142. At this point the answers to the questions, “What is virtue? In what sense is it virtue? What are its characteristic, function, manifestation, and proximate cause? What are the benefits of virtue? How many kinds of virtue are there?” are complete.143. However, it was also asked (vi) WHAT IS THE DEFILING OF IT? and WHAT IS THE CLEANSING OF IT?
We answer that virtue’s tornness, etc., is its defiling, and that its untornness, etc., is its cleansing. Now, that tornness, etc., are comprised under the breach that has gain, fame, etc., as its cause, and under the seven bonds of sexuality. When a man has broken the training course at the beginning or at the end in any instance of the seven classes of offences, his virtue is called torn, like a cloth that is cut at the edge. But when he has broken it in the middle, it is called rent, like a cloth that is rent in the middle. When he has broken it twice or thrice in succession, it is
called blotched, like a cow whose body is some such colour as black or red with a discrepant colour appearing on the back or the belly. When he has broken it [all over] at intervals, it is called mottled, like a cow speckled [all over] with discrepantcoloured spots at intervals. This in the first place, is how there comes to be tornness with the breach that has gain, etc., as its cause.
144. And likewise with the seven bonds of sexuality; for this is said by the Blessed One: “Here, brahman, some ascetic or brahman claims to lead the life of purity rightly; for he does not enter into actual sexual intercourse with women. Yet he agrees to massage, manipulation, bathing and rubbing down by women. He enjoys it, desires it and takes satisfaction in it. This is what is torn, rent, blotched and mottled in one who leads the life of purity. This man is said to lead a life of purity that is unclean. As one who is bound by the bond of sexuality, he will not be released from birth, ageing and death … he will not be released from suffering, I say.
145. “Furthermore, brahman, … while he does not agree to [these things], yet he jokes, plays and amuses himself with women …
146. “Furthermore, brahman, … while he does not agree to [these things], yet he gazes and stares at women eye to eye …
147. “Furthermore, brahman, … while he does not agree to [these things], yet he listens to the sound of women through a wall or through a fence as they laugh or talk or sing or weep …
148. “Furthermore, brahman, … while he does not agree to [these things], yet he recalls laughs and talks and games that he formerly had with women …
149. “Furthermore, brahman, … while he does not agree to [these things], yet he sees a householder or a householder’s son possessed of, endowed with, and indulging in, the five cords of sense desire …
150. “Furthermore, brahman, while he does not agree to [these things], yet he leads the life of purity aspiring to some order of deities, [thinking] ‘Through this rite (virtue) or this ritual (vow) or this asceticism I shall become a [great] deity or some [lesser] deity.’ He enjoys it, desires it, and takes satisfaction in it. This, brahman, is what is torn, rent, blotched and mottled in one who leads the life of purity. This man … will not be released from suffering, I say” (A IV 54–56). This is how tornness, etc., should be understood as included under the breach that has gain, etc., as its cause and under the seven bonds of sexuality.
151 Untornness, however, is accomplished by the complete non-breaking of the training precepts, by making for those broken for which amends should be made, by the absence of the seven bonds of sexuality, and, as well, by the nonarising of such evil things as anger, enmity, contempt, domineering, envy, avarice, deceit, fraud, obduracy, presumption, pride (conceit), haughtiness, conceit (vanity), and negligence (MN 7), and by the arising of such qualities as fewness of wishes, contentment, and effacement (MN 24).
152. Virtues not broken for the purpose of gain, etc., and rectified by making amends after being broken by the faults of negligence, etc., and not damaged by the bonds of sexuality and by such evil things as anger and enmity, are called entirely untorn, unrent, unblotched, and unmottled. And those same virtues are liberating since they bring about the state of a freeman, and praised by the wise since it is by the wise that they are praised, and unadhered-to since they are not adhered to by means of craving and views, and conducive to concentration since they conduce to access concentration or to absorption concentration. That is why their untornness, etc., should be understood as “cleansing” (see also VII.101f.)
153. This cleansing comes about in two ways: through seeing the danger of failure in virtue, and through seeing the benefit of perfected virtue. Herein, the danger of failure in virtue can be seen in accordance with such suttas as that beginning, “Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers for the unvirtuous in the failure of virtue”
(A III 252).
154. Furthermore, on account of his unvirtuousness an unvirtuous person is displeasing to deities and human beings, is uninstructable by his fellows in the life of purity, suffers when unvirtuousness is censured, and is remorseful when the virtuous are praised. Owing to that unvirtuousness he is as ugly as hemp cloth. Contact with him is painful because those who fall in with his views are brought to long-lasting suffering in the states of loss. He is worthless because he causes no great fruit [to accrue] to those who give him gifts. He is as hard to purify as a cesspit many years old. He is like a log from a pyre (see It 99); for he is outside both [recluseship and the lay state]. Though claiming the bhikkhu state he is no bhikkhu, so he is like a donkey following a herd of cattle. He is always nervous,
like a man who is everyone’s enemy. He is as unfit to live with as a dead carcase. Though he may have the qualities of learning, etc., he is as unfit for the homage of his fellows in the life of purity as a charnel-ground fire is for that of brahmans. He is as incapable of reaching the distinction of attainment as a blind man is of seeing a visible object. He is as careless of the Good Law as a guttersnipe is of a kingdom. Though he fancies he is happy, yet he suffers because he reaps suffering as told in the Discourse on the Mass of Fire (A IV 128–34).
By Bhikkhu Ñānamoli