Reading guide
The same fourfold verb chain, the same two-part structure
Anabhijānaṁ, aparijānaṁ, avirājayaṁ, appajahaṁ — the identical four terms from SN 35.26, in the identical negative-then-positive arrangement, applied once again to "the all." At the level of argument, this is a genuine repeat.
A changed definition of "the all": four items, not five
"The eye, sights, eye consciousness, and things knowable by eye consciousness" (cakkhuviññāṇaviññātabbā dhammā) — dropping SN 35.24–26's own "eye contact" and "the feeling that arises dependent on eye contact," and adding instead a single closing category that folds in whatever consciousness itself can know.
Two definitions of "the all" now stand side by side
SN 35.26 used the five-part breakdown (base, object, consciousness, contact, feeling) carried over from SN 35.24–25; this discourse instead uses the leaner four-item version, closing on "things knowable" rather than feeling — the same diagnostic claim, applied to two genuinely different scopes of "the all" within the same trio.
Handing off to this vagga's own narrative pair
Immediately after this discourse, Sabbavagga arrives at its own two pre-existing narrative discourses, SN 35.28 ("Burning") and SN 35.29 ("Overcome") — the vagga's midpoint, where the register shifts from bare formula to specific place, audience, and image.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, without directly knowing and completely understanding the all, without dispassion for it and giving it up, you can’t end suffering. And what is the all, without directly knowing and completely understanding which, without dispassion for it and giving it up, you can’t end suffering? The eye, sights, eye consciousness, and things knowable by eye consciousness. The ear … nose … tongue … body … The mind, ideas, mind consciousness, and things knowable by mind consciousness. This is the all, without directly knowing and completely understanding which, without dispassion for it and giving it up, you can’t end suffering.
§2By directly knowing and completely understanding the all, having dispassion for it and giving it up, you can end suffering. And what is the all, directly knowing and completely understanding which, having dispassion for it and giving it up, you can end suffering? The eye, sights, eye consciousness, and things knowable by eye consciousness. The ear … nose … tongue … body … The mind, ideas, mind consciousness, and things knowable by mind consciousness. This is the all, directly knowing and completely understanding which, having dispassion for it and giving it up, you can end suffering.”
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