The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha

by Bhikkhu Nanamoli

  792 In the East it is considered, under normal circumstances, a serious breach of etiquette for one of lower birth to touch one of superior birth on the head. MA explains that Ghaṭı̄kāra was prepared to risk that breach in order to persuade Jotipāla to meet the Buddha.

  793 MA states that bodhisattas go forth under the Buddhas, purify their virtue, learn the Buddha’s teachings, practise the meditative life, and develop insight up to conformity knowledge (anulomañāṇa). But they do not make effort to attain the paths and fruits (which would terminate their bodhisatta career).

  794 His conduct approximates as closely to that of a monk as is possible for one still leading the household life. MA explains that he does not trade in the pottery he makes but merely engages in a free exchange of services with his neighbours.

  795 MA explains that he refused because of his fewness of wishes (appicchatā). He realised that the king had sent the foodstuffs because he had heard the Buddha’s report about his own virtues, but he thought: “I have no need of this. With what I acquire through my work I can support my parents and make offerings to the Buddha.”

  SUTTA 82

  796 Because of his readiness to risk death in order to obtain his parents’ permission to go forth, he was later declared by the Buddha the foremost of those gone forth in faith. His verses are at Thag 769–93.

  797 I omit here the lines beginning ehi tvaṁ Raṭṭ̣hapāla, found in SBJ but given in brackets in PTS and in a note by BBS. The lines seem to fit better into §8 below, with the verb uṭṭhehi in place of ehi.

  798 Although the stock phrase “before long” is used here, MA says that it took Raṭṭhapāla twelve years of striving to attain arahantship. This statement seems correct in view of the fact that on his return journey to his parents’ home his father did not immediately recognise him.

  799 MA explains that his father meant to say: “Raṭṭhapāla, my dear, there is our wealth—we cannot be called poor—yet you sit in such a place eating old porridge!” However, the householder was afflicted with such sorrow that he was unable to complete his utterance.

  800 The verses obviously refer to his former wives, adorned in order to entice him back to the lay life. Strangely, no mention is made of the wives in the portion of the sutta conceived in his pre-ordination days.

  801 MA: Recalling the Elder, the king would speak praise of him in the midst of his army or his harem: “That young man has done a difficult thing—having abandoned great wealth, he went forth without turning back or looking aside.”

  802 Upanı̄yati loko addhuvo. MA: It is swept away towards ageing and death.

  803 Attāṇo loko anabhissaro. MA: There is no one able to offer it shelter or to console it with a refuge. This statement, of course, does not deny a refuge from the world, which is just what the Dhamma offers.

  804 Assako loko sabbaṁ pahāya gamanı̄yaṁ.

  805 Ūno loko atitto taṇhādāso.

  SUTTA 83

  806 See Makhādeva Jātaka (No. 9) and Nimi Jātaka (No. 541). King Makhādeva and King Nimi were earlier births of the Buddha Gotama.

  807 The grove was originally planted by Makhādeva and thus was still named after him.

  808 MA: He was established in the ten wholesome courses of action.

  809 The Uposatha is the religious observance day of ancient India, also absorbed as such into Buddhism. See n.59.

  810 According to Buddhist cosmology, the lifespan of human beings oscillates between a minimum of ten years and a maximum of many thousands of years. Makhādeva lived at a time when the lifespan was at the long end of the spectrum.

  811 On the “divine messengers”—the foretokens of old age, illness, and death—see MN 130.

  812 MA: Mātali led him first through the hells, then he turned back and led him through the heavenly world.

  813 MA: The good practice is being broken by a virtuous bhikkhu when he thinks, “I cannot obtain arahantship” and does not exert energy. It has been broken by a corrupt bhikkhu. It is being continued by the seven sekhas. It has been continued by the arahant.

  SUTTA 84

  814 See n.230.

  815 From this passage it seems that despite a tendency to rigidification, the Indian class system was at the time considerably more elastic than the later caste system that evolved from it.

