[Buddha-l] 9. Attadiipaa Sutta (Joy Vriens)

[JKirkpatrick]

Thanks, Lance, for doing what the rest of us were too lazy to do: type 'island' into the 
search at access to insight and watch as the verses come up. (No doubt you already knew these anyway.) 
The figure of the lake being flooded in SN1092 is especially appealing.

Joanna
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Well not really, Dan. It is never found in the Vinaya or Abhidhamma Piṭakas, nor in the Majjhima and Aṅguttara Nikāyas. So the contexts are quite limited.

It is found, as noted, in the Mahāparinirvāṇasutta and once elsewhere in the Dīghanikāya: at the very beginning of the Cakkavattisīhanādasutta where the whole sequence from attadīpo onwards is cited and the explanation that one is attadīpa, etc. by practising the four establishings of mindfulness follows immediately.

It is found in two additional places in the Saṃyutta Nikāya. One is the Gilānasutta (S V 152–154) which may appear to the reader as an extract from the same passage in the Mahāparinirvāṇasutta. (I myself think it is one of the short suttas from which the Mahāparinirvāṇa was compiled.) Then it is found in the Cundasutta where the Buddha is consoling Ānanda and Cunda immediately after the parinirvāṇa of Sāriputta. Here too it is directly associated with the four establishings of mindfulness.

We have already met it in the Attadīpasutta (S III 42f.) where it is associated with the development of insight.

Otherwise it is found only in two verse contexts in the Khuddaka Nikāya. 
One is in the (rather late) Apadāna (Ap II 543):

         Have self as your island and the the establishings of mindfulness as your pasture.
         Practising the seven factors of awakening, you will make an end of suffering.
This is obviously based upon the same kind of sutta context we have been discussing.

That leaves only the verse in the Mahāvagga of the Suttanipāta (Sn 501) which refers to 'those who wander (vicaranti) in the world with self as their island, possessing nothing, completely liberated in every respect'. That is in parallel with the earlier verse at Sn 490 which has asattā 'unattached' as a match to atta-. The context is one of describing the behaviour of enlightened beings.

So overall it is found in a rather limited number of contexts and always in  relation to rather advanced practice.


On the meaning of dīpa itself, we find the simile spelt out in the 
Pārāyaṇa of the Suttanipāta (Sn 1092):
         Those who are overcome by old age and death
         are standing in a lake ... when a deadly flood has arisen.
         Tell me, sir, of an island for them
         and announce to me an island such that this might be no more.

The answer is:

         Having nothing, taking nothing is that island with no match.
         I declare that it is nibbāna, the complete destruction of old 
age and death.


Lance Cousins


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