Reading guide
A new term, a familiar answer
"What is the leash to existence? And what is the cessation of the leash to existence?" — bhavanetti, literally something like "the guide-rope to becoming," names whatever keeps a mind tethered to further existence.
The identical nine-term list from SN 22.112
"Any desire, greed, relishing, and craving for form; and any attraction, grasping, mental fixation, insistence, and underlying tendencies — this is called the leash to existence" — the exact same nine terms already given in full at SN 22.112, closing Antavagga much earlier in this book, now reused verbatim to define a new technical term in an entirely different saṃyutta.
Cessation named as simply the list's own ending
"Their cessation is the cessation of the leash to existence" — a maximally economical definition: whatever ends when these nine modes of attachment end is, by definition, the cessation of what binds one to existence.
What this reuse confirms about the collection's vocabulary
That SN 22.112's own nine-term list reappears here, unchanged, to define a term (bhavanetti) that discourse never itself used, demonstrates this vocabulary functions as a genuinely portable technical toolkit — established once, then available to define whatever new concept needs the same underlying analysis, across saṃyutta boundaries as readily as within a single vagga.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Seated to one side, Venerable Rādha said to the Buddha: “Sir, they speak of this thing called ‘the cessation of the leash to existence’. What is the leash to existence? And what is the cessation of the leash to existence?”
§2“Rādha, any desire, greed, relishing, and craving for form; and any attraction, grasping, mental fixation, insistence, and underlying tendencies—this is called the leash to existence. Their cessation is the cessation of the leash to existence.
§3Any desire, greed, relishing, and craving for feeling … perception … choices … consciousness; and any attraction, grasping, mental fixation, insistence, and underlying tendencies—this is called the leash to existence. Their cessation is the cessation of the leash to existence.”
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