  SUTTA 85

  816 Prince Bodhi was the son of King Udena of Kosambı̄; his mother was the daughter of King Ca˚ḍappajjota of Avantı̄. The portion of the sutta from §2 through §8 is also found at Vin Cv Kh 5/ii.127–29, where it leads to the formulation of the rule mentioned in the following note.

  817 MA explains that Prince Bodhi was childless and desired a son. He had heard that people can fulfil their wishes by making special offerings to the Buddha, so he spread the white cloth with the idea: “If I am to have a son, the Buddha will step on the cloth; if I am not to have a son, he will not step on the cloth.” The Buddha knew that by reason of past evil kamma, he and his wife were destined to remain childless. Hence he did not step on the cloth. Later he laid down a disciplinary rule prohibiting the bhikkhus from stepping on a white cloth, but subsequently modified the rule to allow bhikkhus to step on a cloth as a blessing for householders.

  818 Pacchimaṁ janataṁ Tathāgato apaloketi. The Vin version here reads anukampati, “has compassion,” which is preferable. MA explains that Ven. Ānanda said this with the thought in mind: “In later times people will come to regard honour to the bhikkhus as a way of ensuring the fulfilment of their mundane wishes and will lose faith in the Sangha if their displays of honour do not bring the success they desire.”

  819 This is the basic tenet of the Jains, as at MN 14.20.

  SUTTA 86

  820 The name “Angulimāla” is an epithet meaning “garland (mālā) of fingers (anguli).” He was the son of the brahmin Bhaggava, a chaplain to King Pasenadi of Kosala. His given name was Ahiṁsaka, meaning “harmless one.” He studied at Takkasilā, where he became his teacher’s favourite. His fellow students, jealous of him, told the teacher that Ahiṁsaka had committed adultery with his wife. The teacher, intent on bringing Ahiṁsaka to ruin, commanded him to bring him a thousand human right-hand fingers as an honorarium. Ahiṁsaka lived in the Jālinı̄ forest, attacking travellers, cutting off a finger of each, and wearing them as a garland around his neck. At the time the sutta opens he was one short of a thousand and had made a determination to kill the next person to come along. The Buddha saw that Angulimāla’s mother was on her way to visit him, and aware that Angulimāla had the supporting conditions for arahantship, he intercepted him shortly before his mother was due to arrive. Matricide is one of the five terrible crimes that lead to immediate rebirth in hell. Thus the Buddha intercedes to prevent Angulimāla from committing this crime.

  821 MA explains that Angulimāla had just realised that the monk before him was the Buddha himself and that he had come to the forest for the express purpose of transforming him.

  822 MṬ explains the expression mūḷhagabbha to mean that the fetus had turned over only partly in the womb and was being expelled horizontally, so that its exit was blocked. MA says that although Angulimāla had killed almost a thousand people, he had never given rise to a thought of compassion. But now, through the power of his ordination, compassion arose in him as soon as he saw the woman in painful labour.

  823 Even today this utterance is often recited by Buddhist monks as a protective charm (paritta)for pregnant women close to their time of delivery.

  824 MA explains that any volitional action (kamma) is capable of yielding three kinds of result: a result to be experienced here and now, i.e., in the same life in which the deed is committed; a result to be experienced in the next existence; and a result to be experienced in any life subsequent to the next, as long as one’s sojourn in saṁsāra continues. Because he had attained arahantship, Angulimāla had escaped the latter two types of result but not the first, since even arahants are susceptible to exp
eriencing the present-life results of actions they performed before attaining arahantship.

  825 Several of the verses to follow also appear in the Dhammapada. Angulimāla’s verses are found in full at Thag 866–91.

  826 Although MA says that Ahiṁsaka, “Harmless,” was Angulimāla’s given name, the commentary to the Theragāthā says his original name was Hiṁsaka, meaning “dangerous.”

