Comm. NT: 19. There are a number of variant readings to this sutta passage (which is met with elsewhere as follows: A I 206; II 177; cf. III 170). There are also variant readings of the commentary, reproduced at M-a IV 63–65 and in the commentary to A II 177. The readings adopted are those which a study of the various contexts has indicated. The passage is a difficult one.
The sutta passage seems from its various settings to have been a phrase current among non-Buddhists, as a sort of slogan for naked ascetics (A I 206); and it is used to describe the base consisting of nothingness (M II 263), in which latter sense it is incorporated in the Buddha’s teaching as a description that can be made the basis for right view or wrong view according as it is treated.
The commentarial interpretation given here is summed up by Vism-mhṭ as follows:
Saṅkhārupekkhāñāṇakathāvaṇṇanā
‘Nāhaṃ kvacini’: he sees the non-existence of a self of his own.
‘Na kassaci kiñcanat’asmiṃ’: he sees of his own self too that it is not the property of another’s self.
‘Na ca mama’: these words should be construed as indicated.
‘Atthi’ applies to each clause.
He sees the nonexistence of another’s self thus, ‘There is no other’s self anywhere.’
He sees of another that that other is not the property of his own self thus, ‘My owning of that other’s self does not exist.’
So this mere conglomeration of formations is seen, by discerning it with the voidness of the quadruple logical relation, as voidness of self or property of a self in both internal and external aggregates’”
(Vism-mhṭ 840–41 = ṭīkā to MN 106).