The Connected Discourses of the Buddha Read online

  3. KOSALASAṂYUTTA

  This chapter introduces us to King Pasenadi of Kosala. According to the Buddhist texts, Pasenadi was deeply devoted to the Buddha and often sought his counsel, though there is no record of him reaching any stage of awakening (and thus medieval Sri Lankan tradition holds that he was a bodhisatta, who does not attain enlightenment so that he might continue fulfilling the perfect virtues that culminate in Buddhahood). Pasenadi had been led to the Buddha by his wife, Queen Mallikā, whose devotion to the Master he had previously resented. The story of how Mallikā convinced him of the Buddha’s wisdom is related in MN No. 87; MN No. 89 gives us a moving account of the king’s last meeting with the Master when they were both in their eightieth year. The first sutta of the Kosalasaṃyutta apparently records Pasenadi’s first meeting with the Blessed One, after his confidence had been aroused by Mallikā’s ruse. Here the Buddha is described as young, and when the king questions the claim that such a youthful ascetic can be perfectly enlightened, the Buddha replies with a series of verses that dispels the king’s doubts and inspires him to go for refuge.

  Unlike the first two saṃyuttas, the present one employs substantial prose backgrounds to the verses, and often the stanzas merely restate metrically the moral of the Buddha’s discourse. Though the topics discussed are not especially profound, they are almost all relevant to the busy lay person faced with the difficult challenge of living a moral life in the world. Especially noteworthy is the stress they lay on the need to adhere unflinchingly to the path of rectitude amidst the world’s temptations. Several suttas (3:4, 5) show how easy it is to fall away from righteous standards, especially in an age like the Buddha’s when, as in our own time, stiff competition for wealth, position, and power was driving hallowed ethical values out of circulation. The remedy against temptation is diligence (appamāda), and when the Buddha extols diligence to the king the word does not mean, as it does in a monastic context, constant devotion to meditation, but persistence in the performance of meritorious deeds. For a man like Pasenadi, a happy rebirth rather than Nibbāna is the immediate goal.

  The king’s conversation with Mallikā, in which they both admit they cherish themselves more than anyone else (3:8), elicits from the Buddha a verse which gives an ethical slant to a metaphysical thesis found in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, also occurring in a conversation between husband and wife, that of all things the self is the most precious. This raises the interesting question whether the close correspondence between the two is sheer coincidence (not impossible) or the result of a deliberate reworking by the Buddha of the old Upaniṣad. On another occasion we see the king display lack of acumen in his assessment of ascetics (3:11)—perhaps a hint that his commitment to the Dhamma was not unwavering—and the Buddha’s response offers astute counsel on how to judge a person’s character.

  In this saṃyutta we even find, from the Master’s golden lips, enlightened advice for losing weight (3:12), while two other suttas provide an historical perspective on the conflict between Kosala and Magadha, with reflections on war and peace (3:14–15). Of timely interest is the Buddha’s verse explaining to the king that a woman can turn out better than a man (3:16). Elsewhere the Buddha rejects the idea, propagated by the brahmins, that birth is an important criterion of spiritual worth, stressing instead that the true marks of spiritual nobility are ethical purity and wisdom (3:24).

  A theme that recurs throughout this saṃyutta is the inevitability of death and the inexorable operation of the law of kamma, which ensures that good and bad actions meet with due recompense. Beings pass from bright states to dark ones and from dark states to bright ones depending on their actions (3:21). All that we take with us when we die are our good and bad deeds, and thus we should be sure to accumulate merits, for in the next world these are “the support for living beings” (3:4, 20, 22). Among several texts on the inevitability of death, the most memorable is the last sutta in the chapter (3:25), with its startling parable of the mountains advancing from all quarters, crushing everything in their way.

  4. MĀRASAṂYUTTA

  Māra is the Evil One of Buddhism, the Tempter and Lord of Sensuality bent on distracting aspirants from the path to liberation and keeping them trapped in the cycle of repeated birth and death. Sometimes the texts use the word “Māra” in a metaphorical sense, as representing the inward psychological causes of bondage such as craving and lust (22:63–65) and the external things to which we become bound, particularly the five aggregates themselves (23:11–12). But it is evident that the thought world of the suttas does not conceive Māra only as a personification of humankind’s moral frailty, but sees him as a real evil deity out to frustrate the efforts of those intent on winning the ultimate goal. The proof of this lies in his pursuit of the Buddha and the arahants after their enlightenment, which would not be credible if he were conceived of merely as a psychological projection.

