[SpeavaJap]

Hi all,

At the end of the Maha Assupara Sutta it is given a section called "The Three Knowledges" which the first two talk about recalling past lives and rebirth as follows:

"With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to knowledge of the recollection of past lives.[5] He recollects his manifold past lives [...] and:

"With his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to knowledge of the passing away and re-appearance of beings. He sees — by means of the divine eye, purified and surpassing the human — beings passing away and re-appearing, and he discerns how they are inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate in accordance with their kamma: 'These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech, and mind, who reviled the noble ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. [...] What is meant here by a recollection of past lives...? A kind of special ability or a way to be mindfull about the many becomings we experience day by day.

As a personal experience, through the reading of this first knowledge of the sutta, I felt that it can lead us to be mindfull about our endless becomings we have had through this very life and also through a day by day span.

For the second one, I can experience, through a carefull reading of it, that this warns us to be mindfull about anatta, that keeps any entity arising and fading and that the unfortunate ones arises and fades also according to the wrongness of their understandings or the state of mind they keep.

Any comments?