Reading guide
A viper's bite, and no fear
Upasena, bitten, shows no alarm — only a calm, practical instruction to move his own body before it “scatters like a handful of hay,” a traditional image for certain venoms' dissolving effect.
Sāriputta's puzzlement, and Upasena's answer
Seeing no visible injury, Sāriputta asks why Upasena speaks this way; Upasena answers that impairment would only afflict one who identifies with the eye (and the remaining five fields) as “I” or “mine” — which he does not.
The diagnosis: I-making, mine-making, conceit, uprooted
Sāriputta names what Upasena has long since eradicated: ahaṅkāra (I-making), mamaṅkāra (mine-making), and mānānusaya (the underlying tendency to conceit) — the same underlying-tendency vocabulary this vagga's own closing discourses will approach differently.
The prediction fulfilled
The mendicants carry Upasena's body outside, and it disintegrates exactly as he foretold — this project's first narrative to close on a physical prediction stated, then confirmed, within the same discourse.
Key terms
The text
§1At one time the venerables Sāriputta and Upasena were staying near Rājagaha in the Cool Grove, under the Snake’s Hood Grotto. Now at that time a viper fell on Upasena’s body. He addressed the mendicants, “Come, reverends, lift this body onto a cot and carry it outside before it’s scattered right here like a handful of hay.”
§2When he said this, Sāriputta said to him, “But we don’t see any impairment in your body or deterioration of your faculties. Yet you say: ‘Come, reverends, lift this body onto a cot and carry it outside before it’s scattered right here like a handful of hay.’” “Reverend Sāriputta, there may be an impairment in body or deterioration of faculties for someone who thinks: ‘I am the eye’ or ‘the eye is mine.’ Or ‘I am the ear … nose … tongue … body …’ Or ‘I am the mind’ or ‘the mind is mine.’ But I don’t think like that. So why would there be an impairment in my body or deterioration of my faculties?”
§3“That must be because Venerable Upasena has long ago totally eradicated I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit. That’s why it doesn’t occur to you: ‘I am the eye’ or ‘the eye is mine.’ Or ‘I am the ear … nose … tongue … body …’ Or ‘I am the mind’ or ‘the mind is mine.’” Then those mendicants lifted Upasena’s body onto a cot and carried it outside. And his body was scattered right there like a handful of hay.
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