  827 Whereas virtuous bhikkhus short of arahants are said to eat the country’s almsfood as an inheritance from the Buddha, the arahant eats “free from debt” because he has made himself fully worthy of receiving alms. See Vsm I, 125–27.

  SUTTA 87

  828 The expression is often used to mean serious illness and death.

  829 Viḍūḍabha was the king’s son, who eventually overthrew him. Kāsi and Kosala are lands over which the king ruled.

  830 MA: He used this to wash his hands and feet and clean his mouth before saluting the Buddha.

  SUTTA 88

  831 MA explains that the king asked this question with reference to the case involving the female wanderer Sundarı̄, which was pending investigation at the time. Wishing to discredit the Buddha, some wandering ascetics persuaded Sundarı̄ to visit Jeta’s Grove at night and then let herself be seen returning at dawn, so people would become suspicious. After some time they had her murdered and buried near Jeta’s Grove, and when her body was discovered there, they pointed an accusing finger at the Buddha. After a week the false report was exposed when the king’s spies found out the real story behind the murder. See Ud 4:8/42–45.I follow here BBS and SBJ, which add the qualification “wise” to the phrase “recluses and brahmins” (samaṇehi brāhmaṇehi viññūhi). Ānanda’s answer thus implies that it is their censure and not that of ordinary ascetics that should be avoided. That this reading is correct is supported by the king’s statement just below that Ānanda has done with his answer what he himself could not do with the question, namely, distinguish between the wise and the foolish.

  832 Briefly, this passage offers five criteria of evil actions: unwholesomeness underscores the psychological quality of the action, its unhealthy effect upon the mind; its being blameworthy underscores its morally detrimental nature; its capacity to produce painful results calls attention to its undesirable kammic potential; and the last statement calls attention to both its evil motivation and the harmful long-range consequences such action entails for both oneself and others. The opposite explanation applies to good action, discussed in §14.

  833 MA: Ven. Ānanda’s answer goes beyond the question, for he shows not only that the Buddha praises the abandoning of all unwholesome states, but that he acts in accordance with his word by having abandoned all unwholesome states as well.

  834 MA explains the word bāhitikā, after which the sutta is named, as a cloak produced in a foreign country.

  SUTTA 89

  835 Dı̄gha Kārāya˚a was the commander-in-chief of King Pasenadi’s forces. He was the nephew of Bandhula, chief of the Mallas and a former friend of King Pasenadi, whom the king had killed together with his thirty-two sons through the treacherous contrivance of his corrupt ministers. Kārāya˚a was in secret collusion with Prince Viḍūḍabha, Pasenadi’s son, to help the latter usurp his father’s throne.

  836 Three leagues (yojana) would be approximately twenty miles.

  837 MA says that he thought: “Previously, after conferring in private with the recluse Gotama, the king arrested my uncle and his thirty-two sons. Perhaps this time he will arrest me.” The royal insignia entrusted to Dı̄gha Kārāya˚a also included the fan, parasol, and sandals. Dı̄gha Kārāya˚a hurried back to the capital with the royal insignia and crowned Viḍūḍabha king.

  838 At MN 13.11 these quarrels are said to arise because of sensual pleasures.

  839 As at MN 77.6.

  840 As at MN 27.4–7.

  841 At the time of their deaths both were declared by the Buddha to be once-returners. See AN 6:44/iii.348.

  842 This statement indicates that this sutta can be assigned to the last year of the Buddha’s life.

  843 When King Pasenadi returned to the place where he had left Dı̄gha Kārāya˚a, he found only a servant woman who reported the news to him. He then hurried on to Rājagaha to enlist the aid of his nephew, King Ajātasattu. But since he arrived late, he found the city gates closed. Exhausted by the journey, he lay down in a hall outside the city and died during the night.

  844 MA: “Monuments to the Dhamma” means words expressing reverence to the Dhamma. Whenever reverence is shown towards any of the Three Jewels, it is also shown to the others.

