Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa

WESAK Poya Day – 2024

Dhammadayadā — Wed, 29 May 2024 14:26:30 +0000

The post WESAK Poya Day – 2024 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

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Dhammadayadā — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 14:33:15 +0000

Dhamma Sermons - SHORTS

Dhamma Sermons

Online Sutta Study

How to control yourself (Chappanaka Sutta-SN-04)
Why do we get angry? Aghatavattu sutta
Thayodhamma sutta
Baddhekarattha sutta
Penapindupama Sutta
Kosambiya Sutta
Uttara Sutta
Rattapala Sutta
Tithi Sutta
Taana Sutta
Panchabhayavera Sutta Part 1
Kāya Sutta
Paccaya Pacchupanna Sutta
Apana Sutta
Velama Sutta
Bhumija Sutta
Sakya Sutta

The Wise Shall Realize

Brahmana Sutta | Samyutta Nikaya
The Reason behind the success of a business
How to purify your mind | Wisdom for Little Hearts
Dhamma Discussion | How Relationships are Important to Our Lives
Dhamma Discussion | Path to Happiness How to Control Your Anger
Phena Pindupama Sutta | Samyutta Nikaya
Avijja Sutta -| Samyutta Nikaya
Upanisa Sutta | Samyutta Nikaya
Sangarava Sutta | Anguttara Nikaya
Aadi Brahmachariya Pagngna Sutta
Hatthigamaka Ugga Sutta | Aṇguttara Nikāya
Patama Nathakarana Sutta | Samyutta Nikaya
Sotanudata Sutta
Janussoni Sutta
Dhamma Discussion | Spreading Loving Kindness

Bakthi Geetha

Miscellaneous

The post video-gallery-3 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

arahant-kassapa3

Dhammadayadā — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 14:19:18 +0000

AFTER THE BUDDHA’S PARINIBBĀNA

What remains to be said about the Venerable Mahākassapa’s relation to Ānanda is closely connected with his leading role in the Sangha after the Buddha’s passing away. At the demise of the Buddha only two of the five most prominent disciples were present, Ānanda and Anuruddha. Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna had expired earlier that year, and Mahākassapa, with a large company of monks, was just then in route from Pāvā to Kusinārā. During that walk he happened to step aside from the road and sat down under a tree to rest. Just then a naked ascetic passed that way holding a coral-tree flower (mandārava), which is said to grow only in the world of the gods. When Mahākassapa saw this, he knew that something unusual must have happened for the flower to be found on earth. He asked the ascetic whether he had heard any news about his teacher, the Buddha, and the ascetic told him:

“The recluse Gotama passed into Nibbāna a week ago. This coral-tree flower I picked up from the site of his demise.”

Among the monks in Mahākassapa’s company only the arahants remained calm and composed; those who were still unliberated from the passions fell to the ground, weeping and lamenting:

“Too soon has the Blessed One passed into Nibbāna! Too soon has the Eye of the World vanished from our sight!”

There was, however, one monk in the group named Subhadda, ordained in his old age, who addressed his comrades: “Enough, friends! Do not grieve, do not lament. We are well rid of the Great Ascetic. We were constantly troubled by his telling us: ‘This is proper for you, that is improper.’ Now we can do what we like, and we won’t have to do what we don’t like.”

The Venerable Mahākassapa did not reply to those callous words at that time. Just then he may have wanted to avoid striking a discordant note by censuring the monk or having him disrobed as he deserved. But, as we shall see later, Mahākassapa referred to this very incident shortly after the Buddha’s cremation when he spoke of the need to convene a council of elders to preserve the Dhamma and Vinaya for posterity. Now, however, he merely admonished his group of monks not to lament but to remember that all conditioned things are impermanent.

He then continued his journey to Kusinārā together with his company.

Until then the village chieftains at Kusinārā had not been able to set the Buddha’s funeral pyre alight. The Venerable Anuruddha explained that the deities, invisible but present, wanted to hold up the proceedings until the Venerable Mahākassapa came and paid his final homage to the Master’s remains. When Mahākassapa arrived, he walked around the pyre three times, reverently, with clasped hands, and then with bowed head paid his homage at the feet of the Tathāgata. When his group of monks had done likewise, the pyre burst into flames by itself.

Hardly had the bodily remains of the Tathāgata been cremated when there arose a conflict about the distribution of the relics among the lay folk assembled and those who had sent messengers later. But the Venerable Mahākassapa remained aloof in that quarrel, as did the other monks like Anuruddha and Ānanda. It was a respected brahmin named Doṇa who finally divided the relics into eight portions and distributed them among the eight claimants. He himself took the vessel in which the relics had been collected.

The Venerable Mahākassapa himself brought to King Ajātasattu of Magadha his share of the relics. Having done so, he turned his thoughts to the preservation of the Master’s spiritual heritage, the Dhamma and the Vinaya. The necessity for this was plainly demonstrated to him by Subhadda’s challenge of the monastic discipline and his advocacy of moral laxity. Mahākassapa took this as a warning of what the future held in store unless clear strictures were established now. If Subhadda’s attitude were to spread—and there were groups of monks who shared that attitude even while the Buddha was alive—it would rapidly lead to the decline and ruin of both the Sangha and the Teaching. To prevent this at the very start, Mahākassapa proposed holding a council of elders to rehearse the Dhamma and Vinaya and preserve them for posterity. With that suggestion, he turned to the monks gathered at Rājagaha.

The monks agreed, and at their request Mahākassapa selected five hundred elders all but one of whom were arahants. The one exception was Ānanda, whose position was ambivalent. As he had not yet succeeded in reaching the final goal, he could not be admitted to the council; but as he excelled in remembering all the Buddha’s discourses, his presence was essential.

The only solution was to give him an ultimatum that he must reach arahantship before the council began, which he did on the very night before it opened. Thus Ānanda was admitted to complete the five hundred members of the First Council. All other monks were to leave Rājagaha for the duration of the meeting.

As the first item of the council’s proceedings, the Vinaya, the code of monastic discipline, was recited by the Venerable Upāli, the leading Vinaya expert. The second item was the codification of the teachings laid down in the suttas. Here it was the Venerable Ānanda who, on being questioned by Mahākassapa, recited all those texts which were later collected into the five collections (nikāya) of the Sutta Piiaka.

Finally, some special matters concerning the Sangha were discussed. Among them, Ānanda mentioned that the Buddha, shortly before his death, had permitted the abolishment of the lesser and minor rules. When Ānanda was asked whether he had inquired from the Buddha what these minor rules were, he had to admit that he had neglected to do so. Now different monks expressed various opinions about this matter in the assembly.

As there was no consensus, Mahākassapa asked the assembly to consider that if they were to abolish rules arbitrarily, the lay followers and the public in general would reproach them for being in a hurry to relax discipline so soon after the Master’s death. Hence Mahākassapa suggested that the rules should be preserved intact without exception, and so it was decided.

After the holding of the First Council, the high regard in which the Venerable Mahākassapa was held grew still greater, and he was seen as the de facto head of the Sangha. His seniority would have contributed to this, as he was then one of the oldest living disciples. Later on, Mahākassapa handed over the Buddha’s alms bowl to Ānanda as a symbol of the faithful preservation of the Dhamma. Thus Mahākassapa, who had been generally recognized in the Order as the worthiest in succession, on his part chose Ānanda as being the worthiest after him.

There is no report in the Pāli literature about the time and circumstances of Mahākassapa’s death, but a Sanskrit chronicle on “the Masters of the Law” offers us a curious account of the great elder’s end according to the Northern Buddhist tradition.

According to this record, after the First Council Kassapa realized that he had fulfiled his mission and decided to attain final Nibbāna. He transmitted the Dhamma to Ānanda, paid his final respects to the holy places, and entered Rājagaha. He intended to inform King Ajātasattu of his impending demise, but the king was asleep and Kassapa did not wish to wake him up. Thus he climbed to the summit of Mount Kukkaiapāda alone, sat down cross-legged in a cave, and made the determination that his body should remain intact until the coming of the future Buddha, Metteyya. It was to future Buddha Metteyya that Kassapa was to hand over the robe of Gotama Buddha—the very same rag robe that the Blessed One had bestowed on him at their first meeting. Then Kassapa attained final Nibbāna, or, according to a variant, the meditative attainment of cessation (nirodhasamāpatti). The earth quaked, the devas strewed flowers over his body, and the mountain closed over him.

Soon afterwards King Ajātasattu and Ānanda went to Mount Kukkaiapāda to see Mahākassapa. The mountain partly opened and Kassapa’s body appeared before them. The king wanted to cremate it, but Ānanda informed him that Kassapa’s body must remain intact until the coming of Buddha Metteyya.

Then the mountain closed up again and Ajātasattu and Ānanda departed.

THE VERSES OF MAHĀKASSAPA

In the Theragāthā, forty verses are ascribed to the Venerable Mahākassapa. These stanzas mirror some of the great elder’s characteristic qualities and virtues: his austere habits and his contentedness; his strictness toward himself and his brother monks; his independent spirit and his self-reliance; his love of solitude and aloofness from the crowds; his dedication to the practice of meditation and the peace of the jhānas. These verses also show what does not appear in the prose texts: his sensitivity to the beauty of nature that surrounded him.

Here only a selection of the stanzas is given…… First, here is an exhortation to the monks to practice contentment with regard to the four basic requisites of a monk’s life:

Having come down from my mountain lodging,

I entered the city to collect my alms.

Courteously I came up to a man,

A leper who was eating a meal.

With his hand all leprous and diseased

He offered me a morsel of food.

As he placed the morsel in my bowl

A finger broke off and toppled in.

I sat down at the base of a wall

And ate the morsel he had given me.

While I was eating and after I had finished

I did not feel the least disgust.

Using left-over scraps as food,

Putrid urine as medicine,

The foot of a tree for one’s lodging,

And a robe made from cast-off rags:

One who has gained mastery over these

Is truly a man everywhere at home.

When Mahākassapa was asked why, at his advanced age, he still climbed daily up and down the rock, he replied:

While some grow weary as they climb

The steep slope of the rocky mountain,

Kassapa ascends, buoyed by psychic power—

The Buddha’s heir, aware and mindful.

Having returned from his daily alms round,

Having climbed up the rocky mountain,

Kassapa meditates free from clinging,

With fear and trembling well abandoned.

Having returned from his daily alms round,

Having climbed up the rocky mountain,

Kassapa meditates free from clinging,

Quenched among those who burn with passion.

Having returned from his daily alms round,

Having climbed up the rocky mountain,

Kassapa meditates free from clinging,

His task done, his cankers gone.

People asked again why the Venerable Mahākassapa, at his age, wishes to live in forests and mountains. Does he not like monasteries such as the Bamboo Grove and others?

Spread over with kareri garlands,

These regions are delightful to my heart;

Resounding with elephants, so lovely,

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

The splendid hue of dark-blue clouds,

Where streams are flowing, cool and clear,

Covered with indagopaka insects:

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

Like towering peaks of dark-blue clouds,

Like lofty houses with gabled roofs,

Resounding with elephants, so lovely:

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

Their lovely surfaces lashed by rain,

The mountains are resorted to by seers.

Echoing with the cries of peacocks,

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

This is enough for me, desiring to meditate,

Enough for me, resolute and mindful;

This is enough for me, a bhikkhu,

Resolute, desirous of the goal.

This is enough for me, desiring comfort,

A bhikkhu with a resolute mind.

This is enough for me, desiring exertion,

A stable one of resolute mind.

They are like the blue blossoms of flax,

Like the autumn sky covered with clouds,

With flocks of many kinds of birds:

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

No crowds of lay folk visit these hills,

But they are inhabited by herds of deer,

With flocks of many kinds of birds:

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

Wide gorges are there where clear water flows,

Haunted by monkeys and by deer,

Covered by wet carpets of moss:

Those rocky mountains give me delight.

The music of a five-piece ensemble

Can never give me so much delight

As I derive when with one-pointed mind

I gain proper insight into the Dhamma.

In the following verses the Venerable Mahākassapa voices his own ‘lion’s roar’:

As far as the range of this Buddha-field extends,

Excepting the great sage himself,

I am the foremost in ascetic virtues:

One my equal cannot be found.

The Teacher has been served by me,

The Buddha’s Teaching has been done.

The heavy burden has been dropped,

The conduit to becoming has been uprooted.

Gotama the immeasurable does not cling

To robe, to lodging, or to food.

He is untainted like a spotless lotus,

Bent on renunciation, beyond the three worlds.

The foundations of mindfulness are his neck;

The Great Sage has faith for his hands;

Above, his brow is perfect wisdom; nobly wise,

He ever wanders with all desire quenched.

END

(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)

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arahant-kassapa2

Dhammadayadā — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 13:58:40 +0000

HOW KASSAPA CAME TO THE BUDDHA

Continuing our story, we shall now return to Mahākassapa. Where did he go after he had come to the crossroads? As mentioned above, when the two ascetics separated, the earth shook by the force of their act of renunciation. The Buddha perceived this trembling of the earth and knew that it meant an outstanding disciple was on the way to him. Without informing any of the monks, he set out on the road alone, walking the distance of five miles to meet his future pupil—an act of compassion which later was often praised.

On the road between Rājagaha and Nālandā, the Master sat down under a banyan tree by the Bahuputtaka Shrine, waiting for his future disciple to arrive. He did not sit there like an ordinary ascetic but displayed all the sublime glory of a Buddha. He emitted rays of light for eighty meters all around, so that the entire thicket became a single mass of light, and he manifested all his thirty-two marks of a great man.

When Kassapa reached the spot and saw the Buddha sitting there in the full splendour of an Enlightened One, he thought, ‘

‘This must be my master for whose sake I have gone forth!’

He approached the Buddha, fell at his feet, and exclaimed:

“The Blessed One, Lord, is my teacher, and I am his disciple! The Blessed One, Lord, is my teacher, and I am his disciple!”

The Enlightened One said:

“Kassapa, if anyone who does not know and see were to say to a disciple endowed with such sincerity as yourself, ‘I know, I see,’ his head would split. But, Kassapa, knowing, I say ‘I know’; seeing, I say ‘I see.’’

He then gave Kassapa the following three exhortations as his first formal introduction to the Dhamma:

You should train yourself thus, Kassapa:

“A keen sense of shame and fear of wrongdoing (hiri-ottappa) shall be present in me towards seniors, novices, and those of middle status in the Order.’’

“Whatever teaching I hear that is conducive to something wholesome, I shall listen with an attentive ear, examining it, reflecting on it, absorbing it with all my heart.’’

“Mindfulness of the body linked with gladness shall not be neglected by me!”

Thus should you train yourself.

