The Directed and the Undirected

I. The Question: What Could an Undirected Aspiration Be?

Every aspiration has something it is aimed at—an aspiration is always aspiration toward something. I aspire to be reborn well; I aspire to cut the fetters; I aspire to liberation. The word itself, in its plainest sense, names the mind reaching out toward a goal not yet in hand. So when the Āgamas set the "undirected" (appaṇihita) beside the "empty" and the "signless," and call it one of the three doors of liberation that open onto nibbāna, a near-paradox surfaces. What could an aspiration with nothing it is aimed at possibly be? If it aspires to nothing whatever, is it still a kind of aspiration at all? Or is it precisely because it is still counted among the meditative attainments, still turned toward nibbāna, that it is not blank emptiness but a particular kind of aspiration—one that draws aspiration itself to a close, an aspiration whose object is "to aspire no longer"?

The previous paper in this series already drew one line clearly. The "wanting" on which aspiration rests is not craving (taṇhā) but wholesome desire (chanda); and the two are told apart not by the strength of the will but by the direction the desire takes.¹ That paper settled the matter on the axis of direction. The present paper takes the next step along the same axis. If direction is what decides everything, then let us move our attention from "the desire on which aspiration rests" to "the direction of aspiration itself," and watch how the Āgamas arrange aspiration's various orientations—from the lowest, the wish for a good rebirth, to the highest, that self-reverting "undirected."

The thesis can be stated in a single line before it is shown. Aspiration is the mind's inclining-and-resolving; it climbs from the wish for a good rebirth all the way to its orientation toward nibbāna, and the spectrum's highest rung—the undirected—is just this inclining bent to its full strength, taking "no longer inclining toward any becoming" as that toward which it inclines. Put otherwise: the highest aspiration is aspiration aspired to the point where no further aspiring remains. What follows first lays out the canonical witnesses (§II), then distills from them the structural claim of a "spectrum" (§III), brings the teleology of intention from Western action theory to bear as a clarifying mirror (§IV), corrects three misreadings into which it is easy to slip (§V), and closes by setting a signpost (§VI).

II. The Canonical Basis

2.1 The Axis of the Directed: the "May I…" Ladder of the Ākaṅkheyya

The Āgamas contain a discourse whose very title is "aspiration." The Madhyamāgama's Discourse on Wishes (no. 105, corresponding to the Ākaṅkheyya Sutta, MN 6) is built throughout from a dozen or more sentences each opening "May I…," arraying the aspirations a precept-keeping monk can raise into one complete ladder, from low to high:²

"Monk, may I have kinfolk such that, when their bodies break up after death, they will surely rise to a good destination, reborn among the gods…"

"Monk, may I, with the three fetters exhausted, become a stream-enterer…"

"Monk, may I, with the taints exhausted, attain the taintless, the liberation of mind and the liberation by wisdom."

The ladder begins by wishing kinfolk a good rebirth among the gods; its middle reaches for the first fruit of stream-entry and on to the cutting of the five lower fetters; its summit reaches for the final destruction of the taints, the twofold liberation of mind and wisdom. What is worth noticing is that, from first to last, the grammar is one and the same: "may I." The mind that aspires is never exchanged for another; only the object aspired-to is exchanged, and that object climbs rung by rung—from the felicities of the human and heavenly realms up to the taintless extinction of nibbāna. A discourse named for "aspiration" has, with its own hand, laid aspiration out as a continuous incline running from the seeking of existence to the seeking of the taintless. This is the most complete single stretch of canonical ground for the "spectrum" claim of this paper.

2.2 One Inclining of Mind: the Saṅkhārupapatti

The Madhyamāgama's Discourse on the Aspiration-Conditioned (no. 168) confirms the same structure from another side.³ Here the rungs of the ladder are the levels of meditative absorption, and the discourse describes, level by level, how a practitioner is reborn in the corresponding heaven because of "delighting in and inclining toward abiding in" a given attainment:

"Delighting in that attainment and wishing to abide there… abiding there and delighting there, at the breaking-up of the body he is reborn among the Brahmā gods… having first cultivated that absorption, he is afterward reborn there."

From the first absorption up to the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, wherever there is "delighting and wishing to abide"—that is, wherever the mind has taken delight in some attainment and raised the thought "may I abide here"—that becomes the cause of rebirth in the corresponding heaven. In other words: even cultivated as far as the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, the very summit of the three realms, so long as the mind still "delights and wishes to abide," it is still a kind of directed aspiration, still caught within the structure of rebirth. Only the discourse's final rung is no longer of this kind:

"He dwells having attained the cessation of perception-and-feeling. By wisdom he sees, and the taints are exhausted by the knowledge that cuts them… he no longer undergoes the suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death; this is called the limit of suffering."