  The Mārasaṃyutta opens in the vicinity of the Bodhi Tree soon after the Buddha has attained the supreme enlightenment. Here Māra challenges the Blessed One’s claim to have reached the goal. He taunts him for abandoning the path of self-mortification (4:1), tries to frighten him by assuming horrific shapes (4:2), and seeks to break his equanimity by displaying beautiful and hideous forms (4:3). For the Buddha to triumph in these contests he need only call Māra’s bluff, to announce that he knows the adversary before him is none other than the Evil One. Then Māra must disappear, frustrated and mournful.

  Māra also appears as the cynic who denies that mortals can attain perfect purity (4:4, 15). On several occasions he tries to confound the monks while they are listening to the Buddha speak, but each time the Buddha calls his number (4:16, 17, 19). On another occasion Māra tries to tempt the Master with the lure of worldly power, but the Buddha staunchly rejects this (4:20). Especially impressive is the Godhika Sutta (4:23), where the bhikkhu Godhika, afflicted with an illness that obstructs his meditative progress, plans to take his own life. Māra presents himself before the Buddha, pleading with him to discourage his disciple from such folly, but the Master extols devotion to the goal even at the cost of life. At the end of the sutta Māra is searching vainly for the rebirth-consciousness of Godhika, unaware that the monk had attained Nibbāna and expired “with consciousness unestablished.”

  The last two suttas in this saṃyutta take us back to the site of the enlightenment. Here we see first Māra and then Māra’s three daughters—Taṇhā, Aratī, and Ragā (Craving, Discontent, and Lusting)—trying to find a point of vulnerability in the newly enlightened Buddha, but their efforts are in vain and they must depart disappointed (4:24, 25).

  5. BHIKKHUNĪSAṂYUTTA

  The Bhikkhunīsaṃyutta is a compilation of ten short suttas in mixed prose and verse, undivided into vaggas. The protagonists are all bhikkhunīs, Buddhist nuns. Though several of its thirty-seven verses have parallels in the Therīgāthā (mentioned in the notes and Concordance 1 (B)), a substantial number are unique to this collection, while often the variations in roughly parallel versions are themselves of intrinsic interest. At least one nun in the Bhikkhunīsaṃyutta, Vajirā, does not appear at all in the Therīgāthā, while the case of another nun, Selā, is problematic. A comparison between the two collections also brings to light some noteworthy differences in the ascription of authorship. Since SN and the Therīgāthā were evidently transmitted by different lines of reciters, it was only too easy for verses to break off from their original narrative setting and merge with a different background story connecting them to a different author.

  All the ten suttas are constructed according to the same pattern, a direct confrontation between Māra and an individual nun. This structure probably accounts for the placement of the Bhikkhunīsaṃyutta immediately after the Mārasaṃyutta. Each sutta of this collection begins with a nun going off by herself to pass the day in solitary meditation. Then Māra approaches her with a challenge—a provocative question or a taunt—intending to m
ake her fall away from concentration. What Māra has failed to realize is that each of these nuns is an arahant who has seen so deeply into the truth of the Dhamma that she is utterly inaccessible to his wiles. Far from being flustered by Māra’s challenge, the nun promptly guesses her adversary’s identity and meets his challenge with a sharp retort.

  In a dialogue that brings together the Lord of Sensuality with a solitary nun one might expect each of Māra’s overtures to be aimed at sexual seduction. This, however, is so only in several suttas. The actual themes of the discourses vary widely and expose us to a broad range of perspectives on the attitudes and insights of the renunciant life. The contrast between the allurement and misery of sensual pleasures is the theme of 5:1, 4, and 5. In all three cases the nuns sharply rebuke Māra with verses that reveal their utter indifference to his solicitations.

