Ends

Reading guide

Four "ends," one template

"There are these four ends" — anta, here meaning something like a defining boundary or terminus, not merely an ending: "the end that is substantial reality, the end that is the origin of substantial reality, the end that is the cessation of substantial reality, and the end that is the practice that leads to the cessation of substantial reality."

This is the four noble truths' own template — suffering, its origin, its cessation, the path — applied word for word to sakkāya instead of dukkha, making explicit what the two terms already imply about each other.

Substantial reality defined as the five grasping aggregates

"It should be said: the five grasping aggregates" — the same identification used throughout Khandhavagga to define dukkha itself, confirming that sakkāya and dukkha are, at the level of what they refer to, the same five aggregates viewed under different names.

Origin: craving in its three modes

The origin is craving "mixed up with relishing and greed, taking pleasure there wherever it alights" — specified as craving for sensual pleasures, for existence, and for nonexistence, the same threefold craving formula used throughout the four-truths material across the Canon.

Cessation and path, given in full

Cessation is craving's "fading away... with nothing left over; giving it away, letting it go, releasing it, and not clinging to it" — and the path is, exactly as elsewhere, "simply this noble eightfold path": right view, purpose, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and immersion.

Nothing here is abbreviated or elided — this discourse gives the complete four-part formula in full, setting the pattern its two companion discourses, SN 22.104 and SN 22.105, will each restate with a single term changed.

Key terms