The rung of "the cessation of perception-and-feeling" (saññāvedayita-nirodha) no longer leads to "rebirth there" but to "the exhaustion of the taints," to "the limit of suffering" (the ultimate edge of suffering, that is, the highest and final point). Eight rungs of "delighting and wishing to abide, and so reborn there," set against one rung of "cessation, and so reaching the limit of suffering": this single drop in level is the hinge on which "the directed" and "the undirected" are set side by side within one and the same discourse.⁴

2.3 The Axis of the Undirected: Appaṇihita among the Three Doors

The spectrum's far end is fixed by the "undirected" among the three doors of liberation. Treating the three concentrations (the empty, the signless, the undirected), the Ekottarāgama gives the undirected the most spare of definitions:⁵

"What is the concentration of the undirected? The undirected means: toward all phenomena whatsoever, one neither aspires nor seeks. This is called the concentration of the undirected."

Note the governing verb of the definition—"aspires-and-seeks." The undirected does not set up some new psychological activity alongside aspiration; it takes the very act of aspiring-and-seeking and, toward "all phenomena whatsoever," draws it in and ceases to exert it. The undirected, in other words, is a negative operation performed directly upon the inclining faculty that is aspiration itself. Where the Discourse on Wishes raised aspiration's object rung by rung, here aspiration's object is withdrawn altogether. The two ends of one axis meet at this point.

2.4 The Self-Loosening at the Spectrum's Far End

What repays attention is this: in the Āgamas, "seeking" is not severed by an outside force. Rather, when what is sought rises to nibbāna, it begins to loosen of itself. Several passages catch the trajectory of this turn.

First, the Saṃyuktāgama's discourse no. 64 puts the loosening most cleanly, in three interlocking negations:⁶

"For one who grasps nothing, there is nothing sought; for one who seeks nothing, nibbāna reveals itself."

Once grasping ceases, "seeking" ceases with it; once "seeking" ceases, nibbāna stands forth of its own accord. The "nothing sought" here is not an added precept but the natural consequence of "nothing grasped."

Second, in its chapter on the eight difficulties, the Ekottarāgama, treating giving, compresses the same incline into the motivating thought behind a single act of generosity: in giving, a practitioner may give while "seeking [final] extinction" rather than "seeking rebirth among the gods," and so move gradually toward extinction.⁷ One and the same gift: let the motivating intention point toward "seeking cessation" rather than "seeking rebirth among the gods," and the whole direction of the meritorious deed turns over. This is a miniature of the rule that the higher the object aspired-to, the looser the structure of seeking.

Third, the Saṃyuktāgama's discourse no. 842 records the Buddha facing an outsider set on "seeking rebirth in the Brahmā world." The Buddha does not rebuke the man for aspiring; he replaces the object sought—Brahmā—with nibbāna, teaching him to incline "toward nibbāna" by way of the noble eightfold path.⁸ What most deserves notice here is that the Buddha keeps the structure of "raising an aspiration and inclining toward," changing only aspiration's terminus. Aspiration itself need not be discarded; what wants transposing is only its direction.

Fourth, the Saṃyuktāgama's discourse no. 80, the Discourse on the Noble Seal of the Dharma, gives a sequence running from the empty through the signless to "nothingness," and states plainly that this series of contemplations is throughout a "phenomenon of danger, of cessation, of dispassion, of the knowledge that cuts," all of it inclined toward nibbāna:⁹

"Contemplating the cutting of the mark of greed, of hatred, of delusion—this is called nothingness… a phenomenon of danger, of cessation, of dispassion, of the knowledge that cuts; this is called the noble seal of the Dharma."

A point must be settled on the spot here: this "nothingness" denotes one of the three doors of liberation (the very door that "the undirected" also names), and not the "base of nothingness" (ākiñcaññāyatana, a formless attainment) of the formless realm. The two share a name but differ in fact; the distinction is unfolded in §V.

Set these four passages together and a single picture comes clear. When aspiration's object is pushed to the extreme of nibbāna, the act of "seeking" begins to cancel itself. For what nibbāna is, is exactly the thoroughgoing cessation of all grasping and craving; take "the cessation of craving" as craving's object, and craving falls away of itself at the moment of arrival. The spectrum's far end turns out to be the point at which aspiration reverts upon itself.

