..续本文上一页 called "exhaustion of the cankers" (asavakkhaya).
17."Bathed with the inner bathing" (sinato antarena sinanena). According to the Comy., the Buddha used this phrase to rouse the attention of the brahman Sundarika Bharadvaja, who was in the assembly and who believed in purification by ritual bathing. The Buddha foresaw that if he were to speak in praise of "purification by bathing," the brahman would feel inspired to take ordination under him and finally attain to Arahatship.
18.Bharadvaja was the clan name of the brahman. Sundarika was the name of the river to which that brahman ascribed purifying power. See also the Sundarika-Bharadvaja Sutta in the Sutta Nipata.
19.Based on Bhikkhu Ñanamoli”s version, with a few alterations.
20.Three are fords; the other four are rivers.
21.The text has Phaggu which is a day of brahmanic purification in the month of Phagguna (February-March). Ñanamoli translates it as "Feast of Spring."
22.Uposatha.
23."It is here, 0 brahman, that you should bathe." Comy.: i.e., in the Buddha”s Dispensation, in the waters of the Noble Eightfold Path.
In the Psalms of the Sisters (Therigatha), the nun Punnika speaks to a brahman as follows:
Nay now, who, ignorant to the ignorant,
Hath told thee this: that water-baptism
From evil kamma can avail to free
Why then the fishes and the tortoises,
The frogs, the watersnake, the crocodiles
And all that haunt the water straight to heaven
Will go. Yea, all who evil kamma work —
Butchers of sheep and swine, fishers, hunters of game,
Thieves, murderers — so they but splash themselves
With water, are from evil kamma free!
— Transl. by C. A. F. Rhys Davids, from Early Buddhist Poetry, ed. I. B. Horner Publ. by Ananda Semage, Colombo 11.
The Discourse on Effacement
Introduction
The Buddha”s Discourse on Effacement (Sallekha Sutta; quoted as M. 8) is the eighth of the Collection of Middle Length Texts (Majjhima Nikaya). Its subject matter is closely connected with that of preceding text, The Simile of the Cloth (M. 7), these two discourses supplement each other in several ways.
The Simile of the Cloth speaks of sixteen defilements of social conduct as impeding the progress on higher stages of the path to deliverance. The present Discourse on Effacement widens the range to forty-four detrimental qualities of mind which must be effaced. These include thirteen of the sixteen defilements in M. 7 (items 1-11 and 16 of list in Sec. 3 of M. 7), but they go beyond the realm of social ethics, extending also to the hindrances, the path factors, etc.; and special attention is given to the effacement of wrong views (Sec. 12, No. 44). This discourse supplements M. 7 also by dealing with the practical methods of effacement, from the very beginning with thought-arising (Sec. 13), on to avoidance (Sec. 14), etc.; and these methods apply as well to the purification from the sixteen defilements given in M. 7. On the other hand, the 7th discourse gives more details about the higher stages of progress that follow after the initial and partial purification.
(Sec. 12) "Effacement" means the radical removal of detrimental qualities of mind. The forty-four Modes of Effacement (as we may call them) are enumerated in this discourse no less than five times, and the first formulation (in Sec. 12) is very significant: "Others will be harmful, we shall not be harmful here," and so forth through all the other items. This bespeaks of the Buddha”s realistic outlook as befitting a world that cannot be improved by mere wishing nor by "preaching at it. " There is no use nor hope in waiting for our neighbour to change his ways. "Cleanup campaigns" should start at our own door, and then the neighbours may well be more responsive to our own example than to our preaching. Besides, if the aim i…
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