  SUTTA 90

  845 MA: These two sisters are the king’s wives (not his sisters!).

  846 MA: There is no one who can know and see all—past, present, and future—with one act of mental adverting, with one act of consciousness; thus this problem is discussed in terms of a single act of consciousness (ekacitta). On the question of the kind of omniscience the Theravāda tradition attributes to the Buddha, see n.714.

  847 That is, he is not inquiring about their social status but about their prospects for spiritual progress and attainment.

  848 As at MN 85.58.

  849 MA explains coming back and not coming back as referring to rebirth, thus suggesting that gods who do not come back are non-returners, while those who do come back are still “worldlings.” The same distinction would apply to the discussion on Brahmās in §15. The two key terms that here distinguish the two types of gods appear in the PTS ed. as savyāpajjhā and abyāpajjhā, “subject to ill will” and “free from ill will,” respectively; in SBJ, as sabyāpajjhā and abyāpajjhā (which is effectively the same in meaning): in BBS, they appear as sabyābajjhā and abyābajjhā, “subject to affliction” and “not subject to affliction.” The latter reading has the support of MA, which explains the distinction by way of mental suffering. In earlier editions of this translation I translated in accordance with the BBS reading, but the PTS-SBJ reading now seems to me more probable. After all, it seems more likely that a prince would be concerned with the malevolence of the gods than with their experiences of suffering. Note that the word itthatta, which in the stock declaration of arahantship signifies any state of manifest existence, is here glossed by MA as manussaloka, the human world.K.R. Norman, in an interesting paper, has proposed a radical re-editing of this portion of the sutta, which would entail important differences in translation, but as his proposals are not supported by any editions I hesitate to follow him. See Norman, Collected Papers, 2:162–71.

  SUTTA 91

  850 This is a stock description of a learned brahmin. According to MA, the Three Vedas are the Iru, Yaju, and Sāma (= Rig, Yajur, and Sāman). The fourth Veda, the Atharva, is not mentioned, but MA says its existence is implied when the histories (Itihāsa) are called “the fifth,” i.e., of the works regarded as authoritative by the brahmins. It is more likely, however, that the histories are called “the fifth” in connection with the four branches of study auxiliary to the Vedas that precede them in the description. The translation of technical terms here follows MA, with the help of Monier-William’s Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899). On the marks of a Great Man, MA says that this was a science based on 12,000 works explaining the characteristics of great men, such as Buddhas, paccekabuddhas, chief disciples, great disciples, Wheel-turning Monarchs, etc. These works included 16,000 verses called “The Buddha Mantra.”

  851 The thirty-two marks, enumerated in §9 below, are the subject of an entire sutta in the Dı̄gha Nikāya, DN 30, Lakkhaṇa Sutta. There each of the marks is explained as the kammic consequence of a particular virtue perfected by the Buddha during his earlier existences as a bodhisatta.

  852 The seven treasures are discussed in MN 129.34–41. The acquisition of the wheel-treasure explains why he is called a “Wheel-turning Monarch.”

  853 Loke vivattacchaddo. For hypotheses about the original form and meaning of this ex
pression, see Norman, Group of Discourses II, n. to 372, pp. 217–18. MA: The world, enveloped in the darkness of the defilements, is covered by seven veils: lust, hate, delusion, conceit, views, ignorance, and immoral conduct. Having removed these veils, the Buddha abides generating light all around. Thus he is one who draws aside the veil in the world. Or else vivattacchado can be resolved into vivatto and vicchaddo ; that is, he is devoid of the round vaṭṭarahito) and devoid of veils (chadanarahito). By the absence of the round (i.e., saṁsāra) he is an arahant; by the absence of veils, a Fully Enlightened One.

  854 MA explains that the Buddha worked this feat after first ascertaining that Uttara’s teacher, Brahmāyu, had the potential for achieving the fruit of non-returning, and that his attainment of this fruit depended upon the dispelling of Uttara’s doubts.

  855 The seven are the backs of the four limbs, the two shoulders, and the trunk.