MN2 - Intermediate Speech Collection

Book excerpt: This second sub-collection, called The Middle Fifty, contains fifty suttas and is divided into five chapters: the Chapter on Family Heads, the Chapter on Bhikkhus, the Chapter on Ascetics, the Chapter on Kings and the Chapter on Brahmins. Continuing to complete the early autobiography are the suttas MN 85 With Prince Bodhi and MN 100 With Saṅgārava. In all there are five suttas that center and give historical context to the Buddha. The insistent repetition indicates their importance. On the spurious side, the suttas MN 91 and MN 92 stand out, in which the Buddha appears determined to show his penis with phimosis and his very long tongue with which he could clean his ears. All in order to affirm that he supposedly had the legendary 32 marks of the great man, a myth that apparently goes back to Gilgamesh. MN 95 insists on it again. Also surprising in MN 84 Conversation at Madhurā and MN 94 with Ghoṭamukha, the insistence on taking as Master an extinct Buddha in a pair of extemporaneous suttas starring strangers where the plot happens at an indeterminate time after the Buddha's parinibbāna.