According to the commentary, this triple exhortation constituted Kassapa’s going forth (pabbajjā) and higher ordination (upasampadā) together. Then both Master and disciple walked toward Rājagaha. On the way, the Buddha wanted to rest and went off the road to the root of a tree. Mahākassapa then folded his double-robe in four and requested the Master to sit on it

“As this will be for my benefit for a long time.”

The Buddha sat down on Kassapa’s robe and said:

“Soft is your robe of patched cloth, Kassapa.”

Hearing this, Kassapa replied:

“May the Blessed One, O Lord, accept this robe of patched cloth out of compassion for me!”

“But, Kassapa, can you wear these hempen, worn-out rag robes of mine?”

Full of joy, Kassapa said:

“Certainly, Lord, I can wear the Blessed One’s rough and worn-out rag robes.”

This exchange of robes bestowed a great distinction on the Venerable Mahākassapa, an honour not shared by any other disciple. The commentary explains that the Buddha’s intention in exchanging robes with Kassapa was to motivate him to observe the dhutaṅga, the austere practices, from the time of his very admission into the Bhikkhu Sangha.

Although, after his Enlightenment, the Buddha condemned extreme self-mortification as a blind alley which is ‘painful, ignoble, and unbeneficial,’ he by no means rejected those ascetic practices that harmonized with the framework of the Middle Way. The true Middle Way is not a comfortable highway built out of easy compromises, but a lonely, steep ascent, which requires the renunciation of craving and the ability to endure hardship and discomfort. Hence the Buddha encouraged those monks who were truly keen on extricating from their hearts the subtlest roots of craving to adopt the dhutaṅga—special vows of austerity conducive to simplicity, contentment, renunciation, and energy—and he often applauded those monks who observed these vows.

The ancient suttas repeatedly commend several austere practices: using only the triple set of robes (and refusing to use additional robes); wearing only rag robes (and refusing robes offered by householders); subsisting only on food collected on alms round (and refusing invitations to meals); living only in the forest (and refusing to live in town monasteries)…… In the commentaries the list of austere practices is expanded to thirteen, which are explained in detail in such works on the meditative life as the Visuddhimagga.

The robe that the Buddha offered Kassapa was made from a shroud that he had picked up in a cremation ground, and in asking Kassapa whether he could wear that robe he was implicitly asking whether he would be able to make the full commitment to the austere practices that the use of such a robe would entail. When Kassapa affirmed that he could wear the robe, he was saying,

“Yes, Lord, I can fulfil the ascetic practices you wish me to undertake.”

From that moment on Kassapa pledged himself to uphold a life of strict austerity, and even in old age he insisted on observing the same vows that he had undertaken in his youth. On a later occasion the Buddha declared Mahākassapa foremost among the bhikkhus who observed the austere practices, thereby bringing to fulfilment Kassapa’s original aspiration formed a hundred thousand aeons in the past.

It was only seven days after his ordination and the exchange of robes that Kassapa attained the goal he was striving for, arahantship, the mind’s final liberation from defilements. Recounting this episode to Ānanda at a much later time, he declared: “For seven days, friend, I ate the alms-food of the country as a debtor, then on the eighth day the final knowledge of arahantship arose in me” .

KASSAPA’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE BUDDHA

We have already seen that there was a deep inner relationship between the Venerable Mahākassapa and the Buddha. This relationship, according to our traditional sources, had its root in their past lives. According to the Jātaka stories, Kassapa was connected with the Bodhisatta in nineteen existences, frequently through a close family bond. No less than six times Kassapa had been the Bodhisatta’s father, twice his brother, and often his friend or teacher. As it was thus not their first meeting, we can understand why such an immediate and strong devotion and wholehearted dedication toward the Master arose in Kassapa’s heart at the first sight of him.

From Kassapa’s final life, many conversations are reported between the Buddha and this great disciple. It happened on three occasions that the Master spoke to him:

“Exhort the monks, Kassapa. Give them a discourse on the Dhamma, Kassapa. Either I, Kassapa, should exhort the monks, or you. Either I or you should give them a discourse on the Dhamma”.

These words imply a high recognition of Kassapa’s ability, because not every arahant has the capacity to expound the Teaching well and effectively.

The commentary raises here the question why it was Mahākassapa who was placed by the Buddha on such a high footing in this respect, and not Sāriputta or Mahāmoggallāna. The Buddha did so, says the commentary, because he knew that Sāriputta and Moggallāna would not survive him, but Kassapa would, and he wanted to bolster Kassapa’s stature before the other monks so they would consider him one whose advice is to be heeded.

On three occasions when the Buddha requested Kassapa to exhort the monks, he refused to comply. On the first of these occasions Kassapa said that it had now become difficult to speak to some of the monks: they were not amenable to advice, were untractable, and did not accept admonitions with respect. He had also heard that two monks had been boasting of their skill in preaching, saying:

“Come, let us see who will preach more profusely, more beautifully, and at greater length!”

When the Buddha was informed about this by Kassapa, he had these monks summoned and gave them a stern lecture, making them give up their childish conceit. Hence we can see that Kassapa’s negative report turned out to be of positive benefit to those monks. It was not done just for the sake of criticizing others.

On the second occasion, too, Kassapa did not wish to instruct the monks because they were not amenable to admonishment, lacked faith in the good, lacked a sense of shame and fear of wrongdoing, and were slack and devoid of wisdom. Kassapa compared such monks, in their state of decline, to the waning moon, which daily loses in beauty (confidence), in roundness (shame), in splendour (fear of wrongdoing), in height (energy), and in width (wisdom).

On still a third occasion the Buddha asked Kassapa to instruct the monks, and Kassapa again expressed his reluctance for the same reason as before. It seems that this time, too, the Buddha did not urge Kassapa to change his mind, but he himself spoke of the reasons for their conduct:

“Formerly, Kassapa, there were elders of the Order who were forest dwellers, living on alms-food, wearing rag robes, using only the set of three robes, having few wants and being contented, living secluded and aloof from society, energetic; and they praised and encouraged such a way of life. When such elders visited a monastery, they were gladly welcomed and honoured as being dedicated to the practice of the Dhamma. Then the younger monks would also strive to emulate them in their way of life, and this would be of great benefit to them for a long time.

But nowadays, Kassapa, those who are honoured when visiting a monastery are not monks of austere and earnest life, but those who are well known and popular and are amply provided with the requisites of a monk. These are welcomed and honoured, and the younger monks try to emulate them, which will bring them harm for a long time. Hence one will be right in saying that such monks are harmed and overpowered by what does harm to a monk’s life.”

On another occasion, Kassapa asked the Buddha:

“What is the reason that formerly there were fewer rules, but more monks were established in the knowledge of arahantship, while now there are more rules, but fewer monks are established in the knowledge of arahantship?”

The Buddha replied:

“So it happens, Kassapa, when beings deteriorate and the true Dhamma vanishes: then there are more rules and fewer arahants. There will be, however, no vanishing of the true Dhamma until a sham Dhamma arises in the world. But when a sham Dhamma arises in the world, then the true Dhamma vanishes.

But, Kassapa, it is not a cataclysm of the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—that makes the true Dhamma disappear. Nor is the reason for its disappearance similar to the overloading of a ship that causes it to sink. It is rather the presence of five detrimental attitudes that causes the obscuration and disappearance of the true Dhamma.

These are the five: it is the lack of respect and regard for the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, the training, and meditative concentration, on the part of monks and nuns, and male and female lay devotees.

But so long as there is respect and regard for those five things, the true Dhamma will remain free of obscuration and will not disappear.”

We should note that, according to this text, the male and female lay followers are also preservers of the Dhamma. From this we may conclude that even when the Dhamma has come to oblivion among the monks, it will still remain alive when honoured and practiced by the laity.

Other discourses relating to Mahākassapa deal chiefly with his austere way of life, which was highly praised and commended by the Buddha. But on one occasion late in his ministry the Buddha reminded Kassapa that as he had now grown old he must find his coarse, worn- out rag robes irksome to use. Therefore, the Buddha suggested, he should now wear robes offered by householders, accept invitations for alms offerings, and live near him. But Kassapa replied:

“For a long time I have been a forest dweller, going on alms round and wearing rag robes; and such a life I have commended to others. I have had few wants, lived contented, secluded, applying strenuous energy; and that too I have commended to others.”

When the Buddha asked:

“But for what reason do you live in this way?”

Kassapa replied:

“For two reasons: for my own pleasant abiding here and now, and out of compassion for later generations of monks who, when they hear about such a life, might think to emulate it.”

Then the Buddha said:

“Well spoken, Kassapa, well spoken! You are living for the happiness of many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit and welfare of gods and humans. You may then keep to your coarse rag robes, go out for alms, and live in the forest”

“This our Kassapa,” said the Buddha, “is satisfied with whatever robes, alms-food, lodging, and medicine he obtains. For the sake of these he will not do anything that is unbefitting for a monk. If he does not obtain any of these requisites, he is not perturbed; and when he obtains them, he makes use of them without clinging or infatuation, not committing any fault, aware of (possible) dangers and

knowing them as an escape (from bodily affliction). By the example of Kassapa, or by one who equals him, I will exhort you, monks. Thus admonished, you should practice in the same way”.

The Buddha also mentioned that Mahākassapa was exemplary in his relation to the laity. When going among the families on his alms round or on invitation, he did not think wishfully, ‘May people give amply and give things of quality! May they give quickly and respectfully!’ He had no such thoughts, but remained detached like the moon that sheds its mild light from a distance:

When Kassapa goes among families, his mind is not attached, not caught up, not fettered. He rather thinks: ‘Let those who want gain acquire gain! Let those who want merit do merit!’ He is pleased and glad at the gains of others, just as he is pleased and glad at his own gains. Such a monk is fit to go among families.

When he preaches the doctrine, he will not do so for the sake of personal recognition and praise, but for letting them know the Teaching of the Exalted One, so that those who hear it may accept it and practice accordingly. He will preach because of the excellence of the Teaching and out of compassion and sympathy.

But the strongest recognition of Mahākassapa’s achievement, the highest praise given him by the Buddha, came when the Master said that Kassapa could attain at will, just as he himself could, the four fine- material and the four immaterial meditative absorptions, the cessation of perception and feeling, and could also attain the six supernormal knowledges (abhiññā), which include the supernormal powers and culminate in the attainment of Nibbāna.

Here his powerful meditative achievements, akin to those of the Buddha, appear as a characteristic trait of Mahākassapa’s mind. It was because of that deep meditative calm that he could adapt himself, unperturbed, to all external situations and live as one of few wants, materially and socially. In his verses preserved in the Theragāthā, Mahākassapa praises again and again the peace of the jhānas. He was one who went from abundance to abundance. In his lay life he had lived in the abundance of wealth and harmony. As a monk he dwelt in the abundance of jhānic experience, furthered by his former life in the Brahma-world. While in some of the texts he appears to be very severe, this should not lead us to believe that he was harsh by nature.

When he occasionally rebuked others in stern words, he did so for pedagogical reasons, in order to help them. This we shall see especially when we deal with his relationship to Ānanda.

ENCOUNTERS WITH DEITIES

Our sources record two meetings of Mahākassapa with deities. They are related here because they illustrate his independence of spirit and his determination to keep to his austere way of living without accepting privileges even from beings of a higher order.

The first was with a young female deity named Lājā. She remembered that she had obtained her present celestial happiness because, in her previous human existence as a poor woman, she had offered parched rice to the Elder Mahākassapa with a believing heart, uttering the aspiration: ‘May I be a partaker of the truth you have seen!’ On her way home, while reflecting on her offering, she was bitten by a snake and died, and was immediately reborn in the heaven of the Thirty-three in the midst of great splendour.

This the deity remembered, and in her gratitude she now wanted to serve the great elder.

Descending to earth, she swept the elder’s cell and filled the water vessels. After she had done so for three days, the elder saw her radiant figure in his cell, and after questioning her, asked her to leave; he did not wish monks of the future to criticize him for accepting the services of a deity. His entreaties were of no avail; the deity rose into the air, filled with great sadness. The Buddha, aware of what had happened, appeared to the deity and consoled her by speaking of the worth of meritorious deeds and their great reward. But he also said that it had been Kassapa’s duty to practice restraint.

In the other story it is told that Mahākassapa, while living at the Pipphalī Cave, had entered a period of seven days’ uninterrupted meditation. At the end of that period, after emerging from his absorption, he went to Rājagaha on alms round. At that time five hundred female deities of Sakka’s retinue keenly desired to offer him alms. They approached the elder with the food they had prepared, asking him to bestow his favour upon them by accepting their offering. Kassapa, however, declined, for he wanted to bestow his favour on the poor so that they could earn merit. They entreated him several times, but finally left after he repeatedly refused to yield.

When Sakka, king of the gods, heard about their vain effort, he too experienced a keen desire to offer alms to the elder. To avoid being refused, he assumed the guise of an old weaver, and when Mahākassapa approached he offered rice to him. At the moment the rice was accepted it turned exceedingly fragrant. Then Mahākassapa knew that this old weaver was not a human being but Sakka, and he reproached the deva king thus:

“You have done a grievous wrong, Kosiya. By doing so, you have deprived poor people of the chance to acquire merit. Do not do such a thing again!”

“We too need merit, revered Kassapa!” Sakka replied. “We too are in need of merit! But have I acquired merit or not by giving alms to you through deception?”

“You have gained merit, friend.”

Now Sakka, while departing, gave voice to the following solemn utterance (udāna):

Oh, almsgiving! Highest almsgiving! Well bestowed on Kassapa!

RELATIONS WITH FELLOW MONKS

One as dedicated to the meditative life as the Venerable Mahākassapa was cannot be expected to have been eager to accept and train many pupils; and, in fact, the canonical texts mention only a few pupils of his. One of Kassapa’s few recorded discourses addressed to the monks deals with the subject of overestimating one’s attainments:

“There may be a monk who declares he has attained to the highest knowledge, that of arahantship. Then the Master, or a disciple capable of knowing the minds of others, examines and questions him. When they question him, that monk becomes embarrassed and confused. The questioner now understands that the monk has made this declaration through overrating himself out of conceit. Then, considering the reason for it, he sees that this monk has acquired much knowledge of the Teaching and proficiency in it, which made him declare his overestimation of himself to be the truth. Penetrating the mind of that monk, he sees that he is still obstructed by the five hindrances and has stopped

halfway while there is still more to do” .

Apart from the few instances where Mahākassapa is speaking to unnamed monks or a group of monks, the texts record only his relationship to Sāriputta and Ānanda. According to the Jātakas, in former lives Sāriputta was twice the son of Kassapa and twice his brother; once too he was Kassapa’s grandson and his friend. In his verses, Kassapa tells that he once saw thousands of Brahmā gods descend from their heaven, pay homage to Sāriputta, and praise him.

