless mind tires of roaming among them and settles on the one that suits it.

precepts
monastic discipline
virtue
ethical conduct
body contemplation
asubha meditation
anatomy
body
non-self
meditation

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 515
distinct concepts: 520
by passages held, corpus-wide: #143

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “anatomy” and “body contemplation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 89 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
anatomy	body contemplation	32
body contemplation	non-self	30
body contemplation	meditation	27
meditation	non-self	22
karma	merit	13
anatomy	non-self	12
anatomy	meditation	9
buddhist ethics	karma	9
liberation	meditation	9
liberation	merit	6
buddhist ethics	liberation	5
meditation	merit	3
buddhist ethics	merit	2
karma	liberation	2
buddhist ethics	meditation	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Manorathapūraṇī
The last of his four commentaries on the collections of discourses: its closing verses name it the Manorathapūraṇī, "fulfiller of the wish", because it completed his wish to explain them all.
PI
Pañcappakaraṇa-aṭṭhakathā
Five commentaries gathered as one work, ascribed to Buddhaghosa, completing the explanation of the Abhidhamma that the Aṭṭhasālinī and the Sammohavinodanī begin.
PI
Papañcasūdanī
Written for a monk Buddhaghosa had once lived with in a port town, probably in South India, and the home of his reading of the mindfulness discourse.
PI
Paramatthajotikā II
Ascribed to Buddhaghosa by tradition and doubted by modern scholars, a commentary that explains each discourse of the Suttanipāta by first asking what occasioned it.
PI
Sāratthappakāsinī
Made for the elder Jotipāla, and home of the "dry insight" gloss on the Susīma discourse that is still argued over.
PI
Sumaṅgalavilāsinī
Begins with history, the council that first recited the texts, before explaining the long discourses, the first collection in the canon's order.
PI
The Dispeller of Delusion (Sammohavinodanī)
Explains the Vibhaṅga, the Abhidhamma's second book: the middle of the three commentaries ascribed to Buddhaghosa, between the Aṭṭhasālinī and the one on the five remaining books.
PI
The Expositor (Aṭṭhasālinī)
The first of the three Abhidhamma commentaries ascribed to Buddhaghosa, said by a Sri Lankan chronicle to have been written in India, before he crossed to the island.
PI
The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning (Paramatthajotikā I) you are here PI
The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)
His one treatise rather than a commentary: the book his commentaries on the long and middle-length discourses send the reader to whenever meditation comes up.
PI

— or open another of their works