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　　This twelvefold world process is kept going by craving for the six objects and by attachment to the six sense faculties deemed to belong to a "self." Craving itself is kindled by the discrimination between "likes and dislikes," that is, choice and rejection motivated by greed, hatred and delusion.

　　 What "like and dislike" commonly is called, induced by that, desire comes into being.

　　Sutta Nipata, v.867

　　It is this ego-centered discrimination of "like and dislike" that gives to the world its deceptive coloring — its semblance of reality, meaning and value — which is derived from those subjective emotions. But he who is neither carried away by the unreal nor recoils from the real — and thus neither goes too far nor lags behind — he is able to remove that deceptive coloring (ragaratta: colored by passion) and to gain dispassion (viraga). When the coloring fades away, the bare processes of body and mind will appear in their true nature as being void of a core of permanence, happiness and selfhood. In the sense of that triple voidness, too, this world is unreal.

　　 "Look at the world as void, Mogharaja, ever mindful! Uprooting the view of self you may thus be one who overcomes death."

　　Sutta Nipata, v.1119

　　Through freedom from lust and greed (vv.10-11), there is the final fading away of the fictive reality bestowed by attraction.

　　Through freedom from hatred (v.12), there is the final fading away of the fictive reality bestowed by aversion and aggression.

　　Through freedom from delusion (v.13), greed and hatred come to an end, and there is the final fading away of all vain hopes and fears concerning the world and of all delusive ideologies about it.

　　A text in the Itivuttaka (No.49) of the Pali canon speaks of the ideological extremes of eternity-belief and belief in annihilation, using figurative expressions similar to those of our Uraga Sutta:

　　 "There are two kinds of view, O monks, and when deities and human beings are obsessed by them, some stick fast and others run too far; only those with eyes see.

　　"And how, O monks, do some stick fast

　　 Deities and human beings for the most part love existence, delight in existence, rejoice in existence. When Dhamma is taught to them for the ceasing of existence, their minds do not take to it, do not accept it, and do not become firm and resolute (about that Dhamma). Thus it is that some stick fast (to their old attachments).

　　"And how do some run too far

　　 Some feel ashamed, humiliated and disgusted by that same existence, and they welcome non-existence in this way: {Sirs, when with the breaking up of the body after death, this self is cut off, annihilated, does not become any more after death — that is peaceful, that is sublime, that is true.} Thus it is that some run too far.

　　"And how do those with eyes see

　　 Here a monk sees what has become as become, he has entered upon the way to dispassion for it, to the fading away of greed for it, to its cessation. This is how those with eyes see."

　　 14. He who has no dormant tendencies whatever,

　　whose unwholesome roots have been expunged,

　　— such a monk gives up the here and the beyond,

　　just as a serpent sheds its worn-out skin.

　　"Dormant tendencies" (anusaya) are mental defilements which have become so strong that, from a state of latency, they easily become active in reaction to appropriate stimuli. These dormant tendencies are, as it were, the deepest strata of three levels on which defilements may exist.

　　At the first level, the most obvious and the coarsest, the defilements become manifest in unwholesome, evil deeds and words. This is called the level of moral transgression (vitikkama-bhumi), which can be temporarily controlled by morality (sila).

　　The second level is that of a purely mental involvement (pariyutthana-bhumi), namely, i…

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