Reading guide
The mirror claim
"The cosmos is not eternal" — the bare negation of SN 24.9's claim, examined by the identical diagnostic machinery. The two discourses are best read as a single pair: not because either resolves the question, but because both rest on exactly the same grasping.
Compression tightens a further notch
Where SN 24.9 still spelled out "when form exists, because of grasping form..." before eliding the remaining aggregates, this discourse compresses even that opening line to "when form exists..." followed immediately by an ellipsis — one further step in the gradual thinning this vagga will continue through its remaining discourses.
Undetermined precisely because both poles fail identically
That eternalism and its negation are diagnosed by exactly the same mechanism is itself a kind of answer: whichever pole a person is drawn to, the attraction runs through the same impermanent aggregates. Neither claim is being defended or refuted on its own terms — both are being traced to a common root.
Setting up the finite/infinite pair to follow
SN 24.9 and 24.10 establish this vagga's pattern for the remaining eight undetermined questions: paired opposites, each pair sharing one root diagnosis, compression increasing with each successive pair as the pattern becomes fully established.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. “Mendicants, when what exists, because of grasping what and insisting on what, does the view arise: ‘The cosmos is not eternal’?” “Our teachings are rooted in the Buddha. …”
§2“When form exists …” … “But by not grasping what’s impermanent, suffering, and perishable, would such a view arise?” “No, sir.”
§3“When a noble disciple has given up doubt regarding these six grounds, and has given up doubt in suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the practice that leads to its cessation, they’re called a noble disciple who is a stream-enterer, not liable to be reborn in the underworld, assured, destined for awakening.”
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