Sāratthappakāsinī

The commentary whose gloss on a group of monks liberated "by wisdom" still divides Theravāda teachers over meditation.

Pali, the original language

Original language: Pali

Overview

In one of the connected discourses a wanderer from a rival sect, Susīma, joins the Buddha's order to learn the teaching quickly and hears a group of monks declare that they have reached final liberation, though they admit to none of the higher powers or formless meditative states: they are, they say, liberated by wisdom. The Sāratthappakāsinī, Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Buddha's discourses grouped by theme, glosses the phrase in a few words: these monks were without jhāna, the deep meditative absorptions, and reached the goal by bare insight alone, as sukkhavipassaka, "dry-insight" practitioners. On the same discourse it explains why the Buddha's attendant Ānanda brought Susīma to the Buddha instead of ordaining him himself: he suspected the newcomer meant to use the order against it. The book was composed in Pāli in the fifth century at the Mahāvihāra in Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka; its closing verses say it was made for an elder named Jotipāla, that it presents the teaching of the Mahāvihāra monks, taken from the old root commentary, and that it runs to some seventy-eight recitation units of its own. In modern times the dry-insight gloss has become the centre of a dispute over whether the discourses allow liberation without absorption. The scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi took the question to the Journal of the Pali Text Society in 2007 and again in 2009, comparing the discourse with its Chinese parallels; the monk Ajahn Brahmali replied that the dominant position of the discourses is that absorption is required.

Key concepts

What is a dry-insight practitioner?

A dry-insight practitioner, sukkhavipassaka, is someone who reaches liberation by insight alone, without first entering the jhānas, the deep meditative absorptions. "Dry" means unmoistened by the calm and joy of those absorptions. Buddhaghosa uses the word for the monks Susīma meets, who say they are "liberated by wisdom" although they have no psychic powers and none of the formless meditations: by wisdom only, he glosses, they are freed.

What are the four nutriments?

They are four kinds of food that keep a being going: edible food, contact, volition and consciousness. Edible food builds and maintains the body; contact, the meeting of a sense with its object, feeds feeling; volition, the mind's intending, feeds the next existence; and consciousness feeds the mind and body that arise with it. Calling all four food shows that life is sustained, moment by moment, not owned.

What are the four floods?

They are sensual desire, the craving for becoming, wrong views and ignorance, called floods because they sweep beings down into bad rebirths and are as wide as existence itself. Buddhaghosa pairs each with what crosses it: faith carries a person over the flood of views at stream-entry, and later stages cross the floods of becoming and sensual desire, until wisdom crosses ignorance at arahantship.

Who is Māra in the connected discourses?

Māra is the tempter who tries to keep beings within the round of desire and death. In the connected discourses he appears in person, interrupting a monk such as Samiddhi just as his meditation deepens, or claiming that all pleasures, human and divine, are snares belonging to his domain. The commentary treats his visits as tests: the right answer to Māra is to recognise him, after which he has no hold.

Themes of the book

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

Freed by Wisdom Alone

Monks who claim final liberation without the deep absorptions force a hard question about the path. Whether seeing clearly is enough, or calm must come first, still divides Theravāda teachers.

Buddhaghosa's gloss is short and has had a long life: the monks who told Susīma they were liberated by wisdom were without the absorptions and reached the goal by insight alone. He adds that the Buddha mentioned them to show that the newcomer was not the only one. The same commentary is alert to false arrivals. It reads Ānanda's caution with Susīma as a judgement of motive, and Vakkali's story as a monk mistaking passions held quiet for passions gone, until pain showed him the difference.

insight
insight meditation
concentration
meditation
arahantship
liberation
wisdom
nibbana

Enter a dialogue

Hard Sayings Opened

The connected discourses are full of riddling verses and stark images, from a flood crossed without effort to parents eating their child. The commentary asks what each image is for and whom it was meant to shake.

Many of the connected discourses are short exchanges with gods, kings and Māra, and their force lies in a single image that the commentary unpacks. A flood crossed without standing still or striving becomes the four floods of desire, becoming, views and ignorance, and the qualities that cross each. A tortoise drawing in its limbs, a turtle ignoring a friend's warning, a head on fire, food eaten like a lost child's flesh: Buddhaghosa reads each as a lesson in what craving does and what attention can do against it.

craving
attachment
suffering
feeling
defilements
death
impermanence
four noble truths

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 2,306
distinct concepts: 1,468
by passages held, corpus-wide: #20

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: “karma” and “rebirth”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 84 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
karma	rebirth	51
liberation	meditation	34
meditation	mindfulness	33
liberation	suffering	32
impermanence	suffering	27
rebirth	suffering	25
liberation	rebirth	23
karma	suffering	17
generosity	karma	16
impermanence	liberation	13
karma	meditation	13
impermanence	meditation	12
karma	liberation	11
meditation	rebirth	10
generosity	liberation	9
impermanence	mindfulness	9
liberation	mindfulness	9
generosity	rebirth	7
meditation	suffering	7
generosity	impermanence	6
impermanence	karma	5
impermanence	rebirth	5
mindfulness	suffering	4
generosity	meditation	2
generosity	mindfulness	1
generosity	suffering	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 you are here 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)
The smaller of two commentaries sharing one name, both ascribed to Buddhaghosa: this one explains the nine recitations that open the Minor Collection.
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