The opening is extremely compact: upayo avimutto, anupayo vimutto. Upaya can mean approach, engagement, attraction or attachment—literally a “going near.” The Buddha is pointing to the mind’s involvement with experience. When that involvement takes hold, release has not occurred; when the mind no longer approaches and attaches in that way, release becomes possible.

This is important because the sutta does not begin by constructing a long psychological chain. It begins with a binary diagnostic: is the mind attaching and engaging, or is it no longer doing so? Everything that follows explains how that engagement gives consciousness a place to stand and grow.

The first establishment sequence names rūpa, vedanā, saññā and saṅkhārā as the supports upon which consciousness may stand. It does not say that consciousness stands attached to consciousness itself. This is deliberate and must not be rewritten as a five-stage cycle.

The Buddha immediately reinforces the point by saying that the coming, going, passing away, rebirth, growth, flourishing or expansion of consciousness cannot be described apart from form, feeling, perception and formations. Viññāṇa is therefore not presented as an independent entity existing behind the other aggregates.

Later, when rāga is abandoned, the sequence includes viññāṇadhātu as well. That is a different statement: passion can be directed toward consciousness as an element, and that passion too must be abandoned.

Each of the four establishment sentences uses three closely related expressions. Consciousness is rūpārammaṇa—taking form as object; rūpappatiṭṭha—having form as a footing or basis of establishment; and nandūpasecana—watered or sprinkled by delight. The same pattern is repeated for feeling, perception and formations.

The image is organic rather than mechanical. Consciousness does not merely register an object and disappear from the teaching. Where attachment is present and delight keeps watering the process, there is nourishment for continuation. The crucial condition named by the sutta is nandi, delight—the affective enjoyment that keeps the footing alive.

This is why the practical task cannot be reduced to “watching consciousness.” One must see where delight, attraction and passion are providing nourishment.

The expressions vuddhiṁ, virūḷhiṁ, vepullaṁ āpajjeyya describe consciousness coming to growth, flourishing and expansion when it has a footing and is watered by delight. They do not say that a sensory event must pass sequentially from rūpa to vedanā to saññā to saṅkhārā and finally to viññāṇa.

That old five-step presentation is therefore too schematic. In this sutta, each of the four aggregates is independently named as a possible support for established consciousness. The doctrinal emphasis is not a timeline of perception but the conditions that allow consciousness to become established and to grow.

The sentence beginning ahamaññatra rūpā … is one of the strongest safeguards in the Khandhasaṁyutta against turning viññāṇa into a permanent essence. The Buddha says that one cannot validly describe its coming, going, passing away, rebirth, growth or expansion apart from form, feeling, perception and formations.

This does not mean that the four aggregates are a permanent substance supporting another permanent substance called consciousness. The whole framework is conditioned. What the passage excludes is the idea that viññāṇa can be isolated as an autonomous self or metaphysical witness existing independently of the conditioned field in which it appears.

The second half of the discourse reverses the first. Earlier there was attachment, an object, a footing and delight. Now the Buddha says: if rāga toward a dhātu is abandoned, then vocchijjatārammaṇaṁ—the object capable of functioning as the sustaining basis is cut off—and patiṭṭhā viññāṇassa na hoti: there is no footing for consciousness.

This is repeated across the form, feeling, perception, formations and consciousness elements. The movement of release is therefore not achieved by destroying experience but by ending passion toward the very fields in which attachment seeks establishment.

Once there is no footing, consciousness is appatiṭṭhita, unestablished. Because it is unestablished it is avirūḷha, not growing or flourishing. It is then described as anabhisaṅkhacca—not constructing, generating or fabricating further—and vimutta, liberated.

The sequence is exceptionally important: the absence of establishment is not mere blankness or suppression. It is explicitly linked with liberation. The sutta does not instruct the practitioner to annihilate consciousness by force; it shows that when rāga and the supporting object are no longer functioning as a footing, the process no longer grows or constructs further.

The line vimuttattā ṭhitaṁ reverses the ordinary search for security. Earlier consciousness “stood” because it was established on an aggregate and watered by delight. That establishment was bondage. Here true steadiness comes because of release, not because consciousness has secured a permanent object.

From release comes steadiness; from steadiness, contentment; from contentment, the absence of agitation. The progression ends in paccattaññeva parinibbāyati—the practitioner personally realizes complete extinguishment. This makes clear that the sutta is not merely about becoming less distracted; it is directed all the way to the ending of the round.

The final formula—khīṇā jāti, vusitaṁ brahmacariyaṁ, kataṁ karaṇīyaṁ, nāparaṁ itthattāyā—places the entire discourse in the context of arahant release. Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived, the task is completed, and there is no further continuation into another state of being.

This is the proper scale on which to understand SN 22.53. The teaching is not simply “avoid attachment because it causes emotional suffering.” It explains how attachment and delight give consciousness a footing for growth, and how the complete abandonment of rāga removes that footing until there is no further construction and the liberation task is finished.