Two conversations between Mahākassapa and Sāriputta have been recorded in the Kassapa Saṃyutta. On both occasions it was in the evening, after meditation, that Sāriputta went to see Mahākassapa.

In the first text Sāriputta asked:

“It has been said, friend Kassapa, that without ardour and without fear of wrongdoing, one is incapable of gaining enlightenment, incapable of attaining Nibbāna, incapable of attaining highest security, but that with ardour and with fear of wrongdoing, one is capable of such attainments. Now in how far is one incapable of such attainments and in how far is one capable of them?”

“When, friend Sāriputta, a monk thinks: ‘If bad and unwholesome states that have so far not arisen in me were to arise, this would bring me harm,’ and if then he does not arouse ardour and fear of wrongdoing, then he is lacking ardour and fear of wrongdoing. When he thinks: ‘If bad and unwholesome states that have now arisen in me are not abandoned, this would bring me harm,’ or: ‘If unarisen wholesome states were not to arise, this would bring me harm,’ or: ‘If arisen wholesome states were to vanish, this would bring me harm’-if on these occasions, too, a monk does not arouse ardour and fear of wrongdoing, then he is lacking these qualities, and lacking them, he is incapable of attaining enlightenment, incapable of attaining Nibbāna, incapable of attaining the highest security. But if a monk (on those four occasions for right effort) arouses ardour and fear of wrongdoing, he is capable of attaining enlightenment, capable of attaining Nibbāna, capable of attaining the highest security.”

On another occasion Sāriputta asked Mahākassapa whether the Tathāgata, the Perfect One, exists after death, or does not exist, or (in some sense) both exists and does not exist, or neither exists nor does not exist. In each case Mahākassapa replied:

“This was not declared by the Blessed One. And why not? Because it is of no benefit and does not belong to the fundamentals of the holy life, because it does not lead to disenchantment, nor to dispassion, cessation, inner peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and Nibbāna.”

“But what, friend, did the Blessed One declare?”

“This is suffering—so, friend, has the Blessed One declared. This is the origin of suffering… the cessation of suffering… the way to the cessation of suffering—so, friend, has the Blessed One declared. And why? Because it conduces to benefit and belongs to the fundamentals of the holy life, because it leads to turning away (from worldliness), to dispassion, cessation, inner peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and Nibbāna.”

We have no explanation why Sāriputta posed these questions, which for an arahant should have been fully clear. It is, however, not impossible that this conversation took place immediately after Kassapa’s ordination and before his attainment of arahantship, and that Sāriputta wanted to test his understanding; or perhaps the questions were asked for the sake of other monks who may have been present.

The Mahāgosiṅga Sutta records a group discussion led by the Venerable Sāriputta in which Mahākassapa along with several other eminent disciples once participated.

At the time these elders were residing in the Gosiṅga forest along with the Buddha, and on a clear moonlit night they approached Sāriputta for a discussion on the Dhamma. Sāriputta declared:

“Delightful is this Gosiṅga sāla-tree forest, it is a clear moonlit night, the sāla-trees are in full bloom, and it seems as if celestial scents are being wafted around.”

Then he asked each distinguished elder in the group—Ānanda, Revata, Anuruddha, Mahākassapa, and Mahāmoggallāna—what kind of monk could lend more lustre to that forest. Mahākassapa, like the others, replied according to his own temperament:

“Here, friend Sāriputta, a monk is himself a forest dweller and he speaks in praise of forest dwelling; he is himself an alms-food collector and he speaks in praise of collecting alms-food; he is himself a rag-robe wearer and he speaks in praise of wearing rag robes; he is himself a triple-robe wearer and he speaks in praise of wearing the triple robe;

he himself has few wishes, is content, secluded, and aloof from society, and he speaks in praise of each of these qualities; he himself has attained to virtue, to concentration, to wisdom, to liberation, and to knowledge and vision of liberation, and he speaks in praise of each of these attainments. This is the kind of monk who could lend more lustre to this Gosiṅga sāla-tree forest.”

According to tradition, Mahākassapa also had close connections in former lives with the Venerable Ānanda. Ānanda had twice been his brother, once his son, once even the murderer of his son, and in this life he was his pupil. The Kassapa Saṃyutta likewise has two conversations between them. They concern practical questions, while those with Sāriputta referred to points of doctrine.

On the first occasion Ānanda asked Kassapa to accompany him to the nuns’ quarters. Kassapa, however, refused and asked Ānanda to go alone. But Ānanda seemed to be intent on getting Kassapa to give a Dhamma talk to the nuns, and he repeated his request twice. Kassapa finally consented and went along. The result, however, turned out to be quite different from what Ānanda had expected.

After the discourse one of the nuns, Thullatissā by name, raised her voice to make a rather offensive remark:

“How could Master Kassapa presume to speak on the Dhamma in the presence of Master Ānanda, the learned sage? This is as if a needle peddler wanted to sell a needle to the needle maker.”

Obviously this nun preferred the gentle preaching of Ānanda to Kassapa’s stern and sometimes critical approach, which may have touched on her own weaknesses.

When Kassapa heard the nun’s remarks, he asked Ānanda:

“How is it, friend Ānanda, am I the needle peddler and you the needle maker, or am I the needle maker and you the needle peddler?”

Ānanda replied: “Be indulgent, venerable sir. She is a foolish woman.”

“Beware, friend Ānanda, or else the Sangha may further investigate you. How is it, friend Ānanda, was it you whom the Exalted One extolled in the presence of the Sangha, saying: ‘I, O monks, can attain at will the four fine-material and immaterial meditative absorptions, the cessation of

perception and feeling, the six supernormal knowledges; and Ānanda, too, can so attain’?”

“No, venerable sir.”

“Or did he say: ‘Kassapa, too, can so attain’?”

From the above account we see that the Venerable Mahākassapa did not think that Ānanda’s conciliatory reply was adequate or did full justice to the situation. Thullatissā’s remarks showed her personal attachment to Ānanda, who had always been a favourite with women, and who had also given his strong support to the founding of the Bhikkhunī Sangha. This emotional relation of Thullatissā’s to Ānanda could not be put aside just by Ānanda’s general remark. Hence Kassapa responded in a way which, at first glance, appears rather harsh: “Beware, friend Ānanda, or else the Sangha may further investigate you.” With these words he wanted to warn Ānanda to avoid becoming too involved in ministering to the nuns, since they might become too fond of him and cause others to entertain doubts about him.

Kassapa’s reply has therefore to be seen as the earnest advice of a taint-free arahant to one who had not yet reached that state. When, immediately after, Kassapa stressed that it was his own meditative attainments that the Buddha had extolled, and not Ānanda’s, this may be taken as pointing to the far different spiritual status of the two elders; and it may have served as a spur to Ānanda to strive for those attainments. The nun Thullatissā, however, left the Order.

Another conversation between the Venerable Mahākassapa and Ānanda arose on the following occasion. Once the Venerable Ānanda went on a walking tour in the Southern Hills together with a large company of monks. This was at a time when thirty mostly young monks, pupils of Ānanda, had given up the robe and had returned to the lay life. After Ānanda had ended his tour, he came to Rājagaha and went to see the Venerable Mahākassapa. When he had saluted him and was seated, Kassapa said this:

“What are the reasons, friend Ānanda, for the sake of which the Blessed One had said that no more than three monks should take their alms meal among families?”

“There are three reasons, venerable sir: it is for restraining ill- behaved persons, for the well-being of good monks, and out of consideration for the lay families.”

“Then, friend Ānanda, why do you go on tour with those young new monks whose senses are unrestrained, who are not moderate in eating, not devoted to wakefulness? It seems you behave like one trampling the corn; it seems you destroy the faith of the families. Your following is breaking up, your new starters are falling away. This youngster truly does not know his own measure!”

“Grey hairs are now on my head, venerable sir, and still we cannot escape being called ‘youngster’ by the Venerable Mahākassapa.”

But the Venerable Mahākassapa repeated the very same words he had spoken.

This could have ended the matter, as Ānanda did not deny that the reproach was justified. He objected only to the hurtful way in which Mahākassapa had expressed his censure. In response to the admonition, Ānanda would have tried to keep his pupils under stricter discipline.

But, again, this matter was complicated by a nun, Thullanandā, who along with Thullatissā was one of the black sheep of the Bhikkhunī Sangha. She had heard that Ānanda had been called a ‘youngster’ by the Venerable Mahākassapa, and full of indignation, she voiced her protest, saying that Kassapa had no right to criticize a wise monk like Ānanda, as Kassapa had formerly been an ascetic of another sect. In that way, Thullanandā diverted the matter of monastic discipline into personal detraction—personal detraction bordering on calumny; for, as our earlier account has shown, Kassapa had originally gone forth as an independent ascetic, not as a follower of another school. Thullanandā soon left the Order, just as the other wayward nun, Thullatissā, had done.

When the Venerable Mahākassapa heard Thullanandā’s utterance, he said to Ānanda:

“Rash and thoughtless are the words spoken by Thullanandā the nun. Since I left the home life, I have had no other teacher than the Blessed One, the Arahant, the Fully Enlightened One.”

To be Continued……..

The post arahant-kassapa2 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

ARAHANT KASSAPA

Dhammadayadā — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 13:45:33 +0000

ARAHANT KASSAPA’S EARLY YEARS

Shortly before his parinibbāna the Buddha had refused to appoint a personal successor. Instead, he urged the monks to look upon the Dhamma and the Vinaya—the doctrine and the discipline—as their Master, for within the teachings proclaimed during his forty-five-year ministry they could find all the instructions they needed to tread the path to deliverance.

Nevertheless, though the monks did not select a successor, in the period immediately following the Blessed One’s demise the community came to regard with increasing reverence one solitary elder whose person emanated a natural aura of strength and authority. This figure, whom the Pāli commentaries describe as ‘the disciple who was the Buddha’s counterpart’, was known as the Venerable Mahākassapa, Kassapa the Great.

There were many factors that contributed to Mahākassapa’s rise to pre-eminence in the newly orphaned Sangha. He shared with the Buddha seven of the thirty-two ‘marks of a great man’ and had been praised by the Master for his meditative attainments and realizations.

He was the only monk with whom the Buddha had exchanged robes, a special honour. Mahākassapa possessed to the highest degree the ‘ten qualities that inspire confidence.’ He was also a model of a disciplined and austere life devoted to meditation. So it is hardly surprising that he assumed the presidency of the First Council of the Sangha, which had been summoned on his urgent advice.

Like the two chief disciples, Sāriputta and Moggallāna,

Mahākassapa was of brahmin descent. Some years before the Bodhisatta’s own birth he was born in the Magadha country, in the village Mahātittha, as the son of the brahmin Kapila and his wife Sumanādevī. He was named Pipphali. His father owned sixteen villages over which he ruled like a little king, so Pipphali grew up in the midst of wealth and luxury.

Yet already in his youth he felt a longing to leave the worldly life behind and hence he did not want to marry. When his parents repeatedly urged him to take a wife, he told them that he would look after them as long as they lived but that after their deaths, he would become an ascetic.

Yet they insisted again and again that he should take a wife, and thus just to comfort his mother he finally agreed to marry—on the condition that a girl could be found who conformed to his idea of perfection.

For that purpose he commissioned goldsmiths to fashion for him a golden statue of a beautiful maiden. He had it bedecked with fine garments and ornaments and showed it to his parents, saying:

“If you can find a maiden like this for me, I shall remain in the home life.”

But his mother was a clever woman and thought: ‘Surely my son must have done deeds of merit in the past, and he must have done them together with a woman who is the counterpart of this golden image.’

Thus she approached eight brahmins, showered them with rich gifts, and asked them to take the image and travel around in search of a human likeness of it. The brahmins thought: ‘Let us first go to the Madda country, which is a gold mine of beautiful women.’ There they found at Sāgala a girl whose beauty equalled that of the image. She was Bhaddā Kapilānī, a wealthy brahmin’s daughter, age sixteen, four years younger than Pipphali Kassapa.

Her parents agreed to the marriage proposal, and the brahmins returned to tell of their success.

Yet Bhaddā Kapilānī too did not wish to marry. Like Pipphali, she longed to live a religious life and wished to leave home as a female ascetic. Such correspondence between her aspiration and that of Pipphali was not due to chance but sprang from the strong kammic bond they had forged in previous lives. Maturing in the present life, this bond was to unite them in marriage in their youth and to lead to a decisive separation later on—a separation which was again to be resolved by a union at a still higher level, when both consummated their spiritual endeavours by winning the supreme fruit of holiness under the Enlightened One.

Pipphali was most distressed to hear that his plot had been foiled and that his parents had actually found a girl who matched the golden statue. Still intent on escaping from his agreement, he sent the following letter to the girl:

“Bhaddā, please marry someone else of equal status and live a happy home life with him. As for myself, I shall become an ascetic. Please do not have regrets.”

Bhaddā Kapilānī, like- minded as she was, independently sent him a similar letter.

But their parents, suspecting such an exchange would take place, had both letters intercepted on the way and replaced by letters of welcome.

So Bhaddā was taken to Magadha and the young couple were married. However, in accordance with their ascetic yearning, both agreed to maintain a life of celibacy. To give expression to their decision, each night they would lay a garland of flowers between them before they went to bed, resolving, ‘If on either side the flowers wilt, we shall understand that the person on whose side they wilted had given rise to a lustful thought.’ At night they lay awake all night long from fear of making bodily contact; during the day they did not even smile at one another. As long as their parents lived, they remained aloof from worldly enjoyment, and they did not even have to look after the estate’s farms.

When Pipphali’s parents died, the couple took charge of the large property. It was then that they felt the spur that set them on the course of renunciation.

One day, as Pipphali was inspecting the fields, he saw as if with new eyes something that he had seen so often before.

He observed that when his farm hands ploughed the land, many birds gathered and eagerly picked the worms from the furrows. This sight, so common to a farmer, now startled him. It struck him forcefully that what brought him his wealth, the produce of his fields, was bound up with the suffering of other living beings. His livelihood was purchased with the death of so many worms and other little creatures living in the soil. Thinking about this, he asked one of his laborers:

“Who will have to bear the consequences of such an evil action?”

“You yourself, sir,” was the answer.

Shaken by that insight into kammic retribution, Pipphali went home and reflected:

“If I have to carry along the burden of guilt for this killing, of what use to me is all my wealth? I would be better off giving it all to Bhaddā and going forth into the ascetic life.”

But at home, at about the same time, Bhaddā had a similar experience, seeing afresh with a deeper understanding something she had very often seen before. Her servants had spread out sesamum seeds to dry in the sun, and crows and other birds ate the insects that had been attracted by the seeds.

When Bhaddā asked her servants who had to account morally for the violent death of so many creatures, she was told that the kammic responsibility was hers. Then she thought:

“If even by this much I commit evil, I won’t be able to lift my head above the ocean of rebirths even in a thousand lives. As soon as Pipphali returns, I shall hand over everything to him and leave to take up the ascetic life.”

