The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha
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I am aware that the Notes sometimes repeat things already explained in the Introduction, but in a work of this nature such repetitions can be of use, particularly as novel ideas briefly treated in the Introduction may slip the reader’s memory at the time of reading a sutta to which they pertain.
In conclusion I want to mention the contributions that others have made to the completion of this project.
First, I wish to thank Ven. Nyanaponika Mahāthera for first encouraging me to take up this task, which seemed so daunting at the outset, and then for providing valuable advice at every crucial turn along the way. Not only was he always ready to discuss difficult points, but despite deteriorating vision, which drastically reduced the time he had available for reading, he still read through the Introduction, the Notes, and the knottier suttas, offering helpful suggestions.
Second, I thank Ven. Khantipālo (now Laurence Mills) for permission to use his versions of the ninety suttas in A Treasury of the Buddha’s Words as the working basis for this edition. The work he did on those suttas almost two decades ago greatly facilitated the preparation of this volume.
Third, I must mention the tremendous help received from Ayyā Nyanasirī, who subedited the initial draft, made numerous suggestions for minor improvements, and typed out the entire manuscript. Even though, as my conception of the editorial task changed, several suttas had to be typed a second time, and a few a third time, this was always done with patience and understanding.
Fourth, I thank two fellow bhikkhus, Ven. Ṭhānissaro (U.S.A.) and Ven. Dhammavihārī (Sri Lanka), for reading portions of the manuscript and suggesting minor improvements.
Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to Dr. Nicholas Ribush for his encouragement and helpfulness and to Wisdom Publications for doing such a fine job of production. I am particularly grateful to John Bullitt for his careful and precise management of this project.
For any errors or defects that remain, I myself am fully responsible.
BHIKKHU BODHI
Forest Hermitage
Kandy, Sri Lanka
Note to the Second Edition
This second edition of The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (2001) incorporates a number of corrections and minor changes in the terminology that I have been making over the years to the text of the original edition. It also includes some additions and alterations to the Notes.
Note to the Third Edition
This third edition of The Middle Length Discourses (2005) includes numerous corrections and changes suggested to me by Bhikkhu Ñāṇatusita, who diligently compared the entire translation with the original Pāli text. I have also included other changes suggested to me by Ajahn Brahmavaṃso and Sāmaṇera Anālayo.
B.B.
Introduction
THE MAJJHIMA NIKĀYA AS A COLLECTION
THE MAJJHIMA NIKĀYA is the second collection of the Buddha’s discourses found in the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pali Canon. Its title means literally the Middle Collection, and it is so called because the suttas it contains are generally of middle length, compared with the longer suttas of the Dīgha Nikāya, which precedes it, and the shorter suttas making up the two major collections that follow it, the Saṁyutta Nikāya and the Anguttara Nikāya.
The Majjhima Nikāya consists of 152 suttas. These are divided into three parts called Sets of Fifty (paṇṇāsa), though the last set actually contains fifty-two suttas. Within each part the suttas are further grouped into chapters or divisions (vagga) of ten suttas each, the next to the last division containing twelve suttas. The names assigned to these divisions are often derived solely from the titles of their opening sutta (or, in some cases, pair of suttas) and thus are scarcely indicative of the material found within the divisions themselves. A partial exception is the Middle Fifty, where the division titles usually refer to the principal type of interlocutor or key figure in each of the suttas they contain. Even then the connection between the title and the contents is sometimes tenuous. The entire system of classification appears to have been devised more for the purpose of convenience than because of any essential homogeneity of subject matter in the suttas comprised under a single division.
There is also no particular pedagogical sequence in the suttas, no unfolding development of thought. Thus while different suttas illuminate each other and one will fill in ideas merely suggested by another, virtually any sutta may be taken up for individual study and will be found comprehensible on its own. Of course, the study of the entire compilation will naturally yield the richest harvest of understanding.