III. The Argument: Aspiration as a Spectrum from Craving-Becoming to Non-Craving

3.1 Aspiration Is the Mind's Inclining-and-Resolving

Gathering the canonical witnesses of the previous section, a basic judgment can be set down first. In the idiom of the Āgamas, the three words "aspire," "seek," and "incline-toward" are often differing positional descriptions of one and the same inclining act, not three psychologically independent things. Aspiration is the act by which the mind bends its force toward some goal and settles its direction; to say "aspire to a good rebirth," "seek a good rebirth," and "the mind inclines toward a good rebirth" denotes, in the Āgama context, no different matter. Just for this reason, the paper need not coin a new term for this spectrum: the Āgamas' own string of "aspire / seek / incline" already runs through its full length.

3.2 One Inclining Faculty, Its Object Climbing Rung by Rung

The "may I" ladder of the Discourse on Wishes (§2.1) gives this spectrum its spine. Its point is not the number of aspirations it lists but this: the aspiring mind is throughout one and the same, while the object aspired-to climbs steadily—from wishing kinfolk a good rebirth and wishing one's own birth among the gods, to wishing the first absorption and on to the fourth, to wishing stream-entry, once-return, non-return, and finally to wishing the final destruction of the taints, the twofold liberation of mind and wisdom. At no rung is a "different mind" substituted; what is exchanged is only the object that mind faces, and that object draws step by step nearer the taintless liberation, away from the tainted felicities of gods and humans. The height of an aspiration, then, is decided not by the strength of the will but by aspiration's direction—which answers, head to tail, the previous paper's claim that the difference between wholesome desire and craving lies not in intensity but in direction.¹

3.3 When What Is Aspired-To Rises to Nibbāna, "Seeking" Begins to Loosen of Itself

Were the incline only an endless ascent, it would still be a straight line of "the directed." The fineness of the Āgamas lies in this: the incline reverts at its summit. The four passages of §2.4 each witness, from a different angle, this one reversion—the Saṃyuktāgama's "nothing grasped, hence nothing sought"; the Ekottarāgama's "seek cessation, not rebirth among the gods"; discourse 842's "transpose seeking Brahmā into inclining toward nibbāna"; the Noble Seal's "dispassion and the knowledge that cuts, inclining toward nothingness." Together they point to one thing: seeking nibbāna is a seeking that cancels itself. Ordinary seeking, once it gets what it seeks, possesses; and possessing breeds the next seeking. Seeking nibbāna alone has for its object the cessation of all possessing and grasping, so that this one aspiration, in the very act of reaching its object, dissolves the structure of "seeking" along with it. A directed aspiration pushed to its extreme sheds the structure of its directedness of itself—and this is the inner logic by which the undirected can come on stage.

3.4 The Undirected: The Spectrum's Highest Rung

The place of the third door of liberation, the undirected, is now clear. The undirected is not some other thing lying outside this spectrum but precisely its highest rung: the mind bends its full force, taking "no longer inclining toward any becoming" as that toward which it inclines. It is still one of the meditative attainments, still inclined toward nibbāna, still the working of the path's power; it is therefore by no means a flat emptiness or a stalling. But what it inclines toward is "non-inclination" itself. To gather it in one line: the highest aspiration is aspiration aspired to the point where no further aspiring remains.

A clarification belongs here. Beyond the "aspiration-face" taken up at this point, the three doors of liberation have also a face as meditative attainment (bound up with one-pointedness and the settling of the mind) and a face as the contemplative insight of wisdom (the empty and signless mark of phenomena). Those two faces each have their own dedicated treatment and are not restated here; this paper takes up only their "aspiration-face"—the undirected as the objectless extreme of the paṇidhi spectrum.

IV. Interdisciplinary Bridges: The Teleology of Intention and the Directedness toward Non-Direction

To make plain the paradox that "the undirected is still a kind of aspiration," the discussion of "the teleology of intention" in Western action theory offers a rare and clean mirror.

Where they converge. In her Intention, G. E. M. Anscombe advanced a far-reaching view: whatever is intentional action can be understood under the description "for some end"—every volitional act is "toward something seen as good" (the classical sub specie boni, desired under the aspect of the good). This vindicates the Āgamas' "aspiration": the essence of aspiration is just this directedness, and the Discourse on Wishes' ladder from seeking a good rebirth to seeking nibbāna is one and the same intentional structure ascending through a series of differing "ends." On the point that aspiration is always aspiration toward something, action theory and the Āgamas read off the same tally.