When both found themselves in accord, they had saffron cloth and clay bowls brought for them from the bazaar and then shaved each other’s head. They thus became like ascetic wanderers, and they made the aspiration:

“We dedicate our going forth to the arahants in the world!”

Even though they had not yet encountered the Buddha or his Teaching, they knew instinctively that they should follow the ascetic life in a state of ‘adopted discipleship’ to the truly wise and holy ones, whoever they might be. Then, slinging their alms bowls over their shoulders, they left the manor house, unnoticed by the servants.

When, however, they reached the next village, which belonged to the estate, the labourers and their families saw them. Crying and lamenting, they fell at the feet of the two ascetics and exclaimed:

“Oh, dear and noble ones! Why do you want to make us helpless orphans?”

“It is because we have seen the three worlds to be like a house afire that we go forth into the homeless life.”

To those who were serfs, Pipphali Kassapa granted freedom, and he and Bhaddā continued on, leaving the villagers behind still weeping.

As they walked, Kassapa went ahead while Bhaddā followed behind him. Then the thought occurred to Kassapa: ‘Now, this Bhaddā Kapilānī follows me close behind, and she is a woman of great beauty. Some people could easily think: ‘Though they are ascetics, they still cannot live without each other! What they are doing is unseemly!’ If they spoil their minds by such false thoughts or even spread evil rumors, they will cause great harm to themselves. It is better that we separate.’

Thus, when they reached a crossroads, Kassapa told her what he had been thinking and said to her:

“Bhaddā, you take one of these roads, and I shall go the other way.”

She replied:

“It is true, for ascetics a woman is an obstacle. People might suspect us of misconduct and slander us, so let us part. You go your way and I’ll go my way.”

She then respectfully circumambulated him three times, saluted his feet, and with folded hands she spoke:

“Our close companionship and friendship that had lasted for an unfathomable past comes to an end today. Please take the path to the right and I shall take the other road.”

Thus they parted and went their individual ways, seeking the high goal of arahantship, final deliverance from suffering. It is said that the earth, shaken by the power of their virtue, quaked and trembled, and peals of thunder came forth from the sky, and the mountains at the edge of the world system resounded.

BHADDĀ KAPILĀNĪ

Let us first follow Bhaddā Kapilānī. Her road led her to Sāvatthī where she listened to the Buddha’s discourses at the Jetavana monastery. As the Bhikkhunī Sangha, the order of nuns, did not yet exist at that time, she took up residence at a nunnery of non-Buddhist female ascetics not far from Jetavana. There she lived for five years until she could obtain ordination as a bhikkhunī. It was not long afterward that she attained the goal of the holy life, arahantship. The Buddha praised Bhaddā as being the foremost among the nuns who could recollect their past lives. The Pali commentaries and the Jātaka stories leave us a record of some of her former existences in which she had been Kassapa’s wife.

One day she uttered the following verses in which she praised Mahākassapa and declared her own attainment:

A son of the Buddha and his rightful heir,

Kassapa who is well concentrated

Knows his abodes in previous lives

And sees the heavens and planes of woe.

He too has attained the destruction of birth,

A sage consummate in direct knowledge;

Endowed with these three modes of knowledge,

The brahmin is a triple-knowledge bearer.

Just so is Bhaddā Kapilānī

A triple-knowledge nun who has left Death behind.

Having conquered Māra and his mount,

She lives bearing her final body.

Having seen the grave danger in the world,

We both went forth into homelessness.

Now we are destroyers of the cankers;

Tamed and cool, we have won Nibbāna.

As an arahant bhikkhunī, Bhaddā devoted herself chiefly to the education of the younger nuns and their instruction in monastic discipline. In the Bhikkhunī Vibhaṅga (Analysis of Nuns’ Discipline), instances are recorded involving her pupils which led to the prescribing of certain disciplinary rules for bhikkhunīs. There were also two instances when Bhaddā Kapilānī had to bear the envy of another nun who was hostile toward Mahākassapa, too.

The nun Thullanandā was learned in the Dhamma and a good preacher, but evidently she had more intelligence than gentleness of heart. She was self-willed and not prepared to change her conduct, as evidenced by several Vinaya texts.

When Bhaddā, too, became a popular preacher of Dhamma, even preferred by some of Thullanandā’s own pupils, Thullanandā became jealous. In order to annoy Bhaddā, once she and her pupil nuns walked up and down in front of Bhaddā’s cell, reciting loudly. She was censured by the Buddha on that account. Another time, at Bhaddā’s request, she had arranged temporary living quarters for Bhaddā when the latter visited Sāvatthī. But then, in another fit of jealousy, she threw her out of those quarters. Bhaddā, however, being an arahant, was no longer affected by such happenings and looked at them with detachment and compassion.

THE SAṂSĀRIC BACKGROUND

Mahākassapa and Bhaddā Kapilānī originally formed their aspirations to great discipleship under the Buddha Padumuttara, the fifteenth Buddha of antiquity, who arose a hundred thousand aeons in the past and had his main monastic seat in the Khema Deer Park near the city of Haṃsavati. At that time the future Kassapa was a wealthy landowner named Vedeha and Bhaddā was his wife.

One day Vedeha went to the monastery and was seated in the assembly at the very moment that the Teacher declared an elder named Mahānisabha his third pre-eminent disciple, the foremost of the proponents of the ascetic practices. The lay devotee Vedeha was pleased by this and invited the Teacher and his entire Sangha to his home for the next day’s meal.

While the Buddha and the monks were in his house taking their meal, the lay devotee caught sight of the Elder Mahānisabha walking on his alms round down the street. He went outside and invited the elder to join the gathering, but the elder declined. Vedeha then took his bowl, filled it with food, and brought it back to him. When he returned to the house he asked the Buddha about the reason for the elder’s strange refusal. The Teacher explained:

“Lay devotee, we accept invitations to homes for meals, but that bhikkhu lives solely on food gained on alms round; we live in town monasteries, but he lives solely in the forest; we live with a roof over our head, but he lives out in the open air.”

When the lay devotee heard this he became even more pleased ‘like an oil lamp sprinkled with oil,’ and he reflected: ‘Why should I be satisfied simply with arahantship? I will make an aspiration to become the foremost disciple among the practitioners of the ascetic practices under a Buddha in the future.’

Then he invited the Buddha and the community of monks to his home for alms for a week, made presentations of the triple robe to the entire Sangha, and prostrating himself at the Master’s feet, he declared his aspiration. The Buddha Padumuttara looked into the future and saw that the aspiration would be fulfilled. He then gave Vedeha the prediction:

“In the future, 100,000 aeons from now, a Buddha named Gotama will arise in the world. Under him you will be the third chief disciple named Mahākassapa.”

Bhaddā, on her part, had been inspired by the bhikkhunī pronounced the foremost among those who recollect their past lives and she formed the aspiration to attain this position under a future Buddha. She too was assured by the Lord Padumuttara that her wish would be fulfilled.

For the rest of their lives the couple observed the precepts and did meritorious deeds, and after death they were reborn in heaven.

The next past life recorded for Mahākassapa and Bhaddā Kapilānī takes place much later, during the Dispensation of the Buddha Vipassi, the sixth predecessor of the Buddha Gotama. At this time, they had been a poor brahmin couple. They were so extremely poor that they had only a single upper garment, and hence only one of them at a time could go out of their hut. In this story the brahmin was therefore called ‘he with one garment’ (ekasātaka). Though it may not be easy for us to understand such extreme poverty, it will be still more difficult to understand that there have been many people for whom such utter poverty did not mean subjective deprivation. This was so with those two beings who later were to be Kassapa and Bhaddā.

In their life as that poor brahmin couple, they had lived in such perfect harmony that their happiness was not diminished by their indigence.

One day, when the Buddha Vipassi was to give a special sermon, they both wished to attend, but as they had only a single upper garment between them they could not both go at the same time. The wife went during the day and her husband went at night. As the brahmin listened to the sermon, the value of giving and generosity became so deeply impressed on his mind that he wanted to offer his only upper garment to the Buddha. But after he had so resolved, scruples came to his mind:

‘This is our only upper garment, so perhaps I should first consult with my wife. How can we manage without an upper garment? How can we get a replacement?’

But he resolutely pushed aside all such hesitation and placed the garment at the Blessed One’s feet. Having done so, he clapped his hands and joyfully called out:

“I have vanquished! I have vanquished!”

When the king, who had listened to the sermon behind a curtain, heard that shout of victory and came to know the reason, he sent sets of garments to the brahmin and later made him his court chaplain. So the couple’s plight had come to an end.

As a result of his selfless giving, the brahmin was reborn in a celestial world. After parting from there he became a king on earth, a great benefactor of his people who generously supported the ascetics living at that time. Bhaddā was then his chief queen.

As to Bhaddā, she was once the mother of a brahmin youth who was a pupil of the Bodhisatta (the future Buddha) and wanted to become an ascetic. Kassapa was her husband, Ānanda her son. Bhaddā had wanted her son to know the worldly life before she would permit him to become an ascetic. But that knowledge came to the young brahmin in a drastic and heart-rending way. His teacher’s old mother fell passionately in love with him and was even ready to kill her son for his sake. This encounter with reckless passion caused in him a deep revulsion for worldly life, and after that experience his parents gave him permission to go forth as an ascetic.

Another time Kassapa and Bhaddā had been the brahmin parents of four sons who in the future were to be our Bodhisatta, Anuruddha, Sāriputta, and Mahāmoggallāna. All four wanted to become ascetics.

At first the parents refused permission, but later they came to understand the fruits and benefits of the ascetic life and they themselves became ascetics.

In still another life, two village headmen who were friends decided that the children they were expecting should marry each other if they were of the opposite sex. And so it happened. But in their previous life both children had been deities of the Brahma-world. Hence they had no desire for sensual pleasures and, with their parents’ permission, chose the ascetic life.

Bhaddā’s only wrong act reported in the stories of her past lives was this: At a time between the appearance of two Buddhas, Bhaddā was the wife of a landowner. One day she had a quarrel with her sister- in-law. Just then a paccekabuddha drew near to their house on alms round. When her sister-in-law offered him food, Bhaddā, seeking to spite her, took the paccekabuddha’s bowl, threw away the food, and filled the bowl with mud. At once, however, she was stung by remorse. She took the bowl back, washed it with scent, and filled it with delicious, fragrant food. Then she offered it back to the paccekabuddha and apologized for her rudeness.

As a kammic consequence of this deed, a mixture of the dark and bright, in her next life Bhaddā possessed wealth and great beauty but her body exuded a loathsome odour. Her husband, the future Kassapa, could not bear the noxious smell and left her. As she was beautiful other suitors sought her hand, but all her later marriages had the same end. She was full of despair and felt there was no point continuing to live. To dispose of her property, she had her ornaments melted down and formed into a golden brick, which she brought to the monastery as a contribution to the stūpa being erected in honour of the Buddha Kassapa, who had just passed away. She offered the golden brick with great devotion, and as a consequence her body became fragrant again and her first husband, Kassapa, took her back.

Two lives before her present existence, Bhaddā was the queen of Benares and used to support several paccekabuddhas. Deeply moved by their sudden death, she renounced her worldly life as a queen and lived a meditative life in the Himalayas. By the power of her renunciation and her meditative attainments, she was reborn in a Brahma-world, and so was Kassapa. It was after that life in the Brahma- world that they were reborn in the human world as Pipphali Kassapa and Bhaddā Kapilānī.

From these accounts we gather that in their former existences both had lived a life of purity in the Brahma-world and that both had repeatedly been renunciants. Hence, in their final existence, it was not difficult for them to keep to a life of celibacy, to give up all possessions, and to follow the Buddha’s Teaching to its culmination in arahantship.

To be Continued…..

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Enlightened Nuns 1

Dhammadayadā — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:27:34 +0000

Vuḍḍhapabbajita Summna Theri

Known as Princess Sumanā, she was the daughter of the king of Kosala and sister of king Pasenadi. She is included among the eminent female lay supporters. She once visited the Buddha, with five hundred royal maidens in five hundred royal chariots, and questioned him regarding the efficacy of giving. The Commentary explains that these five hundred companions were born on the same day as herself.

She was seven years old when the Buddha paid his first visit to Sāvatthi, and she was present at the dedication of Jetavana with her five hundred companions, carrying vases, flowers, etc., as offering to the Buddha. After the Buddha’s discourse she became a Stream-entrant.

It is said that, in the time of Vipassī Buddha, she was born to a rich family. But her father who used to be the general of the king, passed away just in her childhood. When the people, obtained the king’s permission to offer dana to the Buddha and his monks, it was the general’s (senāpati) privilege to invite the Buddha to his house on the first day.

When Sumanā came back from playing, she found her mother in tears, and when asked the reason, her mother replied,

“If your father had been alive, we would have been able to offer dana to the Buddha today.”

Sumanā comforted her by saying that, that honor should yet be theirs. She filled a golden bowl with richly flavored milk-rice, covering it with another bowl. She then wrapped both vessels all round with jasmine flowers and left the house with her servants.

On the way to the present general’s house, she was stopped by his men, but she coaxed them to let her pass, and, as the Buddha approached, saying that she wished to offer him jasmine flowers, she put the two vessels into his alms bowl. She then made a wish that ‘in every subsequent birth she should be named Sumanā and that her body should smell the fragrance of jasmine.’

When the Buddha arrived in the general’s house and was served first with soup, he covered his bowl saying that he had already been given alms.

At the end of the meal the general made enquiries to find out who had offered a meal to the Buddha before him. When he found out what happened, full of admiration for Sumanā’s courage and wisdom, invited her to his house and made her his chief consort.

Ever after that she was known as Sumanā, and, wherever she was born, a shower of jasmine flowers fell knee deep on the day of her birth.

Sumanā wished to renounce the household life, but had to put off doing so in order to look after her grandmother as long as she lived. After the grandmother’s death, Sumanā went with King Pasenadi to the monastery, taking such things as rugs and carpets, which she offered to the Order.

The Buddha taught her and King Pasenadi the Dhamma and she became a Non-returner. She then sought ordination, and, at the conclusion of the stanza taught to her by the Buddha, attained Arahantship.

Selā (Āḷavikā) Theri

She was born in Āḷavī as daughter of the king of the state: therefore she was also called Āḷavikā. When she was still unmarried, the Buddha visited Āḷavī with Āḷavaka, the Yakkha who was tamed by the Buddha, carrying his begging bowl and robe.

On that occasion Sela went with her father to hear the Buddha teach. She became a lay disciple, but later, disenchanted with life, she joined the Order and became an Arahant.

After that, she lived in Sāvatthi.

