Is "the mind is without feature or surface, limitless, ..." in the Pali canon?

Question

in John Haspel's book, 'Becoming Buddha', the following quote is attributed to MN 11:

“Magandiya, when you hear the true Dhamma, ... When released from clinging the mind is without feature or surface, limitless, outside of time and space, freed from the six-sense base.”

Here's a larger quote:

While meditating with tranquility, allow insight to arise and have a direct experience of the Buddha’s teachings leading to abandoning clinging and the cessation of suffering. Experience awakening through unbinding the Five Clinging-Aggregates.

“Magandiya, when you hear the true Dhamma, you will practice the Dhamma correctly. When you practice the Dhamma correctly, you will know & see for yourself: ‘This is where confusion and suffering ceases without trace. With the cessation of my clinging comes the cessation of becoming. With the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of birth. With the cessation of birth then aging & death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair all cease. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of suffering & stress.” (Majjhima Nikaya 11)

The Buddha describes a mind free of clinging and freed of association to the five clinging aggregates:

“released from clinging the mind is without feature or surface, limitless, outside of time and space, freed from the six-sense base.” (Majjhima Nikaya 11)

(This text was copied from Becoming-Buddha.com. If you found this helpful, please visit our website for more Dhamma articles. All content is copyright 2017 by John Haspel and is distributed under a Creative Commons 4.0 license. Here is a link to the full article: The Five Clinging Aggregates | Becoming Buddha)

However I don't see this phrase, that verse about the nature of the mind, in translations of MN 11.

Because the quote mentions Magandiya, I looked in MN 75 as well, but don't see it there either.

Is that verse anywhere to be found in the Pali Canon?

Thanks for your much appreciated help.

Answer 1

There's a similar phrase (not an exact match) in DN 11:

This is how the question should be asked:
Evañca kho eso, bhikkhu, pañho pucchitabbo:

85.11 “Where do water and earth,
‘Kattha āpo ca pathavī,

85.12 fire and air find no footing;
tejo vāyo na gādhati;

85.13 where do long and short,
Kattha dīghañca rassañca,

85.14 fine and coarse, beautiful and ugly;
aṇuṃ thūlaṃ subhāsubhaṃ;

85.15 where do name and form
Kattha nāmañca rūpañca,

85.16 cease with nothing left over?”
asesaṃ uparujjhatī’ti.

85.17 And the answer to that is:
Tatra veyyākaraṇaṃ bhavati:

85.18 “Consciousness that’s invisible,
‘Viññāṇaṃ anidassanaṃ,

85.19 infinite, radiant all round.
anantaṃ sabbatopabhaṃ;

Maybe that it's it: if MN 11 was mistaken for DN 11; but it's not an exact match.

Even so I think that may be the Pali phrase you're looking for --

Viññāṇaṃ anidassanaṃ, anantaṃ sabbatopabhaṃ

For example this (The Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path) translates these words as:

Nirvana is a realm where corporeality and all the pairs of opposites - long and short, great and small, pure and impure - disappears and the mind is signless (anidassanam), boundless (anantam) and all-radiant (sabbato pabhamn). It is unchanging state (nibbanam accutam) of purity (suddhi), freedom (vimitti) and supreme happiness (nibbanam paramam sukham).

... although that doesn't say which sutta[s] these words come from.

Another place that phrase appears is in MN 49 (but also not an exact match, i.e. "freed from the six-sense base" isn't part of the phrase there).