5:6  Upasīva’s Questions

Alone, Sakyan, with nothing to rely on,

I can’t venture across

the great flood.

Tell me, All-around Eye,

the support to rely on

for crossing over this flood.

The Buddha:

Mindfully focused on nothingness,1

relying on ‘There isn’t,’

you should cross over the flood.

Abandoning sensuality,

abstaining from conversations,

keep watch for the ending of

craving, night & day.

Upasīva:

One free from passion

for all sensuality

relying on nothingness, letting go of all else,

released in the highest emancipation of perception:

Does he stay there unaffected?

The Buddha:

One free from passion

for all sensuality

relying on nothingness, letting go of all else,

released in the highest emancipation of perception:

He stays there unaffected.

Upasīva:

If, All-around Eye, he stays there,

unaffected for many years,

right there

would he be cooled & released?

Would his consciousness be like that?

The Buddha:

As a flame overthrown by the force of the wind

goes to an end

that cannot be classified,2

so the sage freed from the name-body3

goes to an end

that cannot be classified.

Upasīva:

One who has reached the end:

Does he not exist,

or is he for eternity

free from dis-ease?

Please, sage, declare this to me

as this phenomenon has been known by you.

The Buddha:

One who has reached the end

has no criterion4

by which anyone would say that—

for him it doesn’t exist.

When all phenomena are done away with,5

all means of speaking

are done away with as well.

vv. 1069–1076

Notes

1. “Nothingness” here denotes the dimension of nothingness, one of the four levels of mental absorption on formless themes. One attains this level, after surmounting the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, by focusing on the perception, “There is nothing.” MN 26 tells us that Āḷāra Kālāma, the Buddha’s first teacher when the latter was still a Bodhisatta, had attained this level of mental absorption and had thought that it was the highest possible attainment. The Bodhisatta left him upon realizing that it was not true liberation from stress and suffering. Nevertheless, the dimension of nothingness can be used as a basis for the insight leading to that liberation. On this point, see Sn 5:14, below, and AN 9:36. On the strategy of relying on the formless states to cross over the flood, see MN 52, MN 106, MN 111, and AN 9:36.

2. For a discussion of this passage in light of early Buddhist theories of fire, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, chapter 1.

3. Nāma-kāya = mental activities of all sorts.

4. For a discussion of the meaning of “criterion” in this passage, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, chapter 1. On the Tathāgata as being undescribable, see Skill in Questions, chapter 9 and appendix 4.

5. This is one of the passages in the Canon that treats unbinding, not as a phenomenon (dhamma), but as the end of phenomena. On this point, see AN 3:137, note 1.