One day, as she was resting in the Andhavana under a tree, and Māra, in the guise of a stranger, approached her and tried to tempt her. However, she refuted his statements regarding the attractions of lay life, and so Māra was defeated.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha, Selā was born in the family of a clansman of Haṃsavatī and was given in marriage. After her husband’s death she devoted herself to the quest of good, and went from ārāma to ārāma and vihāra to vihāra, teaching the Dhamma to followers of the religion.

One day she came to the Bodhi tree of the Buddha and sat down there thinking,

‘If a Buddha is Incomparable among men, may this tree show the miracle of Enlightenment.’

Immediately the tree blazed forth, the branches appeared golden, and the sky was all shining. Inspired by the sight, she fell down and worshipped the tree, and sat there for seven days. On the seventh day she performed a great feast of offering and worshipped the Buddha.

Bhaddā Kāpilānī Theri

She was the daughter of a Kosiya Brahmin of Sāgala, in the Madda country. When the messengers sent by the parents of Pippali- māṇava (Mahā-Kassapa) were wandering about searching for a wife for him that resembles the golden statue they carried with them, they discovered Bhaddā and informed Pipphali’s parents. The parents arranged the marriage and Bhaddā went to Pipphali’s house. There, they lived together, but, by mutual consent, the marriage was never consummated.

It was said that, she brought with her, on the day of her marriage, fifty thousand cartloads of wealth. When Pipphali desired to leave the household life, handing over to her all his wealth, she also wished to renounce like her husband, and together they left the house in the guise of recluses, their hair shaved. In the village, however, they were recognized by their demeanour, and the people fell down at their feet.

They granted freedom to all their servants, and set forth, Pipphali leading and Bhaddā following close behind. On coming to a fork in the road, they agreed that he should take the right and she the left.

In due course she came to the Tiṭṭhiyārāma (near Jetavana),

where she lived for five years, women not having yet been admitted to the Buddha’s Order. Later, when Pajāpatī Gotamī obtained bhikkhuni ordination, Bhaddā joined her and received ordination, attaining Arahantship not long after.

Later in the assembly, the Buddha declared her foremost of nuns who could recall past lives.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha she was the wife of Videha, a millionaire of Haṃsavatī, and having heard a nun proclaimed in the first rank of those who could recall past lives, she wished to acquire a similar rank, while her husband (Mahā-Kassapa in this life) wished to be chief among those who practice austere vows (dhuṭavādinaṃ). Together they did many good deeds and were reborn in heaven.

In the time of Vipassī Buddha, the husband was the brahmin Ekasāṭaka and she was his wife. In his next birth he was king of Bārāṇasī and she his chief queen. Together theymade offerings to eight Pacceka Buddhas on a very lavish scale.

In the interval between the appearance in the world of Koṇāgamana Buddha and Kassapa Buddha, the husband was a clansman and she his wife. One day, a quarrel arose between her and her sister-in law.

The sister-in-law gave alms to a Pacceka Buddha and Bhaddā, thinking ‘She will win glory for this,’ took the bowl from her hand and filled it with mud. However, later she was filled with remorse, took back the bowl, emptied it, scrubbed it with scented powder and, having filled it with the four sweet foods (chatumadura), covered the top with a lotus flower. Handing it back to the Pacceka Buddha, she made a wish to herself ‘May I have a shining body like this offering.’

In a later birth, Bhaddā was born as the daughter of a wealthy treasurer of Bārāṇasī; she was given in marriage, but her body was of such bad odor that she was repulsive to all and was abandoned by several husbands. Much troubled, she had her gold jewellery made into a gold brick and placed it on the stupa of Kassapa Buddha, which was in the process of being built, and paid respect with her hands full of lotuses.

Her body immediately became fragrant and sweet, and she was married again to her first husband.

Later, she was the queen of Nanda, king of Bārāṇasī with whom she attended to five hundred Pacceka Buddhas.

When they passed away, she was greatly troubled and left the Household life to give herself up to ascetic practices. She dwelt in a grove, developed jhāna, and was reborn in the Brahma world.

Bhaddā Kuṇḍalakesā Theri

She was foremost among nuns, of swift realization.

She was born in the family of a treasurer of Rājagaha. On the same day, a son was born to the king’s chaplain under a constellation favorable to highwaymen, and was therefore called Sattuka. One day, through her lattice veranda, Bhaddā saw Sattuka being led by the city guards to execution on a charge of robbery. She fell in love with him at once, and refused to live without him. Her father, out of his love for her, bribed the guard to release Sattuka, let him be bathed in perfumed water, and brought him home, where Bhaddā, decked in jewels, waited upon him.

Very soon, Sattuka began to covet her jewels and told her that he had made a vow to the deity of the Robbers’ Cliff that, should he get freed from being executed, he would bring him an offering. She trusted him and, making ready an offering, went with him wearing all her jewellery.

On arriving at the top of the cliff, he told her of his real purpose of coming there, and she, all undaunted, begged of him to let her embrace him on all sides. He agreed to this, and then, pretending to embrace him from the back, she pushed him over the cliff.

The deity of the mountain praised her presence of mind saying that men were not in all cases wiser than women. Unwilling to return home after what had happened; she joined the Order of the white robed Nigaṇṭhā. As she wished to practice extreme austerities, they dragged out her hair with palmyra seeds. Her hair grew again in close curls, and so they called her ‘Kuṇḍalakesā’ (Curly-hair). Dissatisfied with the teaching of the Nigaṇṭhā, she left them, and going to various teachers, became very proficient in discussion and eager for debate.

She would enter a village and, making a heap of sand at the gate, set up the branch of a rose apple saying,

“Whoever wishes to enter into discussion with me, let him trample on this branch.”

One day, Arahant Sāriputta, seeing the branch outside of Sāvatthi, ordered some children to trample on it. Bhaddā then went to Jetavana accompanied by a large crowd whom she had invited to be present at the discussion. Arahant Sāriputta suggested that Bhaddā should first ask him questions; to all of these he replied until she fell silent. It was then his turn, and he asked,

“One, what is that?”

She, unable to answer, asked him to be her teacher. However, Arahant Sāriputta sent her to the Buddha, who taught her that itwere better to know one single stanza bringing calm and peace than one thousand verses bringing no profit. At the end of this discourse, Bhaddā attained Arahantship, and the Buddha himself ordained her.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha, she had heard him teach and place as foremost among nuns one whose realization was swift (khippābhiññā). She wished that this rank should one day be hers.

Later, during the Kassapa Buddha’s time, she was one of the seven daughters of Kikī, king of Bārāṇasī and was named Bhikkhadāyikā (Bhikkhudāsikā). For twenty thousand years she remained celibate and built a dwelling for the Order.

Patāchārā Theri

She was the daughter of a banker of Sāvatthi, and, when grown up, formed an intimate relationship with a servant. When her parents wished to marry her to a youth of her own rank, she ran away with her lover and lived in a village. After the time of labour of her first pregnancy came closer, she wished to return to her parents, but the husband, on various pretexts, put off the visit.

One day when he was out, she left a message with the neighbors and left for Sāvatthi. Her husband followed her, but on the way, she gave birth to a son, and they returned home.

The same happened when her second child was born, but soon after that birth a great storm broke, and her husband went to cut some sticks and grass in the jungle with which to make a shelter. He was bitten by a snake and died. The wife spent the night in misery, lying on the ground hugging her children. In the morning, she discovered her husband’s body, and started off to go to her parents.

On the way she had to cross a river, and, because it was in flood, she could not carry both her children across at the same time. She therefore left the younger one on some leaves on the bank and started wading across with the other.

In midstream she looked back and saw a hawk swoop down and carry away the baby. The older one thought she was calling him and came into the water and he was swept away by the flood.

Miserable, she went on towards Sāvatthi, but on the way she learnt that the house in which her parents and brother lived had collapsed on them in the night and that they had been burnt on one pyre.

Mad with grief, she wandered about in circles, and because, as she circled round, her skirt cloth fell from her, she was called Paṭācārā (cloak walker). People chased her away from their doors, until one day she arrived in Jetavana, where the Buddha was teaching. The people around him tried to stop her from approaching, but the Buddha called her to him and talked to her.

By the potency of his gentleness, she regained mindfulness.

A man threw her his outer robe, and she, wearing it, drew close to the Buddha, and worshipping at his feet, told him her story and begged for his help. The Buddha spoke to her words of consolation, making her realize the inevitability of death; he then taught her the Truth.

When he finished speaking, she became a Stream-winner and asked for ordination. Her request was granted, and one day, while washing her feet, she noticed how the water flowed, sometimes only to a short distance, sometimes further, and she pondered,

‘Even so do mortals die, either in childhood, in middle age, or in old age.’

The Buddha sent her a ray of glory and appeared before her, speaking and confirming her thoughts. When he had finished speaking, Paṭācārā attained Arahantship.

She later became a great teacher, and many women, stricken with grief, sought her guidance and her consolation.

She was declared by the Buddha to be the best among Therī’s who knew the Vinaya.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha, she was born in a clansman’s family, and having heard the Buddha speak of a nun as first among those who knew the rules of the Order, she aspired to a similar rank for herself.

In the time of Kassapa Buddha, she became a Bhikkhuṇī, and was third of the seven daughters of Kikī, king of Bārāṇasī. She built a lodging for the Sangha and lived a celibate life for twenty thousand years.

Khemā Theri

An Arahant theri, chief of the Buddha’s bhikkuni disciples.

She was born in a ruling family at Sāgala in the Madda country, and her skin was of the color of gold. She became the chief consort of King Bimbisāra. She would not visit the Buddha who was at Veḷuvana, lest he should speak critically of her beauty with which she was infatuated. The king ordered poets to sing the glories of Veḷuvana and persuaded Khemā to go there. She was then brought face to face with the Buddha, and using psychic powers the Buddha created, for her to see, a woman like a celestial nymph who stood facing him.

Even as Khemā gazed on the nymph, whose extraordinary beauty far excelled her own, she saw her pass gradually from youth to extreme old age, and so fall down in the swoon of death. Seeing that Khemā was filled with dismay at the sight, the Buddha taught her on the vanity of lust, and at that moment she attained Arahantship.

With the consent of king Bimbisāra she entered the Order, and was ranked by the Buddha foremost among his ordained women disciples with great wisdom.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha she was a slave, and having seen the Buddha’s chief disciple, Sujāta, offered three cakes, and that same day she sold her hair and gave alms.

Once when Khemā was at Toraṇavatthu, between Sāvatthi and Sāketa, King Pasenadi, who happened to spend one night there, heard of her presence and went to see her.

He questioned her as to whether or not the Buddha existed after death. She explained the matter to him in various ways, and king Pasenadi, delighted with her exposition, related it to the Buddha.

In Kassapa Buddha’s time she became the eldest daughter of Kikī, king of Bārāṇasī, and was named Samaṇī. With her sisters she observed celibacy for twenty-thousand years and built a monastery for the Buddha.

She learnt the Mahānidāna Sutta, having heard the Buddha teach it.

In the time of Vipassī Buddha she became a renowned teacher of the Dhamma, and during the time of both Kakusandha Buddha and Koṇāgamana Buddha she had great monasteries built for the Buddha and his monks.

She is mentioned in several places as the highest ideal of womanhood worthy of imitation, and is described as the chief nun of excellence.

Mahāpajāpati Gotami Theri

An eminent Therī, she was born at Devadaha in the family of Suppabuddha as the younger sister of Mahāmāyā.

Daṇḍapāṇī and Suppabuddha were her brothers. At the birth of each sister, interpreters of bodily marks prophesied that their children would be world-turning monarchs (Cakkavatti).

King Suddhodana married both the sisters, and when Mahāmāyā died, seven days after the birth of prince Siddharta, Pajāpati looked after the prince and nursed him.

She was the mother of Nanda, but it is said that she gave her own son to nurses and herself nursed Prince Siddharta.

When king Suddhodana died, Pajāpatī decided to renounce the world, and waited for an opportunity to ask for permission from the Buddha. Pajāpatī was already a Stream-winner. She attained this eminence when the Buddha first visited his father’s palace and taught the Mahādhammapāla Jātaka.

Her opportunity came when the Buddha visited Kapilavatthu to settle the dispute between the Sākyā and the Koliyā as to the right to take water from the river Rohiṇī. When the dispute had been settled, the Buddha taught the Kalahavivāda Sutta, and five hundred young Sakyan men joined the Order.

Their wives, led by Pajāpatī, went to the Buddha and asked leave to be ordained as nuns. The Buddha refused, and he went on to Vesāli. However, Pajāpatī and her companions, nothing daunted, had barbers to cut off their hair, and donning yellow robes, followed the Buddha to Vesāli on foot. They arrived with wounded feet at the Buddha’s monastery and repeated their request. The Buddha again refused, but Ānanda mediated on their behalf and their request was granted, subject to eight strict conditions.

There was some question, which arose later as to the procedure of Pajāpatī’s ordination, which was not normal. When the nuns discovered this some of them refused to hold the uposatha with her.

However, the Buddha declared that he himself had ordained her and that all was in order. Her ordination (upasampadā) consisted in acquiescing in the eight conditions laid down for nuns.

After her ordination, Pajāpatī came to the Buddha and worshipped him. The Buddha taught her and gave her a subject for meditation. With this topic she developed insight and soon after attained Arahantship, while her five hundred companions attained to the same after listening to the Nandakovāda Sutta.

Later, at an assembly of monks and nuns in Jetavana, the Buddha declared Bhikkuni Pajāpatī chief of those who have been long ordained.

Not long after, while at Vesāli, she realized that her life had come to an end. She was one hundred and twenty years old; she took leave of the Buddha, performed various miracles, and attained final nibbana with her five hundred companions. It is said that the marvels which attended her cremation rites were second only to those of the Buddha.

It was in the time of Padumuttara Buddha that Pajāpatī made the wish for her eminence. She then belonged to a clansman’s family in Haṃsavatī, and, hearing the Buddha assign the foremost place in being long ordained to a certain nun, wished for similar recognition herself, doing many good deeds in that life.

After many births, she was born once more at Bārāṇasī, forewoman among five hundred slave girls in a village. When the rains season drew near, five Pacceka Buddhas came from Nandamūlaka to Isipatana seeking lodgings. Pajāpatī saw them after the king had refused them any assistance, and, after consultation with her fellow villagers, they persuaded their husbands to build five huts for the Pacceka Buddhas during the rainy season and they provided them with all requisites.

At the end of the rains, they offered complete set of robes to each Pacceka Buddha.

After that she was born in a weaver’s village near Bārāṇasī, and again ministered, this time to five hundred Pacceka Buddhas.

