Questions of King Milinda Part 02

SR No.: 007682
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 2240
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 38 MB

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three nor five nor six hundred, not a thousand only, nor a hundred thousand, nor ten millions, nor ten thousand millions, not even only a billion laymen (have seen Nirvâna)-not to speak of twenty or thirty or a hundred or a thousand who have attained to clear understanding (of the four Truths)'. By
VI, 2.
OF MILINDA THE KING.
I take this to mean, 'Not to speak of comparatively small numbers who have experienced Abhisamaya, an innumerable host of laymen have reached Nirvâna—that is, have reached, and during their lives remained in, the third stage of the Path, and attained Arahatship just before they died. Abhisamaya is used either absolutely or in composition. Mânâbhisamaya (A. IV, 38, 5=M. I, 12) certainly, and perhaps Atthâbhisamaya, is used of Arahats, but they do not occur in our author. He uses occasionally Dhammâbhisamaya (see pp. 255, 350, &c., of the Pâli) and Katu-sakkâbhisamaya (see pp. 171, 334, &c.), but more frequently Abhisamaya absolutely. Dhammâbhisamaya, 'penetration into, clear understanding of, the Dhammas or Dhamma,' may refer to the four Dhammas of Anguttara IV, 1 (= M. P. S., IV, 2, 3), or to the comprehension of the qualities (Dhammas) of things, or (what is very much the same) to the comprehension of the principal doctrine (Dhamma) of the impermanence of all things. In the last case it would be the same thing, looked at from a slightly different point of view, as the Dhamma-kakkhu, the Eye for the Truths (see Sumangala Vilâsinf I, 237), or as that insight (Vipassanâ) which is the entrance to the Path. But the four Truths (as to sorrow, &c.) are also important Dhammas, and as the expression Katu-sakkâbhisamaya clearly refers to them and them only, this may also be the meaning of dhammâbhisamaya, or at any rate of abhisamaya standing above. So at least I take the latter here. We know that the 'Eye for the Dhamma,' the perception of the first only of the tîni lakkhanâni (impermanence), implies and involves the entrance into the Path. Oddly enough there is as yet no evidence to show whether the perception of the cardinal doctrine of the four Truths necessarily does so too; or can do so alone, without the Dhammakakkhu. If the latter, then there are two gates to the Path. And this is not only quite possible, but is the inference one might fairly draw from the constant phrase 'After the exposition of the Truths had concluded so and so attained to' one or other of the phalâni.
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