  Māra’s dialogue with Somā (5:2) voices the ancient Indian prejudice that women are endowed with “mere two-fingered wisdom” and thus cannot attain Nibbāna. Somā’s rejoinder is a forceful reminder that enlightenment does not depend on gender but on the mind’s capacity for concentration and wisdom, qualities accessible to any human being who earnestly seeks to penetrate the truth. In 5:3, Māra approaches Kisāgotamī, the heroine of the well-known parable of the mustard seed, trying to arouse her maternal instincts to beget another son. His challenge thus touches on sensuality only indirectly, his primary appeal being aimed at the feminine desire for children.

  The last two suttas are philosophical masterpieces, compressing into a few tight stanzas insights of enormous depth and wide implications. When Māra challenges Selā with a question on the origins of personal existence, she replies with a masterly poem that condenses the whole teaching of dependent origination into three four-line stanzas adorned with an illuminating simile (5:9). He poses a similar problem to Vajirā, who answers with a stunning exposition of the teaching of nonself, illustrating the composite nature of personal identity with the famous simile of the chariot (5:10).

  Though set against a mythological background in an ancient world whose customs and norms seem so remote from our own, these poems of the ancient nuns still speak to us today through their sheer simplicity and uncompromising honesty. They need no ornamentation or artifice to convey their message, for they are sufficient in themselves to startle us with the clarity of unadorned truth.

  6. BRAHMASAṂYUTTA

  Brahmā was the supreme deity of early Brahmanism, conceived as the creator of the universe and venerated by the brahmins with sacrifices and rituals. Occasionally this conception of Brahmā persists in the Buddhist canon, though as a target of criticism and satire rather than as an article of faith. In such contexts the word “brahmā” is used as a proper name, often augmented to Mahābrahmā, “Brahmā the Great.” The Buddha reinterpreted the idea of brahmā and transformed the single, all-powerful deity of the brahmins into a class of exalted gods dwelling in the form realm (rūpadhātu) far above the sense-sphere heavens. Their abode is referred to as “the brahmā world,” of which there are many, of varying dimensions and degrees of hegemony. Within their realm the brahmās dwell in companies, and Mahābrahmā (or sometimes a brahmā of a more personal name) is seen as the ruler of that company, complete with ministers and assembly. Like all sentient beings, the brahmās are impermanent, still tied to the round of rebirth, though sometimes they forget this and imagine themselves immortal.

  The path to rebirth in the brahmā world is mastery over the jhānas, each of which is ontologically attuned to a particular level of the form realm (see Table 3). Sometimes the Buddha mentions the four “divine abodes” (brahmavihāra) as the means to rebirth in the brahmā world. These are the “immeasurable” meditations on lovingkindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity (mettā, karuṇā, muditā, upekkhā).

  The Nikāyas offer an ambivalent evaluation of the brahmās, as can be seen from the present saṃyutta. On the one hand, certain brahmās are depicted as valiant protectors of the Buddha’s dispensation and devoted followers of the Master. But precisely because of their longevity and elevated stature in the cosmic hierarchy, the brahmās are prone to delusion and conceit; indeed, they sometimes imagine they are all-powerful creators and rulers of the universe. Perhaps this dual evaluation reflects the Buddha’s ambivalent attitude towards the brahmins: admiration for the ancient spiritual ideals of the brahmin life (as preserved in the expressions brahmacariya and brahmavihāra) coupled with rejection of the pretensions of the contemporary brahmins to superiority based on birth and lineage.

  The most eminent of the brahmās devoted to the Buddha is Brahmā Sahampati, who appears several times in SN. Soon after the enlightenment he descends from his divine abode and reappears before the Blessed One to beseech him to teach the Dhamma to the world (6:1). He applauds the Buddha’s reverence for the Dhamma (6:2), extols an arahant bhikkhu on alms round (6:3), reproaches the evil Devadatta (6:12), and shows up again at the Buddha’s parinibbāna, where he recites a verse of eulogy (6:15). He will also appear in other sạyuttas (at 11:17; eulogy (6:15). He will also appear in other samyuttas (at 11:17; 22:80; 47:18, 43; and 48:57).