It is said that once queen Pajāpatī made a robe for the Buddha of wonderful material and marvelously elaborate. However, when it came to be offered to the Buddha he refused it, and suggested it should be given to the Order as a whole. Pajāpatī was greatly disappointed, and Ānanda intervened. However, the Buddha explained that his suggestion was for the greater good of Pajāpatī, and also as an example to those who might wish to make similar offerings in the future.

This was the occasion for the teaching of the Dakkhiṇāvibhaṅga Sutta.

The Buddha had a great affection for Theri Pajāpatī, and when she lay ill, as there were no monks to visit her and teach her since it was against the monastic rules – the Buddha amended the rule and went himself to teach her.

Mahāpajāpatī was named so because, at her birth, astrologers prophesied that she would have a large following; Gotamī was her clan (gotta) name.

Kisāgotami Theri

She was declared chief among women disciples with respect to the wearing of coarse robes (lūkhacīvara-dharānam).

She came from a poor family in Sāvatthi. Gotamī was her name she was called Kisā because of her thinness. She was married into a rich family, by whom she was disdainfully treated; but as soon as she bore a son, she was shown respect. The boy, however, died when just old enough to run about; his mother, distraught with grief, fearful her child will be taken from her, went about with him on her hip, seeking medicine to revive his life.

People laughed at her, until one wise man, realizing her condition, directed her to the Buddha. The Buddha asked her to bring him a mustard seed from a house where no one had yet died. In the course of her search for the impossible she regained mindfulness, and having grasped the truth, she laid the child in the charnel ground, and returning to the Buddha begged admission to the Order.

She became a Stream-winner (sotāpanna), and soon after, when her insight was developed, the Buddha appeared before her in a blaze of radiance and, listening to his words, she became an Arahant.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha she was a householder’s daughter in Hamsavatī, and having heard the Buddha assign to a bhikkhuṇī the foremost rank among wearers of coarse robes, she vowed that one day the same rank should be her’s.

In the time of Kassapa Buddha she was the fifth daughter of Kikī and her name was Dhammā. She lived a celibate life.

Uppalavannā Theri

One of the two chief women disciples of the Buddha.

She was born in Sāvatthi as the daughter of a banker, and she received the name of Uppalavaṇṇā because her skin was the color of the centre of the blue lotus. When she was come of age, kings and commoners from the whole of India sent messengers to her father, asking for her hand. He, not wishing to offend any of them, suggested that Uppalavaṇṇā should become ordained.

Because of her spiritual potential (upanissaya), she very willingly agreed and was ordained a nun. Soon it came to her turn to perform certain services in the uposatha-hall. Lighting the lamp, she swept the room. Taking the flame of the lamp as her visible object, she developed concentration on the fire-device (tejokasina) and, attaining to jhāna, became an Arahant possessed of the four kinds of Analytical Knowledge (Paṭisambhidā).

She became particularly versed in the mystic potency of transformation (iddhivikubbana). When the Buddha arrived at the Gandamba-tree to perform the Twin Miracle, Uppalavaṇṇā offered to perform certain miracles herself, if the Buddha would give his consent, but this he refused.

Later, at Jetavana, in the assembly of the Saṅgha, he declared her to be the chief of the bhikkhunis possessed of psychic power.

Once a young man named Nanda, who was her cousin and had been in love with her during her lay-life, hid himself in her hut in Andhavana and, in spite of her protestations, deprived her of her chastity. It is said that he was swallowed up by the fires of Avīci hell.

From that time onwards, nuns were forbidden to live in Andhavana. The Buddha declared that Khemā and Uppalavaṇṇā are the measure of his women disciples, and that the believing nun, if she would aspire perfectly, should aspire to be like them.

In the time of Padumuttara Buddha, Uppalavaṇṇā saw a woman disciple who was declared to be the best of those possessed of supernormal power, and wished for herself a similar rank in the dispensation of a future Buddha.

In the time of Buddha Kassapa, she was one of the seven daughters of Kikī, king of Bārāṇasī, and having done many good deeds, was born in heaven.

Later, she was born in the human world and had to work for her own living. One day she gave to a Pacceka Buddha, who had just risen from samādhi, a meal of fried rice in his bowl and covered it with a beautiful lotus; the meal had been prepared for herself. The lotus she afterwards took back but again replaced it, asking the Pacceka Buddha’s forgiveness. She expressed a wish that she should beget as many sons as there were grains of rice in her gift, and that lotuses should spring up under her feet as she walked.

In her next birth she was born in a lotus. An ascetic adopted her as his daughter, but when she grew up, the king

of Bārāṇasī, hearing of her beauty, asked the ascetic for her hand and made her his chief queen, under the name of Padumavatī.

The king’s other wives were jealous of her beauty, and when the king was away, supressing a rising of the border tribes, they hid in caskets the five hundred sons, chief of whom was the prince Mahāpaduma, that were born to Padumavatī, and told the king that Padumavatī was a non-human and had given birth to a log of wood. Padumavatī was sent away in disgrace, but later, through the instrumentality of Sakka, the trick was exposed, and Padumavatī regained all her former power and glory.

Later, when Mahāpaduma and his brothers became Pacceka Buddhas, Padumavatī died of a broken heart and was born in a village outside Rājagaha. There some of the Pacceka Buddhas who had been her sons discovered her, and they all came to a meal at her house. At the conclusion of the meal, she offered them blue lotuses, and expressed the wish that her complexion should be like the matrix of the blue lotus.

Ambapāli Theri

A courtesan of Vesāli. She is said to have come spontaneously into being at Vesāli in the gardens of the king. The gardener found her at the foot of a mango tree – hence her name (Ambapali)- and brought her to the city. She grew up so full of beauty and of grace that many young princes fought with each other for the honor of her hand. Finally, in order to end their strife, they appointed her courtesan.

Later she became a devout follower of the Buddha, and building a vihāra in her own garden, gave it to the Buddha and the Order. This was during the Buddha’s last visit to Vesāli shortly before his death.

It is said that when Ambapālī heard of the Buddha’s visit

to Koṭigāma near Vesāli she and her retinue drove out of the city in magnificent chariots to meet him, and, after hearing a discourse, invited him and the monks to a meal the next day.

The Buddha accepted this invitation and had, as a result, to refuse that of the Licchavis of Vesāli.

While returning from her visit to the Buddha, Ambapālī was so elated at the idea of having the Buddha to a meal the next day, that she refused to make way for the Licchavi princes who were on their way to the Buddha. The Licchavi princes asked her to pass them the invitation, but she refused to give up her invitation for anything in the world.

Ambapālī had a son, Vimala-Koṇḍañña, who was an eminent elder. Having heard him teach one day, she renounced the world and, working for insight by studying the law of impermanence as illustrated in her own aging body, she attained Arahantship.

In the time of Sikhī Buddha she had entered the Order. While yet a novice, she took part in a procession of Bhikkhuṇīs, and was doing homage at a shrine when an Arahant Therī in front of her hastily sneezed in the court of the shrine. Seeing the phlegm and not knowing who had done it, she said in reproof, “What prostitute has dirtied here?” It was owing to this remark that she was born as a courtesan even in her last birth.

The Apadāna gives some more details about her. She had been a daughter of a warrior (khattiya) family in the time of Phussa Buddha and had done many good deeds in order to be beautiful in later births. As a result of the abuse of the nun (referred to above) she had been born in hell and later had, for ten thousand lives, been a courtesan.

In Kassapa Buddha’s time she had practiced celibacy. It is said that she charged fifty kahāpaṇas a night from her patrons and that Vesāli became very prosperous through her. It was this that prompted Bimbisāra to get a courtesan for his own city of Rājagaha.

Among Ambapālī’s patrons was king Bimbisāra, and he was the father of her son, Vimala-Koṇḍañña.

The post Enlightened Nuns 1 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

Arahant Moggallana4

Dhammadayadā — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:07:07 +0000

Once Moggallāna saw with the divine eye how King Pasenadi had been defeated in battle by the Licchavis and how afterwards he had gathered his troops again and vanquished them. When Moggallāna reported this, some monks accused him of falsely boasting about his supernormal faculties, which is a disciplinary offence making a monk subject to expulsion from the Order. The Buddha, however, explained that Moggallāna had reported only what he had seen and what had actually happened.

Above all, Moggallāna used his divine eye to observe the operation of the law of kamma and its fruits. Again and again he saw how human beings, through their evil actions that harmed their fellow beings, were reborn among the petas, miserable ghosts, and had to undergo much suffering, while others, who practiced charity and virtue, rose upwards to the heavenly abodes. He often reported such cases to exemplify the law of kamma. These reports are collected in two books of the Pāli Canon, one dealing with the ghost realm (the Petavatthu) and one with the heavenly abodes (the Vimānavatthu). From this it can be readily understood why Moggallāna was famous as one who knew the worlds beyond as well as the workings of kamma.

The reports are too numerous to discuss here, but at least one of his visions, recorded in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, should be mentioned.

Once Moggallāna lived on Vulture’s Peak, near Rājagaha, together with the monk Lakkhaṇa, one of the thousand brahmin ascetics who had been converted together with Uruvela Kassapa. One morning, when they had descended from the peak to go on alms round in the town, Moggallāna smiled when they reached a certain place on the road. When his companion asked him the reason, Moggallāna said that this was not the right time to explain; he would explain later in the presence of the Master.

When they later met the Buddha, Lakkhaṇa repeated his question, and Moggallāna now said that at that spot he had seen many miserable ghosts flying through the air, chased around by predators and tormented by various kinds of afflictions. The Buddha confirmed this as absolutely true and added that he himself spoke only reluctantly about such matters because people with skeptical minds would not believe it.

Then the Buddha, out of his universal knowledge, explained what propensities and behaviour had brought those ghosts to their present pitiable position.

TRAVEL BY MIND-MADE BODY (ASTRAL TRAVEL)

“Just as a person might bend his stretched arm or stretch his bent arm,” so quickly could Moggallāna depart bodily from the human world and reappear in a celestial realm. Repeatedly he made use of this capacity to instruct other beings and to look after the affairs of the Order. Thus he taught the devas in the realm of the Thirty-three the factors of stream- entry, and tested Sakka, their king, to determine whether he had understood the teaching about the extinction of craving.

When the Buddha was preaching the Abhidhamma for three months in one of the heavenly worlds, Moggallāna appeared in that heaven, informed him of happenings in the Order, and asked for instructions. He visited not only the gods of the sense sphere, but also those of the Brahma- world.

Thus he appeared before a Brahmā deity who believed that there were no ascetics capable of entering his realm, and through questioning and supernormal feats Moggallāna shook that deity’s self-assurance. On another occasion he appeared in front of a Brahmā named Tissa—who formerly had been a monk and had died recently—and gave him instructions about stream-entry and the realization of final deliverance.

Moggallāna also had mastery over what appears to be solid matter. Once the monks staying at a monastery were negligent, busying themselves too much with material trifles. Learning of this, the Buddha asked Moggallāna to use a feat of supernormal power in order to shake them out of their complacency and inspire them to return to serious striving. In response, Moggallāna pushed the building with his big toe, so that the entire monastery, called the Mansion of Migāra’s Mother, shook and trembled as if there was an earthquake. The monks were so deeply stirred by this event that they shook off their worldly interests and again became receptive to the Buddha’s instructions.

The Buddha explained to them that the source of Moggallāna’s great supernormal prowess was the development of the four roads to power.

Once Moggallāna visited Sakka in his heavenly realm and saw that he was living rather lightheartedly. Captivated by heavenly sense pleasures, he had become forgetful of the Dhamma. To dispel his vanity Moggallāna used his toe to shake Sakka’s celestial palace, the Banner of Victory, in which Sakka took much pride. This had a shock effect on Sakka too, and he now recalled the teaching on the extinction of craving, which the Buddha had briefly taught him not long ago. It was the same teaching that the Buddha had given to Moggallāna as a spur to attaining arahantship.

Once there was a famine in the area where the Buddha and his community of monks were residing, and the monks could not obtain sufficient alms-food. On that occasion Moggallāna asked the Buddha whether he might overturn the ground so that the nourishing substance underneath would be accessible and could be eaten. But the Buddha prohibited him, as this would cause the destruction of a large number of living beings.

Then Moggallāna offered to use his psychic power to open a road to the Uttarakuru country so that the monks could go there for alms. This, too, the Buddha prohibited. But all survived the famine unharmed, even without such supernormal devices. This was the only occasion when the Buddha disapproved of Moggallāna’s suggestions.

Moggallāna’s supernormal power expressed itself too in his ability to bring things from far distances by magical locomotion. Thus, for instance, he brought lotus stalks from the Himalayas when Sāriputta was ill and needed them for medicine. He also fetched a shoot of the Bodhi tree for Anāthapiṇḍika to be planted at the Jetavana Monastery. However, when his fellow-monk Piṇḍola asked him to prove the superiority of the Buddha’s Sangha over the sectarians by magically bringing down a precious bowl that had been hung up in town so high that nobody could take it down, Moggallāna refused, saying that Piṇḍola himself possessed sufficient powers to do it. But when Piṇḍola actually performed that feat, the Buddha rebuked him: a monk should not display supernormal powers merely to impress the laity.

THE POWER OF TRANSFORMATION

Although we have confined the preceding discussion to incidents mentioned in the Pāli Canon, this account would be deficient if we did not mention what the commentaries regard as Moggallāna’s most formidable display of psychic power, his triumph over the divine serpent, the royal nāga Nandopananda. This incident is recorded in the Visuddhimagga. On one occasion, when the Buddha together with five hundred monks visited the heaven of the Thirty- three, they passed just above the abode of Nandopananda.

This infuriated the royal nāga, who sought to take revenge by surrounding Mount Sineru with his coils and spreading his hood so that the entire world was enveloped in darkness. Several eminent monks offered to subdue the nāga, but the Buddha, aware of his ferocity, would not permit them. It was only to Moggallāna, the last to volunteer, that he granted permission. Moggallāna then transformed himself into a huge royal nāga and engaged Nandopananda in a terrible battle of flame and smoke.

Drawing upon one power after another, appearing in a variety of shapes and sizes, he shattered his rival’s defenses. In the last phase of the battle he assumed the form of a supaṇṇa, the celestial eagle, arch-enemy of the nāga. At this point Nandopananda capitulated, and the elder, assuming once again the form of a monk, brought him to the Buddha in triumph and elicited from him an apology.

THE LAST DAYS OF MOGGALLĀNA

Half a year before the Buddha’s Parinibbāna, on the full-moon day of the month Kattika (October/November), death separated the two chief disciples for the last time. It was on this day that Sāriputta passed away in his birth chamber in his parental home—surrounded by his many pupils, but far away from Moggallāna. Even though during life the two had been almost inseparable, their deaths, like their attainment of arahantship, occurred at different places.

Soon after the passing away of Sāriputta, Moggallāna had a bizarre encounter with Māra, the Evil One, the Tempter and Lord of Death, which may well have been a premonition of his own imminent demise.