If the Majjhima Nikāya were to be characterised by a single phrase to distinguish it from among the other books of the Pali Canon, this might be done by describing it as the collection that combines the richest variety of contextual settings with the deepest and most comprehensive assortment of teachings. Like the Dīgha Nikāya, the Majjhima is replete with drama and narrative, while lacking much of its predecessor’s tendency towards imaginative embellishment and profusion of legend. Like the Saṁyutta, it contains some of the profoundest discourses in the Canon, disclosing the Buddha’s radical insights into the nature of existence; and like the Anguttara, it covers a wide range of topics of practical applicability. In contrast to those two Nikāyas, however, the Majjhima sets forth this material not in the form of short, self-contained utterances, but in the context of a fascinating procession of scenarios that exhibit the Buddha’s resplendence of wisdom, his skill in adapting his teachings to the needs and proclivities of his interlocutors, his wit and gentle humour, his majestic sublimity, and his compassionate humanity.
Naturally the greatest number of discourses in the Majjhima are addressed to the bhikkhus—the monks—since they lived in closest proximity to the Master and had followed him into homelessness to take upon themselves his complete course of training. But in the Majjhima we do not meet the Buddha only in his role as head of the Order. Repeatedly we see him engaged in living dialogue with people from the many different strata of ancient Indian society—with kings and princes, with brahmins and ascetics, with simple villagers and erudite philosophers, with earnest seekers and vain disputants. It is perhaps in this scripture above all others that the Buddha emerges in the role ascribed to him in the canonical verse of homage to the Blessed One as “the incomparable leader of persons to be tamed, the teacher of gods and humans.”
It is not the Buddha alone who appears in the Majjhima in the role of teacher. The work also introduces us to the accomplished disciples he produced who carried on the transmission of his teaching. Of the 152 suttas in the collection, nine are spoken by the venerable Sāriputta, the General of the Dhamma; three of these (MN 9, MN 28, MN 141) have become basic texts for the study of Buddhist doctrine in monastic schools throughout the Theravāda Buddhist world. The venerable Ānanda, the Buddha’s personal attendant during the last twenty-five years of his life, delivers seven suttas and participates in many more. Four suttas are spoken by the venerable Mahā Kaccāna, who excelled in elaborating upon the brief but enigmatic sayings of the Master, and two by the second chief disciple, the venerable Mahā Moggallāna, one of which (MN 15) has been recommended for a monk’s daily reflections. A dialogue between the venerable Sāriputta and the venerable Puṇṇa Mantāṇiputta (MN 24) explores a scheme of seven stages of purification that was to form the outline for Ācariya Buddhaghosa’s great treatise on the Buddhist path, the Visuddhimagga. Another dialogue (MN 44) introduces the bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, whose replies to a series of probing questions were so adroit that the Buddha sealed them for posterity with the words “I would have explained it to you in the same way.”
The formats of the suttas are also highly variegated. The majority take the form of discourses proper, expositions of the teaching that pour forth uninterrupted from the mouth of the Enlightened One. A few among these are delivered in a series of unadorned instructional propositions or guidelines to practice, but most are interlaced with striking similes and parables, which flash through and light u
p the dense mass of doctrine in ways that impress it deeply upon the mind. Other suttas unfold in dialogue and discussion, and in some the dramatic or narrative element predominates. Perhaps the best known and most widely appreciated among these is the Angulimāla Sutta (MN 86), which relates how the Buddha subdued the notorious bandit Angulimāla and transformed him into an enlightened saint. Equally moving, though in a different way, is the story of Raṭṭhapāla (MN 82), the youth of wealthy family whose precocious insight into the universality of suffering was so compelling that he was prepared to die rather than accept his parents’ refusal to permit him to go forth into homelessness. Several suttas centre upon debate, and these highlight the Buddha’s wit and delicate sense of irony as well as his dialectical skills. Particular mention might be made of MN 35 and MN 56, with their subtle humour leavening the seriousness of their contents. In a class of its own is the Brahmanimantanika Sutta (MN 49), in which the Buddha visits the Brahma-world to detach a deluded deity from his illusions of grandeur and soon finds himself locked in a gripping contest with Māra the Evil One—an inconceivable alliance of Divinity and Devil defending the sanctity of being against the Buddha’s call for deliverance into Nibbāna, the cessation of being.