  Brahmās of the deluded type are epitomized by Brahmā Baka, who imagined himself eternal and had to be divested of this illusion by the Master (6:4). On another occasion, an unnamed brahmā imagined he was superior to the arahants, and the Buddha and four great disciples visited his realm to make him alter his views (6:5). We also witness a contest between a negligent brahmā, stiff with pride, and two colleagues of his, devotees of the Buddha, who sweep away his illusions (6:6). The penultimate sutta shows a disciple of the past Buddha Sikhī awing a whole assembly of proud brahmās with his display of psychic powers (6:14). This saṃyutta also relates the sad story of the monk Kokālika, a cohort of Devadatta, who tried to defame the chief disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna and had to reap the kammic result as a rebirth in hell (6:9–10). The last sutta in this collection, included here only because of Brahmā Sahampati’s single verse, is a parallel of the death scene in the long Mahāparinibbāna Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya.

  7. BRĀHMAṆASAṂYUTTA

  This saṃyutta, recording the Buddha’s conversations with brahmins, contains two vaggas, each with a different unifying theme. In the first all the brahmins who come to the Buddha, often angry (7:1–4) or disdainful (7:7–9), are so deeply stirred by his words that they ask for ordination into the Saṅgha and “not long afterwards” attain arahantship. These suttas display the Buddha as the incarnation of patience and peace, capable of working, in those who would attack him, the miracle of transformation simply by his unshakable equanimity and impeccable wisdom. In this vagga we also see how the Buddha assessed the brahmin claim to superior status based on birth. He here interprets the word “brahmin” by way of its original meaning, as a holy man, and on this basis redefines the true brahmin as the arahant. The three Vedas which the brahmins revered and diligently studied are replaced by the three vijjās or true knowledges possessed by the arahant: knowledge of past births, of the laws of kammic retribution, and of the destruction of the taints (7:8). The last sutta adds a touch of humour, still recognizable today, by depicting the contrast between the oppressive cares of the household life and the untrammelled freedom of the life of renunciation (7:10).

  In the second vagga the brahmins come to challenge the Buddha in still different ways, and again the Buddha rises to the occasion with his inexhaustible wit and wisdom. In this vagga, however, though the Buddha inspires in his antagonists a newly won faith, the brahmin converts do not become monks but declare themselves lay followers “who have gone for refuge for life.”

  8. VAṄGĪSASAṂYUTTA

  The bhikkhu Vaṅgīsa was declared by the Buddha the foremost disciple of those gifted with inspirational speech (paṭibhānavant̄nạ , at AN I 24,21). This title accrued to him on account of his skill in composing spontaneous verse. His verses make up the longest chapter
in the Theragāthā, whose seventy-one verses (Th 1209–79) closely correspond with those in the present saṃyutta but lack the prose frameworks. Another poem by Vaṅgīsa, found at Sn II, 12, is not included in the present compilation but does have a counterpart in the Theragāthā.

  The verses of Vaṅgīsa are not mere metrical aphorisms (as are so many verses in this collection) but skilfully wrought poetic compositions that can well claim an honoured place in early Indian poetry. They also reveal, with unabashed honesty, the trials and temptations which their author faced in his career as a monk. Having an aesthetic bent of character and a natural appreciation of sensuous beauty, Vaṅgīsa must have gone through a difficult struggle in his early days as a monk adjusting to the strict discipline required of a bhikkhu, with its training in sense restraint and vigilant control of the mind. The early suttas in this chapter (8:1–4) speak of his battle against sensual lust, his susceptibility to the charms of the opposite sex, and his firm determination not to succumb but to continue bravely along the path laid down by his Master. They also tell of his proclivity to pride, no doubt based on his natural talent as a poet, and of his endeavour to subdue this flaw of character. Later in his monastic career, apparently after he gained a greater degree of self-mastery, he often extolled the Buddha in verse, and on one occasion the Blessed One requested him to compose extemporaneous verses (8:8). In other poems he praises the great disciples S̄riputta, Moggall̄na, and Koṇḍañña (8:6, 9, 10). The last poem in the sạyutta, partly autobiographical, concludes with a declaration that the author has become an arahant equipped with the three true knowledges and other spiritual powers (8:12).