One night, while the elder was walking back and forth for exercise, Māra slipped into his body and entered his bowels. Moggallāna sat down and attended to his abdomen, which suddenly felt as heavy as a bag of beans. He then discovered the Evil One lodged within his own belly. Calmly he told Māra to get out. Māra was astonished that he had been detected so soon, and in his delusion thought that even the Buddha would not have recognized him so quickly. But Moggallāna read his thoughts and again ordered him to depart. Māra now escaped through Moggallāna’s mouth and stood at the door of the hut. Moggallāna told him that he knew him not only on that day but had also known him in the past, for their kammic connection was old and deep.

The following is the gist of what he said:

The first of the five Buddhas appearing in our ‘fortunate aeon’ (bhaddakappa) was Kakusandha, whose chief disciples were the arahants Vidhura and Sañjīva. At that time, Moggallāna was Māra, by name Māra Dūsi. For Māra too, like Mahā-brahmā and Sakka, is not a permanent being but a cosmic post or office—chief of demons, lord of the lower world— which is filled by different individuals migrating through the round of existence.

At that time Māra Dūsi had a sister named Kālī, whose son was to become the Māra of our age. Hence Moggallāna’s own nephew then was now standing in front of him in his hut as the present Māra. When, in that past age, Moggallāna was Māra, he had taken possession of a boy and made him throw a potsherd at the head of the Buddha Kakusandha’s chief disciple, the arahant Vidhura. The wound was a severe one, which caused blood to flow.

When the Buddha Kakusandha turned around and saw this, he said: “Indeed, Māra knows no moderation here” —for even in diabolical actions there might be moderation—and under the Perfect One’s glance Māra Dūsi’s body dissolved and reappeared in the deepest hell. Just a moment earlier he had been the overlord of all the hellish worlds, and now he himself was one of hell’s victims. For many thousands of years Moggallāna had to suffer in hell as the kammic result of attacking an arahant. He was condemned to spend ten thousand years alone in the Great Hell, having a human body and the head of a fish. Whenever two lances of his torturers crossed in his heart, he would know that a thousand years of his torment had passed.

This encounter with Māra once more brought to Moggallāna’s mind the terrors of saṃsāra from which he was now forever free. Soon afterwards Moggallāna felt that the time of his last existence was running out. Being an arahant he saw no reason to extend his life span to the end of the aeon by an act of will, and he calmly allowed impermanence to take its lawful course.

MOGGALLĀNA’S DEATH

Surrounded by many of his monks, the Buddha passed away peacefully during a meditative absorption which he entered with perfect mastery. Sāriputta’s death in his parental home, likewise with fellow monks in attendance, was similarly serene. Ānanda died at the age of 120; as he did not wish to burden anyone by his funeral, he entered meditative concentration on the fire element so that his body vanished in a blaze.

Considering the serene death of the Master and of these two disciples, one would have expected that Mahāmoggallāna, too, would have undergone the final dissolution of the body under peaceful circumstances. But Moggallāna’s end was very different, though the gruesome nature of his death did not shake his firm and serene mind.

Moggallāna passed away a fortnight after his friend Sāriputta, on the new-moon day of the month Kartika (October/November), in the autumn. The ‘great decease’ of the Buddha took place on the full- moon night of the month Vesākha (May), half a year after the death of his two chief disciples. The Buddha was in his eightieth year when he passed away, while both Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna died at the age of eighty-four.

The circumstances of Moggallāna’s death are related in two sources, the Dhammapada Commentary and the Jātaka Commentary. The account here will be based on the Dhammapada Commentary, with the differences in the Jātaka Commentary noted parenthetically.

Because the Buddha was so skilful as a teacher, leading countless people to the gates of deliverance, the populace of Magadha for the most part had transferred its allegiance from the various rival ascetic orders to the Enlightened One and his Sangha.

A group of naked ascetics, resentful over this loss of prestige, pinned the prime responsibility for their hard times on the Venerable Mahāmoggallāna. They believed that Moggallāna had won over their own adherents to the Buddha’s Dhamma with his reports of his celestial travels, in which he related how he had seen the virtuous devotees of the Buddha enjoying rebirth in heaven and the followers of other sects, lacking moral conduct, suffering in miserable subhuman states of existence. These ascetics were so enraged about their loss of popularity that they wanted to eliminate Moggallāna. Without accepting responsibility for their own misfortune, they projected the blame externally and concentrated their envy and hate on the great disciple.

While the ascetics were hesitant to kill Moggallāna by their own hand, they had no scruples about employing others to carry out their nefarious deed. Having procured a thousand gold coins from their followers, they approached a band of brigands and offered them the money in exchange for the great disciple’s life. At that time Moggallāna was living alone in a forest hut at the Black Rock, on the slope of Mount Isigili outside Rājagaha.

After his encounter with Māra he knew that the end of his days was near. Having enjoyed the bliss of liberation, he now felt the body to be an obstruction and burden and had no desire to use his psychic faculties to keep it alive for the rest of the aeon. Yet, when he saw the brigands approach, he knew they were coming to kill him, and he used his supernormal powers to slip through the keyhole. The gangsters arrived at an empty hut, and though they searched everywhere, they could not find him. They returned the following day too, but this time the elder soared up into the air and escaped through the roof. The next month too the bandits came, but again they could not catch the elder. (In the Jātaka version the bandits return on six consecutive days and catch him only on the seventh day.)

Moggallāna’s motivation in escaping was not fear of death. The reason he used his psychic powers to elude the gangsters was not to protect his body but to spare the would-be assassins the frightful kammic consequences of such a murderous deed, necessarily leading to rebirth in the hells. He wanted to spare them such a fate by giving them time to reconsider and abstain from their crime.

But their greed for the promised money was so great that they persisted and returned again the following month (or on the seventh day in the Jātaka account). This time their persistence was ‘rewarded,’ for at that moment Moggallāna suddenly lost his psychic mastery over the body.

The reason for this sudden change in fate lay in a terrible deed he had committed in the distant past. Many aeons ago, in a previous birth, Moggallāna had brought about the death of his parents (in the Jātaka version, however, he relents at the last moment and spares them). That heinous kamma had brought him to a rebirth in hell for countless years, but it had not yet fully matured. A residue remained, and now, when he was in mortal danger, that residue suddenly ripened and confronted him with its fruit. Moggallāna realized that he had no choice but to submit to destiny. The brigands entered, knocked him down, and ‘pounded his bones until they were as small as grains of rice.’ Then, thinking that he was dead, they threw his body behind a clump of bushes and fled, keen on collecting their reward.

But Moggallāna’s physical and mental strength was formidable and he had not yet capitulated to death.

He regained consciousness and, by the power of meditation, he soared through the air and came into the presence of the Master. There he announced that he would attain final Nibbāna. The Buddha asked him to give a final sermon to the community of monks, which he did, with an additional display of wonders and marvels. Then he paid homage to the Blessed One, returned to the Black Rock, and passed into the Nibbāna element without residue.

In this last turbulent phase of his life, the kamma of the past that had ripened so suddenly could affect only his body but could not shake his mind, for he no longer identified himself with his empirical personality. For him the five aggregates that others identified as ‘Moggallāna’ were as foreign as an inanimate body:

They penetrate the subtle truth

As the tip of a hair with an arrow

Who see the five aggregates as alien

And do not regard them as self.

Those who see conditioned things

As alien and not as self

Have pierced right through the subtle truth

As the tip of a hair with an arrow.

This last episode of Moggallāna’s life, however, did show that the law of moral causality has even greater potency than the supernormal feats of a master of psychic power.

Speaking about his chief disciples shortly after their deaths, the Buddha declared:

Those who in the past have been Holy Ones,

Fully Enlightened Ones, those Blessed Ones, too, had such excellent pairs of disciples as I had in Sāriputta and Moggallāna.

Those who in the future will be Holy Ones, Fully Enlightened Ones, those Blessed Ones, too, will have such excellent pairs of disciples as I had in Sāriputta and Moggallāna.

Marvellous it is, most wonderful it is, bhikkhus, concerning those disciples, that they will act in accordance with the Master’s teaching, will act in accordance with his advice; that they will be dear to the four assemblies, will be loved, respected, and honoured by them.

Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna were such wonderful disciples, the Buddha said, that the assembly of monks appeared empty to him after their death. It was marvellous that such an excellent pair of disciples existed, but it was marvellous, too, that, in spite of their excellence, when the two had passed away there was no grief, no lamentation on the part of the Master.

Therefore, the Buddha continued, inspired by the greatness of the two chief disciples, let dedicated followers of the Dhamma strive to be their own island of refuge, with the Dhamma as their island of refuge, not looking for any other refuge. Let them rely entirely on the powerful help of the four foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna).

Those who, with keen desire, thus train themselves along the Noble Eightfold Path will certainly pass beyond all the realms of darkness which abound in saṃsāra. So the Master assures us.

END

(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)

The post Arahant Moggallana4 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

Arahant Moggallana3

Dhammadayadā — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:51:57 +0000

THE MOST EXCELLENT PAIR OF DISCIPLES

For a Fully Enlightened One his two chief disciples and his personal attendant are as necessary as the ministers of war, of the interior, and of finance are to a king. The Buddha himself used this comparison with a state’s administration. He spoke of Ānanda, who could remember all the discourses, as the treasurer of the Dhamma (the minister of finance), of Sāriputta as its marshal or general-in-command, and of Moggallāna as ‘the child’s nurse’ (the minister of the interior).

Of these four (including the Buddha), two groups of two had certain things in common: both the Buddha and Ānanda belonged to the warrior caste (khattiya), Sāriputta and Moggallāna to the brahmin caste. This affinity showed itself also in their lives. Ānanda was always with the Buddha; from the time when he was appointed his attendant, he followed him like a shadow. Similarly, Moggallāna was almost inseparable from Sāriputta and nearly always dwelt together with him. Whenever the Buddha, in advancing years, felt physically tired, these three disciples were the only ones whom he asked to expound the Dhamma on his behalf.

This happened, for instance, at Kapilavatthu when Moggallāna gave a long discourse on sense control as the remedy against being submerged in the flood of the six senses.

After Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna had attained arahantship, the Buddha announced to the Order that they would now be his chief disciples. Some of the monks were surprised and began to grumble, asking why the Master did not treat with such distinction those ordained first, the ‘men of the first hour,’ as for instance, the first five disciples, or Yasa, or the three Kassapas. Why did he overlook them and give prominence to those who had entered the Order last and were of junior standing? To this, the Awakened One replied that each reaps according to his merit.

For aeons Sāriputta and Moggallāna had been progressing towards this state by gradually cultivating the necessary faculties. Others, however, had developed along different lines. Although both chief disciples were of another caste and from another region than the Buddha’s, their special position within the Noble Order was an outcome of the law of kamma.

In many ways the Buddha had spoken in praise of this noble pair of disciples:

“If a devout lay woman should admonish her only son whom she dearly loves, she would rightly do so by saying: “My dear son, you should be like Citta the householder or Hatthaka of Ālavi!”— because these two are models and exemplars for my lay devotees. (And she should further say:) “But if, my dear, you go forth from home into the homeless life of a monk, you should be like Sāriputta and Moggallāna!”—because they are models and exemplars for my bhikkhu disciples.”

“O monks, seek and cultivate the company of Sāriputta and Moggallāna! They are wise and are helpful to their fellows in the holy life. Sāriputta is like a mother, and Moggallāna is like a nurse. Sāriputta trains the monks for the fruit of stream-entry, and Moggallāna for the supreme goal.”

The characterization of the two in the last text may be interpreted as follows: Sāriputta, like a mother, gives birth to the path of emancipation in his pupils, urging them to cut through the first, most basic fetters and thus attain to stream-entry. In this way he ‘converts’ his pupils by vigorously diverting them from the futility of the round of existence and guiding them into the zone of safety. At this point Moggallāna takes over and leads the pupils further along the upwards path, supporting them in their struggle for arahantship in the same way that he himself had been helped by the Master. Thus he is like a wet-nurse, nourishing the pupils’ strength and sustaining their growth.

Both these aspects are found perfectly united in a Fully Awakened One, but in Sāriputta and Moggallāna they were separate qualifications. Though both were ‘liberated in both ways,’ for Sāriputta the major emphasis was on wisdom, and for Moggallāna on the meditative ‘liberation of the mind’ (cetovimutti). For this reason Sāriputta guided disciples to the intuitive understanding of liberating truth, the breakthrough to the Dhamma (dhammābhisamaya), the vision of things in their real undistorted nature. With Moggallāna, who knew well the subtle and tortuous labyrinths of the mind, the stress was on harnessing the forces of concentration toward the removal of all remaining defilements and fetters.

This fact found perfect expression when these two spiritual sons of the Buddha had to look after Rāhula, the Buddha’s own son. Like every newly ordained monk, Rāhula had two teachers, one in knowledge and one in conduct. Sāriputta was appointed as his teacher in knowledge, and Moggallāna as his teacher in conduct and spiritual practice.

Once Sāriputta said to his friend that, compared with Moggallāna in regard to supernormal powers, he was like a small splinter of rock set against the mighty Himalayas. Moggallāna, however, replied that, compared with Sāriputta in regard to the power of wisdom, he was like a tiny grain of salt set against a big salt barrel. About the differing range of wisdom, the Buddha said that there are questions that only he could conceive and answer, but not Sāriputta; there are other questions that only Sāriputta could clarify, but not Moggallāna; and there are those questions that only Moggallāna could solve, but not the other disciples. Thus the two chief disciples were like a bridge between the supreme qualities of the Buddha and the capacities of the other disciples.

When Devadatta voiced his claim to lead the Order, the Buddha said that he would not entrust anybody with the leadership of the Sangha, not even his two chief disciples, let alone Devadatta. Between the extremes of discipleship—with Sāriputta and Moggallāna at one end of the scale and Devadatta, the most depraved of the disciples, at the other—there is a long and varied line of disciples with different degrees of accomplishments and virtues.

It is characteristic that the only slander uttered against the chief disciples came from a follower of Devadatta. The monk Kokālika, wishing to malign them, told the Buddha that the two had evil intentions, which, in fact, was the case with Devadatta. The Buddha, however, replied:

“Don’t say so, Kokālika, don’t speak like that! Let your heart have glad confidence in Sāriputta and Moggallāna! They are virtuous monks.”

But Kokālika, in spite of this emphatic admonition, persisted in his slander. According to the old texts, Devadatta and Kokālika were reborn in a state of utter suffering, in the deepest hell, while Sāriputta and Moggallāna won the highest bliss, Nibbāna.

In the Pāli Canon there are many reports about the common activities of the two chief disciples as they assisted the Master in looking after the community of monks. Both worked tirelessly for the advancement and benefit of the Order, and their activities aimed at maintaining its inner concord, stability, and discipline deserve special mention.

