Where name-and-form ceases,
Stops without remainder,
And also impingement and perception of form:
It is here this tangle is cut.

This generation is all tangled up like a nest of matted hair. Who can untangle this mess and how?

Buddhaghosa is referring to the brahminical etymology

An obscure pun explained.

These are the over two hundred kinds of knowledge that arise in one who develops concentration by mindfulness of breathing with sixteen grounds

… the earliest extant, detailed commentary on Buddhist meditation available in an Indic language

The Path of Discrimination was a key influence on later meditation manuals (such as the medieval Visuddhimagga) and is the oldest such commentary in existence, giving us a rare insight into the early Indian commentarial and meditation traditions.

For a translation of the entire Paṭisambhidāmagga, see SuttaCentral

Kammaṭṭhāna meditation should be practised so as to reach Nibbāna, thereby escaping from all kinds of misery

A thorough and concise overview of the entire path of meditative purification. A very helpful map, essentially summarizing the Visuddhimagga.

Western writers too readily described Buddhism as a nihilistic doctrine teaching annihilation as its highest goal, a view these writers condemned as philosophically absurd and ethically reprehensible. Similar statements still sometimes appear in prejudiced non-Buddhist literature. The pendular reaction to that view was the conception of Nibbāna as existence. It was now interpreted in the light of already familiar religious and philosophical notions [such] as pure being, pure consciousness, pure self or some other metaphysical concept.

A short booklet on seeing Nibbāna as the ultimate expression of the middle way between existence and non-existence.

If you’ve ever heard a Theravāda monk talk about the “forty kammaṭṭhānas” this is the list they are referring to.

This article explores to what degree meditation on the breath in early Buddhist thought involved focused attention. Closer inspection of instructions on this mode of meditation in the form of sixteen steps shows focused attention to be only a secondary aspect of the practice, which for the most part rather involves cultivating breadth of mind.