THE BUDDHA IN THE MAJJHIMA NIKĀYA
Biographical information for its own sake was never an overriding concern of the redactors of the Pali Canon, and thus the data the Majjhima provides on the life of the Buddha is scanty and uncoordinated, included principally because of the light it sheds on the Buddha as the ideal exemplar of the spiritual quest and the fully qualified teacher. Nevertheless, though it subordinates biography to other concerns, the Majjhima does give us the fullest canonical account of the Master’s early life as a Bodhisatta, a seeker of enlightenment. With the Dīgha it shares the miraculous story of his conception and birth (MN 123), but its version of his great renunciation has been stripped to bare essentials and related in the stark terms of existential realism. In his youth, having seen through the sensual delights to which his princely status entitled him (MN 75.10), the Bodhisatta decided that it was futile to pursue things subject like himself to ageing and death and thus, with his parents weeping, he left the home life and went in search of the ageless and deathless, Nibbāna (MN 26.13). MN 26 tells of his discipleship under two accomplished meditation teachers of the day, his mastery of their systems, and his consequent disillusionment. MN 12 and MN 36 describe his ascetic practices during his six hard years of striving, a path he pursued almost to the point of death. MN 26 and MN 36 both relate in lean and unembellished terms his attainment of enlightenment, which they view from different angles, while MN 26 takes us past the enlightenment to the decision to teach and the instruction of his first disciples. From that point on connected biography breaks off in the Majjhima and can only be reconstructed partially and hypothetically.
Again, despite the absence of any systematic account, the Majjhima offers a sufficient number of cameo portraits of the Buddha for us to obtain, with the aid of information provided by other sources, a fairly satisfactory picture of his daily activities and annual routine during the forty-five years of his ministry. A commentarial text shows the Buddha’s daily schedule as having been divided between periods of instructing the bhikkhus, giving discourses to the laity, and secluded meditation, during which he usually dwelt either in the “abode of voidness” (MN 121.3, MN 122.6) or in the attainment of great compassion. The day’s single meal was always taken in the forenoon, either received by invitation or collected on almsround, and his sleep was restricted to a few hours per night, except in the summer, when he rested briefly during the middle of the day (MN 36.46). The annual routine was determined by the Indian climate, which divided the year into three seasons—a cold season from November through February, a hot season from March through June, and a rainy season from July through October. As was customary among the ascetics of ancient India, the Buddha and his monastic community would remain at a fixed residence during the rainy season, when torrential rains and swollen rivers made travel almost impossible. During the rest of the year he would wander through the Ganges Valley expounding his teachings to all who were prepared to listen.
The Buddha’s main seats of residence for the rains retreat (vassa) were located at Sāvatthī in the state of Kosala and Rājagaha in the state of Magadha. At Sāvatthī he would usually stay at Jeta’s Grove, a park offered to him by the wealthy merchant Anāthapiṇḍika, and accordingly a great number of Majjhima discourses are recorded as having been given there. Occasionally at Sāvatthī he would reside instead at the Eastern Park, offered by the devout lay-woman Visākhā, also known as “Migāra’s mother.” In Rājagaha he often stayed at the Bamboo Grove, offered by the king of Magadha, Seniya Bimbisāra, or for greater seclusion, on Vulture Peak outside the city. His wanderings, during which he was usually accompanied by a large retinue of bhikkhus, ranged from the Angan country (close to modern West Bengal) to the Himalayan foothills and the Kuru country (modern Delhi). Occasionally, when he saw that a special case required his individual attention, he would leave the Sangha and travel alone (see MN 75, MN 86, MN 140).
