The Anumana Sutta is spoken by Moggallana, one of the leading disciples of the Buddha. It's sometimes also called the Bhikshu Pratimoksha Sutra. Pratimoksha is the name given to the rules for Buddhist monastics.
But prati means towards and moksha is liberation. So, Pratimoksha actually means "towards liberation". So, in a certain sense, this sutra is the gist of all the rules.
But we should understand more deeply than simply the following of rules. What is indicated is the pathway to liberation. The sutra begins with Moggallana saying that there are those who come for instruction who are easy to teach, who receive and accept the teaching readily, and such people are trusted by the Sangha community, but there are other people who also come for instruction, but who are actually resistant to the teaching, who are difficult to guide, and these people are not trusted by the community.
He then lists some of the attitudes that make a person difficult to teach. There's 16 of them listed, but they basically all come down to anger and arrogance. They include being stubborn, envious, argumentative, contemptuous, dishonest, self-opinionated, bitter, full of prevarication, attached to evil appetites, and so on. Moggallana says that we should examine ourselves and see whether we have attitudes of this kind and realize that they will become obstacles to spiritual practice.
Well, this is good advice, but in order to carry it out, a deeper reflection is needed. He says it's like looking into a mirror. We should look into the mirror and see what is true, but we should look into the mirror deeply.
The way of liberation has two aspects. Firstly, the person must come for the teaching. This is the first thing that Moggallana says. People come for the teaching. There has to be a relationship with a teacher.
Then, secondly, the person has to be open to receive the teaching. Moggallana is saying that there's no point in coming with a closed mind. The transmission of the Dhamma, the opening of the gate to liberation, is not really like the solution of a puzzle. The Dhamma is the transmission of love and wisdom and love, love is always an interpersonal affair. One party offers love, the other party may or may not be in a condition to receive it.
Behind the stubbornness, distrust, and arrogance, there is hurt and fear. Because we've had bad experience in past relations, we fear new ones, but it's only through a new one that one can be released from the old.
Also, the teacher is able to offer real love only if that teacher can see the reality of the seeker who comes before him. Love isn't real unless it encompasses the reality of the other and that reality must include the residues of past hurt and the fear of new hurt.
So we say that Amida Buddha accepts us just as we are, which means as we really are, not just as we pretend to be, but this reality includes all of the attitudes that constitute obstacles. So, although Amida loves us just as we are, the way we are impedes our reception of that love.
Yet, it is only that love that can release us. And this relation to Amida is replicated in the relationship between the disciple and the teacher. Stated in this way, we can see it's an insoluble problem, but this is why spiritual progress comes as unexpected breakthroughs, as a kind of grace, or as a sideways leap. If we take the sutta in a purely moralistic way, the moksha will never occur. But if we have faith that release can come to us in spite of ourselves, well then, there is a possibility.
So, to reflect upon one's faults and feel contrition, as Moggallana suggests, is certainly good not because it enables one to smarten up one's act, but rather because it reduces the ego to a point where one might just be willing to receive the love.
Namo Amida Bu.
Thank you very much.
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