Reading guide
The same city, the same sixteen views
This sutta opens exactly as Ud 6.5 does — the same wanderers, the same city, and, point for point, the identical sixteen-view list: eight positions on the eternity and origin of “the self and the cosmos,” then the same eight positions repeated with “pleasure and pain” folded in. The full breakdown of that sixteenfold list is given at Ud 6.5; this reading guide won’t repeat it, and turns instead to what makes this third sutta distinct — its verse.
The I-maker and the other-maker
Where Ud 6.4 closed on an image (the elephant) and Ud 6.5 closed on a metaphor (foundering mid-stream), Ud 6.6 closes with something closer to direct diagnosis: “Folk are fixated on the I-maker, which is tied up with the other-maker.” The Pali names both terms outright — ahaṅkāra, “I-maker,” and paraṅkāra, “other-maker” — and the pairing is doing real work: the verse’s logic seems to be that the very act of positing an “I” automatically manufactures its counterpart, an “other,” and every one of the sixteen views just catalogued — every claim that something is self-made or other-made, mine or not mine — already presupposes this more basic split.
The dart
Those who don’t see this, the verse says, “do not see the dart.” The image of a dart or arrow recurs elsewhere in the canon for what wounds or afflicts unseen, and the verse doesn’t pin down a single fixed referent here — but its placement is suggestive: immediately after naming the I-maker and the other-maker, and immediately before describing what changes once the dart is seen: “when they see this dart, they do not think, ‘I make it,’ nor ‘another makes it.’” Seeing clearly, on this reading, doesn’t settle the dispute in favor of one of the sixteen views — it dissolves the self/other framing that produced all sixteen of them in the first place.
Caught up in conceit
The closing stanza makes the strongest claim of the whole triad: “These folk are caught up in conceit, tied by conceit, shackled by conceit. Vehemently defending their views, they don’t escape transmigration.” What began, across three suttas, as a satirical scene of quarreling ascetics ends here in a serious doctrinal claim: clinging to any of these sixteen positions is bound up with māna, conceit, and that binding is precisely what keeps someone circling in saṁsāra rather than escaping it. Of the three closing verses in this triad, this is the one that states its consequence most directly.
Key terms
The text
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. Now at that time several ascetics, brahmins, and wanderers who followed various other religions were residing in Sāvatthī, holding different views, beliefs, and opinions, relying on different views.
§2There were some ascetics and brahmins who had this doctrine and view: “The self and the cosmos are eternal. This is the only truth, anything else is futile.”
The first eight views
§3–9Others held views such as the following, each regarding their own view as true and others as silly:
- “The self and the cosmos are not eternal.”
- “The self and the cosmos are both eternal and not eternal.”
- “The self and the cosmos are neither eternal nor not eternal.”
- “The self and the cosmos are made by oneself.”
- “The self and the cosmos are made by another.”
- “The self and the cosmos are made by both oneself and another.”
- “The self and the cosmos have arisen anomalously, not made by oneself or another.”
The second eight views
§10–17The same eightfold pattern was repeated once more, now with pleasure and pain folded in alongside the self and the cosmos:
- “Pleasure and pain are eternal, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are not eternal, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are both eternal and not eternal, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are neither eternal nor not eternal, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are made by oneself, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are made by another, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain are made by both oneself and another, and the self and the cosmos.”
- “Pleasure and pain have arisen anomalously, not made by oneself or another, and the self and the cosmos.”
§18They were fighting, quarreling, and disputing, continually wounding each other with barbed words: “Such is Truth, such is not Truth! Such is not Truth, such is Truth!”
§19Then several mendicants robed up in the morning and, taking their bowls and robes, entered Sāvatthī for alms. Then, after the meal, when they returned from almsround, they went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what was happening.
§23Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha expressed this heartfelt sentiment:
§24“Folk are fixated on the I-maker, which is tied up with the other-maker. There are some who do not realize this, they do not see the dart.
§25But when they see this dart, they do not think, ‘I make it’, nor ‘another makes it’.
§26These folk are caught up in conceit, tied by conceit, shackled by conceit. Vehemently defending their views, they don’t escape transmigration.”
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