Dictionary of Pali Proper Names v2.c31.45

v2.c31.45

According to the books, the Buddha considered Makkhali as the most dangerous of the heretical teachers: "I know not of any other single person fraught with such loss to many folk, such discomfort, such sorrow to devas and men, as Makkhali, the infatuate."⁵ The Buddha also considered his view the meanest—"just as the hair blanket is reckoned the meanest of all woven garments, even so, of all the teachings of recluses, that of Makkhali is the meanest."⁶ Buddhaghosa⁷ draws particular distinction between the moral effect of Makkhali's doctrine on the one hand and that of the doctrines of Pūraṇa Kassapa and Ajita on the other. Pūraṇa, by his theory of the passivity of the soul, denied action; Ajita, by his annihilationistic theory denied retribution; whereas Makkhali, by his doctrine of fate or non-causation, denied both action and its result.