Where they part. At the summit, however, the two diverge. The teleology of action theory commonly halts either at an endless regress ("behind every action there is always a still higher end") or at some ultimate good; its framework holds no rung for "having one's own endlessness as one's end." The Buddhist spectrum of aspiration reverts at the summit: the undirected is an intention "aimed at its own aimlessness"—a directedness that dissolves the very structure of directedness. This finds no place to rest in a pure teleology of action, for what it asks is not "swap in a higher end" but "aspire until the very structure of ends falls away of itself." That Buddhism can house this rung at all has its root in its ontology of non-self and non-grasping: when what is sought is precisely the cessation of all grasping, the seeking dissolves itself in the very moment of arrival.

A statement of irreducibility. It must be said emphatically: the foregoing is only a heuristic analogy, not a theoretical equivalence. Anscombe's teleology of intention is a descriptive analysis of the structure of human action and carries no soteriological ontology within it; this paper borrows it only to throw light on the single point that the undirected is still a mind-movement with direction, not a numbness or a stalling. One may by no means infer in reverse that the Buddhist undirected amounts to some position in action theory, or that the Āgamas' graded path to liberation can be reduced to a theory of intention. A mirror can show an outline; it is not the thing reflected.

A note in passing: the late Heidegger's "releasement" (Gelassenheit, a serene letting-be, a releasing of grasping that lets things be of themselves) does resonate with the undirected's posture of "no longer grasping, no longer fixing," and is often drawn upon to gloss this state. Yet one crucial difference must be kept. The Āgamas' undirected is arrived at by way of the graded ladder of aspiration—it is the outcome of the Discourse on Wishes' whole climb of "may I," reverting only at the summit. It coexists with aspiration and is made of aspiration; it is neither a mystic's leap to the top in a single stride nor a quietist's wholesale doing-nothing. The undirected does not bypass aspiration; it passes through it.

V. Corrections of the Middle Way

This section flags three readings into which it is easy to slip (marking doctrinal deviations with ❌ and textual traps with ⚠️), as boundary-stakes for holding to the Middle Way.

❌ The undirected is not "the abandonment of aspiration." The readiest misreading takes "the undirected" to mean "from here on, raise no aspiration whatever." The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra itself stops up this side-road with its own hand. On the one side it says "the uncommitted means, among all phenomena, to form no aspiration—this is the door of liberation of the uncommitted," and "one should not seek a reborn body within the three realms";¹⁰ on the other side it says the bodhisattva, "though dwelling in the three doors of liberation and contemplating nibbāna, does not cut off the original vow and good conduct,"¹¹ and even "practices the three doors of liberation yet does not forsake beings," and "being upheld by the great-compassionate mind of the original vow, though he practices emptiness he does not realize [its] verification."¹² What "the undirected" negates, then, is the grasping kind of seeking aimed at the existences of the three realms (aspiring to rebirth, aspiring to possess); it does not negate, nor extinguish, the original vow that "seeks nothing for itself but is set up for the sake of beings." The undirected is the removal of grasping, not the discarding of the vow—the two must be held apart. As for the deeper question—how a mind already free of all grasping can still raise a vow at all—this paper only sets the marker, reserving it for later in this volume.

❌ The undirected is not a cold emptiness. A second misreading takes the undirected for a passive blank of heart-grown-cold, desireless and seekless, a kind of numbness toward the world or a giving-up. This too misses. The undirected is throughout "inclined toward nibbāna"—it is still an attainment, still the working of the path's power, a de-acquisitive transposition of direction, not the cancellation of direction. It is not the collapse of "wanting nothing any longer" but the turn of "no longer wanting in the mode of possession." It is precisely within this turn that the original vow endures, rather than being wiped away along with the rest.

⚠️ The naming of the third door of liberation. The third of the three doors appears in the Chinese Āgamas now as "the undirected" (Ekottarāgama), now as "nothingness" (the Saṃyuktāgama's Noble Seal), while the Prajñāpāramitā treatises (such as the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra) more often render it "the uncommitted." The three names denote one and the same door of liberation (Pāli appaṇihita), but the terminology of the Chinese layer was never standardized: "nothingness" names it from the side of the empty content contemplated, "the undirected" from the side of the cessation of inclining (aspiring-and-seeking no more), "the uncommitted" from the side of no longer fashioning a rebirth. The reader must not, because three names stand together, mistake them for being literally word-for-word identical, or misjudge them as three different methods. This paper's prose keeps mainly to the Āgama-layer "the undirected / nothingness," flagging the name "the uncommitted" only as it arises when the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra is cited.

