The Discourse on Right View
The Sammaditthi Sutta and its Commentary
translated from the Pali by
Bhikkhu Ñanamoli
edited and Revised by
Bhikkhu Bodhi
© 1994
Contents
The Translator
The Editor
Introduction
Part One: The Discourse on Right View (Sammaditthi Sutta)
Part Two: The Commentary to the Discourse on Right View
Notes
The Translator
Bhikkhu Ñanamoli was born in England in 1905 and graduated from Exeter College, Oxford. In 1948 he came to Sri Lanka, where he was ordained the following year at the Island Hermitage near Dodanduwa. During his 11 years in the Sangha Ven. Ñanamoli translated into lucid English some of the most difficult texts of Theravada Buddhism. In 1960, on one of his rare outings from the Hermitage, he suddenly passed away due to heart failure.
The Editor
Bhikkhu Bodhi is a Buddhist monk of American nationality, born in New York City in 1944. After completing a doctorate in philosophy at Claremont Graduate School, he came to Sri Lanka in 1972, and was ordained the same year under the eminent scholar-monk, Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya. Since 1984 he has been Editor for the Buddhist Publication Society, and its President since 1988.
Bhikkhus, just as the dawn is the forerunner and first indication of the rising of the sun, so is right view the forerunner and first indication of wholesome states.
For one of right view, bhikkhus, right intention springs up. For one of right intention, right speech springs up. For one of right speech, right action springs up. For one of right action, right livelihood springs up. For one of right livelihood, right effort springs up. For one of right effort, right mindfulness springs up. For one of right mindfulness, right concentration springs up. For one of right concentration, right knowledge springs up. For one of right knowledge, right deliverance springs up.
Anguttara Nikaya 10:121
Introduction
The Sammaditthi Sutta, the Discourse on Right View, is the ninth sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya, the Collection of Middle Length Discourses. Its expositor is the Venerable Sariputta Thera, the Buddha”s chief disciple and the foremost of the Master”s bhikkhu disciples in the exercise of the faculty of wisdom. The Buddha declared that next to himself, it was the Venerable Sariputta who excelled in turning the incomparable Wheel of the Dhamma, in expounding in depth and in detail the Four Noble Truths realized with the attainment of enlightenment. In the Sammaditthi Sutta the great disciple bears ample testimony to the Buddha”s words of praise, bequeathing upon us a discourse that has served as a primer of Buddhist doctrine for generations of monks in the monasteries of South and Southeast Asia.
As its title suggests, the subject of the Sammaditthi Sutta is right view. The analysis of right view undertaken in the sutta brings us to the very core of the Dhamma, since right view constitutes the correct understanding of the central teachings of the Buddha, the teachings which confer upon the Buddha”s doctrine its own unique and distinctive stamp. Though the practice of right mindfulness has rightly been extolled as the crest jewel of the Buddha”s teaching, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the practice of mindfulness, or any other approach to meditation, only becomes an effective instrument of liberation to the extent that it is founded upon and guided by right view. Hence, to confirm the importance of right view, the Buddha places it at the very beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path. Elsewhere in the Suttas the Buddha calls right view the forerunner of the path (pubbangama), which gives direction and efficacy to the other seven path factors.
Right view, as explained in the commentary to the Sammaditthi Sutta, has…
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