Although the Canon is precise and reliable in affording such details, for the early Buddhist community interest focuses upon the Buddha not so much in his concrete historical particularity as in his archetypal significance. Whereas outsiders might view him as merely one among the many spiritual teachers of the day—as “the recluse Gotama”—to his disciples “he is vision, he is knowledge, he is the Dhamma, he is the holy one,…the giver of the Deathless, the lord of the Dhamma, the Tathāgata” (MN 18.12). The last term in this series is the epithet the Buddha uses most often when referring to himself and it underscores his significance as the Great Arrival who brings to fulfilment a cosmic, repetitive pattern of events. The Pali commentators explain the word as meaning “thus come” (tathā āgata) and “thus gone” (tathā gata), that is, the one who comes into our midst bearing the message of deathlessness to which he has gone by his own practice of the path. As the Tathāgata he possesses the ten powers of knowledge and the four intrepidities, which enable him to roar his “lion’s roar” in the assemblies (MN 12.9–20). He is not merely a wise sage or a benevolent moralist but the latest in the line of Fully Enlightened Ones, each of whom arises singly in an age of spiritual darkness, discovers the deepest truths about the nature of existence, and establishes a Dispensation (sāsana) through which the path to deliverance again becomes accessible to the world. Even those of his disciples who have attained unsurpassable vision, practice, and deliverance still honour and venerate the Tathāgata as one who, enlightened himself, teaches others for the sake of their enlightenment (MN 35.26). Looking back at him following his demise, the first generation of monks could say: “The Blessed One was the arouser of the unarisen path, the producer of the unproduced path, the declarer of the undeclared path; he was the knower of the path, the finder of the path, the one skilled in the path,” which is followed by and attained to afterwards by his disciples (MN 108.5).
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
The Buddha’s teaching is called the Dhamma, a word that can signify both the truth transmitted by the teaching and the conceptual-verbal medium by which that truth is expressed in order that it can be communicated and made comprehensible. The Dhamma is not a body of immutable dogmas or a system of speculative thought. It is essentially a means, a raft for crossing over from the “near shore” of ignorance, craving, and suffering to the “far shore ” of transcendental peace and freedom (MN 22.13). Because his aim in setting forth his teaching is a pragmatic one—deliverance from suffering—the Buddha can dismiss the whole gamut of metaphysical speculation as a futile endeavour. Those committed to it he compares to a man struck by a poisoned arrow who refuses the surgeon’s help until he knows the details about his assailant and his weaponry (MN 63.5). Being struck by the arrow of craving, afflicted by ageing and death, humanity is in urgent need of help. The remedy the Buddha brings as the surgeon for the world (MN 105.27
) is the Dhamma, which discloses both the truth of our existential plight and the means by which we can heal our wounds.
The Dhamma that the Buddha discovered and taught consists at its core in Four Noble Truths:• the noble truth of suffering (dukkha)
• the noble truth of the origin of suffering (dukkhasamudaya)
• the noble truth of the cessation of suffering (dukkhanirodha)
• the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering (dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā)
It is these four truths that the Buddha awakened to on the night of his enlightenment (MN 4.31, MN 36.42), made known to the world when he set rolling the matchless Wheel of the Dhamma at Benares (MN 141.2), and held aloft through the forty-five years of his ministry as “the teaching special to the Buddhas” (MN 56.18). In the Majjhima Nikāya the Four Noble Truths are expounded concisely at MN 9.14–18 and in detail in MN 141, while in MN 28 the venerable Sāriputta develops an original exposition of the truths unique to that sutta. Yet, though they may be brought forth explicitly only on occasion, the Four Noble Truths structure the entire teaching of the Buddha, containing its many other principles just as the elephant’s footprint contains the footprints of all other animals (MN 28.2).