⚠️ "Nothingness": one name, two things. Following on, a trap must be pinned down again: the "nothingness" of the Noble Seal (one of the three doors of liberation) and the "base of nothingness" (ākiñcaññāyatana) among the four formless attainments share a name but differ in fact. The former is a door of liberating contemplation inclined toward nibbāna; the latter is a formless attainment still belonging to the summit of the three realms, still a kind of "abiding-in." Reading the texts here, one must not, on the strength of the shared word, conflate the two.

⚠️ The recensions of the Saṅkhārupapatti. When §2.2 above draws on the Discourse on the Aspiration-Conditioned, it takes the Chinese recension's structure, whose ladder is the levels of meditative absorption (delighting and wishing to abide, and so reborn in that heaven). It must be said honestly that the Pāli parallel (the Saṅkhārupapatti Sutta, MN 120) arrays a ladder that is not meditative absorptions but social-ethical items—faith, virtue, learning, generosity, wisdom. The two transmissions take different paths of exposition at this point, and may not be grafted onto one another: this paper does not read the Pāli text's "ladder of social-ethical items" into the citation of the Chinese Discourse on the Aspiration-Conditioned. The social incline of "from seeking a good rebirth to seeking the destruction of the taints" is something this paper grounds separately on the Chinese-complete Discourse on Wishes (§2.1), not on the Discourse on the Aspiration-Conditioned. The Pāli discourses throughout this paper serve as reference only, with no original text embedded.

VI. Conclusion

The essential layer. Aspiration is the mind's inclining-and-resolving. In the Āgamas it is not a grasping set against liberation but a continuous spectrum: one and the same "may I" mind, its object climbing rung by rung from seeking a good rebirth up to its orientation toward nibbāna; and when what is aspired-to rises to the extreme of nibbāna, the structure of "seeking" loosens of itself at the moment of arrival. The spectrum's highest rung—the undirected—is just this inclining bent to its full force, taking "no longer inclining toward any becoming" as that toward which it inclines. In a word: the highest aspiration is aspiration aspired to the point where no further aspiring remains.

The layer of practice. From this a directional hint follows. One need not set "the directed" and "the undirected" against each other as two camps, still less belittle "raising aspiration" out of a haste to "seek nothing." The graded path the Āgamas show is exactly one mind raising its object rung by rung—first putting "wanting," that driving force, to good use, letting its object grow ever higher and ever farther from possession, until what is sought (nibbāna) itself begins to loosen the "seeking." Aspiration is not a thing to be pressed flat but a thing to be steered; the work to be done upon aspiration lies not in diminishing its force but in correcting its direction.

The layer of open questions. Yet this paper also leaves an unanswered question at the summit. If aspiration carried to its extreme is the undirected, and the bodhisattva nonetheless "does not cut off the original vow, does not forsake beings"—then how can a mind already free of all grasping, already seeking nothing, still raise a vow? Is "raising a vow with a mind of nothing-to-attain" possible, and if so, how? This question reaches into a deeper engagement of vow and emptiness; the paper only sets its marker and lays its path. The full treatment is reserved for later in this volume.

With this, Part II of the volume—the aspiration and wholesome desire of the Āgamas—comes to a close. Where Part I established the vow as arousal and traced the immovability native to it, Part II has moved from "the will on which aspiration rests" to "the direction of aspiration itself," following paṇidhi across its spectrum from the directed to the undirected. The baton now passes to the treatment of the vow as perfection (pāramitā). How a mind that grasps nothing can yet aspire—that is the matter held in reserve, signposted here and unfolded later.

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References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

• Saṃyuktāgama, translated by Guṇabhadra (Liu Song), Taishō vol. 2, No. 99.
• Madhyamāgama, translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō vol. 1, No. 26.
• Ekottarāgama, translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō vol. 2, No. 125.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, attributed to Nāgārjuna, translated by Kumārajīva (Later Qin), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.
• Pāli parallels (reference only, no text reproduced): Majjhima Nikāya—Ākaṅkheyya Sutta (MN 6), Saṅkhārupapatti Sutta (MN 120); the loci for the three doors of liberation (suññata / animitta / appaṇihita).

II. Modern Scholarship

• Anscombe, G. E. M. Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957. (The teleology of intention; sub specie boni.)
• Heidegger, Martin. Gelassenheit. Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1959. (Releasement / serene letting-be.)

III. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō / PTS no.	Author / Translator
Saṃyuktāgama	Saṃyuktāgama	T02 No. 99《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Guṇabhadra
Madhyamāgama	Madhyamāgama	T01 No. 26《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗	Gautama Saṅghadeva
Ekottarāgama	Ekottarāgama	T02 No. 125《增壹阿含經》EkottarāgamaT2, No. 125View on CBETA online reader ↗	Gautama Saṅghadeva
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	T25 No. 1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Nāgārjuna / Kumārajīva
MN 6	Ākaṅkheyya Sutta	M I 33 (PTS)	—
MN 120	Saṅkhārupapatti Sutta	M iii 99 (PTS)	—

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Cross-References to Other Papers in the Series

• Carrying forward P04 (wholesome desire vs. craving): this paper turns from "the will on which aspiration rests" to "the direction of aspiration itself," extending P04's claim that the difference lies in direction, not intensity—now along the full spectrum of aspiration's objects.
• Carrying forward Part I (resolve and non-retreat): Part I established the immovability native to the vow; Part II places that vow within the Āgamas' graded incline of "may I," from seeking existence to seeking the taintless.
• Signpost to Part III (the vow as perfection, pāramitā): with Part II sealed, the baton passes to the treatment of vowing as a perfection of the bodhisattva path.
• Signpost (later in this volume) (aspiration with a mind of nothing-to-attain): the full argument for how a mind already free of grasping can still raise a vow—the coexistence of the undirected and the original vow—is reserved for a later paper; here only the marker is set.
• Treated elsewhere (the meditative-attainment face and the wisdom face of the three doors of liberation): this paper takes up only the "aspiration-face" of the undirected; the face as concentration (non-abiding even in nibbāna) and the face as the contemplation of the empty mark of phenomena belong to dedicated treatments in other volumes.

Footnotes

1. See the previous paper in this series, Chanda, Not Taṇhā (Part II · P04). That paper argued that the will on which aspiration rests is wholesome desire (chanda) and not craving (taṇhā), the difference lying in direction rather than in intensity; it is the groundwork for the present paper's "spectrum of direction." ↩ ↩²

2. Madhyamāgama, fascicle 26, Discourse on Wishes (no. 105), Taishō vol. 1, No. 26, pp. 595c–596b. The Pāli parallel is the Ākaṅkheyya Sutta (MN 6), cited at PTS reference-level only. ↩

3. Madhyamāgama, fascicle 43, Discourse on the Aspiration-Conditioned (no. 168), Taishō vol. 1, No. 26, p. 700c. The Pāli parallel is the Saṅkhārupapatti Sutta (MN 120); on the divergence of the two recensions, see §V. ↩

4. Same discourse, p. 701b. "The cessation of perception-and-feeling" is saññāvedayita-nirodha; "the limit of suffering" denotes the ultimate edge of suffering, that is, the highest and final point. ↩

5. Ekottarāgama, fascicle 16, the chapter on the three concentrations (the empty, the signless, the undirected), Taishō vol. 2, No. 125, p. 630b. "The undirected" corresponds to Pāli appaṇihita. ↩

6. Saṃyuktāgama, fascicle 3, discourse no. 64, Taishō vol. 2, No. 99, p. 15c. ↩

7. Ekottarāgama, fascicle 37, chapter on the eight difficulties, Taishō vol. 2, No. 125, p. 755b (giving while seeking [final] extinction rather than rebirth among the gods, and so moving gradually toward extinction). ↩

8. Saṃyuktāgama, fascicle 30, discourse no. 842, Taishō vol. 2, No. 99, p. 215b (the Buddha transposing an outsider's "seeking rebirth in the Brahmā world" into inclining "toward nibbāna" by way of the noble eightfold path). ↩

9. Saṃyuktāgama, fascicle 3, discourse no. 80 (the Discourse on the Noble Seal of the Dharma), Taishō vol. 2, No. 99, pp. 20a–b. This "nothingness" denotes one of the three doors of liberation, sharing a name but differing in fact from the formless realm's "base of nothingness" (ākiñcaññāyatana). ↩

10. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicles 49 and 20, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, pp. 406b, 207c. "The uncommitted" is the Prajñāpāramitā treatises' rendering of the third door of liberation; it denotes the same appaṇihita as the Āgamas' "the undirected / nothingness," without being word-for-word identical. ↩

11. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 38, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 283a. ↩

12. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 78, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 594b. That the bodhisattva, "though practicing emptiness, does not realize [its] verification," held back by the great-compassionate mind of the original vow, belongs in its meditative-attainment face to a dedicated treatment elsewhere and is not restated here. ↩