At the request of the Buddha they brought about the banishment of a clique of monks known as “the group of six” (chabbhaggiya), after their six leaders, whose reckless and scandalous behaviour was threatening to tarnish the entire image of the Buddha’s Dispensation in the eyes of the wider populace of the Ganges Valley.

The Vinaya Piiaka records many instances when the Buddha had to promulgate rules of discipline on account of their misconduct. One major upheaval they brought about is reported in the Kīṭāgiri Sutta, when they flaunted the Buddha’s regulations regarding the proper times for meals. Finally they behaved in such a frenzied way that the Buddha sent Sāriputta and Moggallāna, at the head of a group of virtuous monks, to banish these six from their seat of residence, which was near Kītāgiri. Thereafter most of them left the Order.

The most noteworthy mission the two great disciples performed together was to induce the newly ordained monks led astray by Devadatta to return to the Buddha’s fold and to the right conduct of the monk’s life. At that time, when Sāriputta gave his exhortation to those misguided monks, he spoke about the power of thought reading, while Moggallāna spoke on psychic powers. On another occasion, when a junior monk came to the Buddha and complained that the Venerable Sāriputta had treated him rudely, Moggallāna and Ānanda called together all the monks, so that, for their instruction and edification, they could hear Sāriputta’s dignified reply to those accusations.

The two chief disciples often lived together in the same cell of the monastery, and they held many dialogues for the benefit of their fellow monks. An example of this is the Anaṅgaṇa Sutta, Sāriputta’s great sermon on the removal of ‘evil wishes,’ which was inspired by questions from Moggallāna. At the end of the sermon Moggallāna applauded Sāriputta’s eloquence, comparing his discourse to a garland of flowers which one might place on one’s head as an ornament.

On another occasion, when a group of leading disciples had gathered in the Gosiṅga sāla-tree forest on a full-moon night, Sāriputta asked them each in turn to describe what they considered to be the ideal monk, “one who could illuminate this forest”. Moggallāna replied:

Here, friend Sāriputta, two monks engage in a talk on the higher Dhamma (abhidhamma), and they question each other, and each being questioned by the other answers without foundering, and their talk rolls on in accordance with the Dhamma. That kind of monk could illuminate this Gosiṅga sāla-tree forest.

Later the Buddha confirmed that Moggallāna was indeed a very capable speaker on the Dhamma, as is evident from his discourses in the canon. Talks on the Dhamma gain in range and depth when they issue from an experience that transcends the realm of the senses. The more one has widened one’s consciousness by deep meditation and personal insight into truth, the more convincing one’s words will be, and when one can speak from the heights of wisdom, one’s understanding will be contagious.

The Buddha often extolled his chief disciples for their personal qualities as much as for their contributions to his mission. One particularly striking instance is recorded in the Udāna. When the two were seated near the Master, immersed in deep concentration based on contemplation of the body, first the Buddha spoke an ‘inspired utterance’ (udāna) in praise of Sāriputta:

Just as a mountain made of solid rock Stands firm and unshakable,

Even so, when delusion is destroyed,

A bhikkhu, like a mountain, is not perturbed.

Then he applauded Moggallāna:

With mindfulness of the body established, Controlled over contact’s sixfold base,

A bhikkhu who is always concentrated Can know Nibbāna for himself.

It happened only once that the Buddha preferred Moggallāna’s attitude in a certain matter to that of Sāriputta. After he had dismissed from his presence a band of noisy, unmannerly monks, just recently ordained, the Master later asked his two chief disciples what they had thought when he sent those monks away. Sāriputta said he thought that the Master wanted to enjoy a blissful abiding in meditation and that they, the chief disciples, were to do the same. But the Buddha mildly reproached him, saying that he should never again entertain such thoughts.

Then he turned to Moggallāna with the same question. Moggallāna replied that he, too, had thought the Master wanted to enjoy the bliss of meditation; but if so, then the responsibility for looking after the community of monks would have devolved on Sāriputta and himself.

The Buddha praised him and said that if both his chief disciples took care of the community, it would be as good as if he himself looked after the monks.

ARAHANTH MOGGALLĀNA’S PSYCHIC POWERS

The Venerable Mahāmoggallāna was the bhikkhu who had been most assiduous in developing and cultivating the four roads to power, and thus the Buddha named him the foremost disciple among those who possessed the psychic powers. There were, of course, other prominent disciples who were highly skilled in psychic power, but they were usually proficient in only one or two areas.

Thus, for instance, the monk Anuruddha and the nun Sakulā possessed the supernormal vision of the divine eye; the monk Sobhita and the nun Bhaddā Kapilānī could recollect their previous lives far back into the past; the monk Sāgala was skilled in the exercise of the fire element; Cūḷa Panthaka excelled in the ability to manifest himself in multiple bodies; and Pilindavaccha was foremost in communicating with heavenly beings. Mahāmoggallāna, however, had a comprehensive master over the psychic faculties that no other disciple shared, not even the nun Uppalavaṇṇā, who was foremost among the bhikkhunīs in the exercise of the psychic powers.

We shall now turn to what the Buddhist canonical texts relate about Moggallāna’s supernormal faculties.

PENETRATION OF OTHERS’ MINDS (THOUGHT READING)

Once on an Uposatha day, the Buddha sat silently in front of the assembly of monks. At each watch of the night Ānanda requested him to recite the code of monastic discipline, the Pātimokkha, but the Buddha remained silent. Finally, when dawn came, he only said:

“This assembly is impure.”

Thereupon Moggallāna surveyed with his mind the entire assembly and saw one monk sitting there who was ‘immoral, wicked, of impure and suspect behaviour,…rotten within, lustful and corrupt.’ He went up to him and told him to leave, three times. When the monk did not move even after the third request, Moggallāna took him by the arm, led him out of the hall, and bolted the door. Then he begged the Exalted One to recite the Pātimokkha, as the assembly was now pure again.

Once the Master was dwelling together with a community of five hundred monks, all of whom were arahants. When Moggallāna joined them, he searched their minds with his own mind and saw that they were arahants, released and free from all defilements. Then the Venerable Vaṅgisa, the foremost poet in the Sangha, realizing what had taken place, rose from his seat, and in the Buddha’s presence praised Moggallāna in verse:

While the sage is seated on the mountain slope, Gone beyond to the far shore of suffering,

His disciples sit in attendance on him,

Triple-knowledge men who have left Death behind.

Moggallāna, great in spiritual power,

Encompassed their minds with his own,

And searching (he came to see) their minds: Fully released, without acquisitions!

A third report tells us that once, while the Venerable Anuruddha was meditating in solitude, he considered how the noble path that leads to the extinction of suffering can be perfected by means of the four foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna).

Then Moggallāna, penetrating Anuruddha’s mind by his own, appeared before him through supernormal power and requested him to describe in detail this method of practice.

THE DIVINE EAR

One evening when Sāriputta went to see Moggallāna he found that his features had such a strikingly serene expression that he felt moved to ask Moggallāna whether he had dwelt in one of the peaceful abodes of mind. Moggallāna replied that he had dwelt only in a coarse abode, but that he had been engaged in a talk on the Dhamma. On being asked with whom he had such a talk, Moggallāna replied that it had been with the Exalted One.

Sāriputta remarked that the Master was now dwelling very far away, in Sāvatthī, while they themselves were in Rājagaha. Had Moggallāna gone to the Buddha by way of supernormal power, or had the Buddha come to him? Moggallāna replied that neither had been the case; rather, they had directed toward each other their divine eye and divine ear, which enabled them to engage in a Dhamma talk on the mental faculty of energy.

Then Sāriputta exclaimed that Moggallāna, being endowed with powers so great, might be able to live through an entire aeon, like the Buddha, if he so wished.

With the divine ear Moggallāna could also hear the voices of nonhuman beings, deities, spirits, etc., and receive messages from them. So, for instance, a spirit had warned him against Devadatta, who harboured evil intentions toward the Buddha and was plotting against him.

THE DIVINE EYE

As mentioned above, Moggallāna, with his divine eye, was able to perceive the Buddha over a long distance. The texts describe other occasions when the Elder made use of this faculty. Once, while Sāriputta was sitting in meditation, a malicious demon (yakkha) pounded him on the head. Moggallāna saw this and asked his friend how he was feeling. Sāriputta, who had not seen the demon, said that he was feeling generally well, but was troubled by a slight touch of headache. Then Moggallāna praised his strength of concentration, but Sāriputta said that Moggallāna had been able to see that demon while he himself could not.

To be Continued……

(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)

The post Arahant Moggallana3 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

Arahant Moggallana2

Dhammadayadā — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:35:01 +0000

The Buddha himself had gone to Rājagaha, where the king of Magadha soon became his follower and donated to him the Bamboo Grove Monastery. He was living at that monastery when Kolita and Upatissa returned to Rājagaha, where they were offered accommodations at Sañjaya’s place.

One day Upatissa had gone to the town while Kolita had stayed at their dwelling. When Kolita saw his friend returning in the afternoon, he was struck with awe at the change in his friend’s manner. Never before had he seen him so beatific; his entire being seemed to have been transformed, and his face shone with a sublime radiance. Eagerly Kolita asked him:

“Your features are so serene, dear friend, and your complexion is so bright and clear. Have you found the way to the Deathless?”

Upatissa then replied:

“It is so, dear friend, the Deathless has been found.”

He then reported what had happened. In town, he had seen a monk whose behaviour impressed him so deeply that he was immediately convinced he was an arahant, or at least one well advanced on the path to arahantship. He approached him and started a conversation.

The monk, whose name was Assaji, replied that he was a disciple of the ascetic Gotama of the Sakyan clan, whom he referred to as “the Enlightened One.”

When Upatissa begged him to explain his teacher’s doctrine, Assaji modestly said that he was only a beginner and could not explain it in detail, but he could briefly tell him the gist of the teaching. When Upatissa assured him that he would be satisfied with that, Assaji recited a short stanza that summed up the main points—a stanza that in the centuries and millennia to follow was to become famous wherever the Buddha’s Teaching spread:

‘Of those things that arise from a cause,

The Tathāgata has told the cause,

And also what their cessation is:

This is the doctrine of the Great Recluse.’

When Assaji spoke this stanza, right on the spot there arose in Upatissa the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma: ‘All that has the nature of arising has the nature of cessation.’ And the very same thing happened to Kolita when Upatissa repeated the stanza to him. Such sudden experiences of enlightenment may fascinate us and baffle us, particularly when they are triggered by sayings that to us seem so opaque and enigmatic. But the power of the Dhamma to ignite realization of ultimate truth is proportional to the receptivity and earnestness of the disciple. For those who have long trained themselves in the disciplines of contemplation and renunciation, who have reflected deeply upon the impermanent and the Deathless, and who are ready to relinquish everything for the sake of final deliverance, even a concise four-line stanza can reveal more truth than volumes of systematic exposition.

The two friends Upatissa and Kolita were amply endowed with these qualifications. Single-minded in their quest for final freedom, they had learned to investigate things solely in terms of the conditioned and the unconditioned, and their faculties were ripe to the bursting point. All they lacked was the key to direct insight. Assaji’s stanza was that key. Having swiftly cut through the subtle screens of ignorance that covered their mental eyes, in a flash it bestowed on them the first vision of the Deathless. They had penetrated the Four Noble Truths and seen the Uncreated, Nibbāna, beyond the transience of phenomenal existence where death ever reigns.

They now stood securely in the stream of the Dhamma (sotāpatti), assured that the goal was within their grasp.

After Kolita had listened to that potent stanza, he asked at once where the Great Ascetic, the Tathāgata, was staying. Hearing that he was staying not far away at the Bamboo Grove Monastery, he wished to go there immediately, but Upatissa asked him to wait, saying,

“Let us first go to Sañjaya and tell him that we have found the Deathless. If he can understand, he is sure to make progress toward the truth. But if he cannot comprehend at once, he may perhaps have confidence enough to join us when we go to see the Master. Then, on listening to the Buddha himself, he will certainly understand.”

Thus the friends went to their former Master and said:

“Listen, teacher, listen! A Fully Enlightened One has appeared in the world. Well proclaimed is his teaching, and his monks live the fully purified life. Come with us to see him!”

Sañjaya, however, declined their invitation, but instead offered to share with them the leadership of his community.

“If you will accept my offer,” he said, “you will enjoy abundant gain and fame and you will be held in the highest respect.”

But the two friends would not swerve from their course and firmly replied,

“We would not mind remaining pupils for life, but you should make up your mind now, as our own decision is final.”

Sañjaya, however, torn by indecision, lamented:

“I cannot go! For so many years I have been a teacher and have had a large following of disciples. If I were to become a pupil again, it would be as if a mighty lake were to change into a pitcher!”

Thus conflicting motives contended within his heart: on one side, his longing for truth, on the other the desire to preserve his superior status. But the latter prevailed, and he stayed behind.

At that time, Sañjaya had about five hundred disciples. When they learned that the two friends had decided to follow the Buddha, spontaneously all of them wanted to join. But when they noticed that Sañjaya would not go, half of them wavered and returned to their teacher. Sañjaya, seeing that he had lost so many of his disciples, was so stricken by grief and despair that, as the texts tell us, ‘hot blood spurted from his mouth.’

THE STRUGGLE FOR REALIZATION OF THE TEACHING

Now the two friends, at the head of 250 fellow ascetics, approached the Bamboo Grove. There the Buddha was teaching the Dhamma to his monks, and when he saw the two friends approaching, he announced:

“Here, monks, they are coming, the two friends, Kolita and Upatissa. They will be my chief disciples, a blessed pair!”

Having arrived, the whole company respectfully saluted the Buddha, raised their joined palms to the forehead, and bowed at his feet. Then the two friends spoke:

“May we be permitted, Lord, to obtain under the Blessed One the going forth and the full admission?”

Then the Blessed One responded:

“Come, monks, well proclaimed is the Dhamma. Live now the holy life for making an end of suffering!”

These brief words served to bestow ordination on the two friends and their following.

From that point on the texts refer to Upatissa by the name Sāriputta, ‘the son of Sāri,’ after the name of his mother, and to Kolita as Mahāmoggallāna, ‘Moggallāna the Great,’ to distinguish him from others of the same brahmanic clan, such as Gaṇaka Moggallāna and Gopaka Moggallāna.

After all of them had obtained ordination, the Buddha addressed the 250 disciples and explained to them the Teaching in such a way that before long they attained to the first stage of emancipation, stream-entry, and in due course all became arahants except Sāriputta and Moggallāna. These two went into solitude, in separate places, to continue their striving for the highest goal.

Sāriputta remained in the vicinity of Rājagaha and went to meditate in a cave called the Boar’s Den. From there he walked to the city for his alms, which often gave him the opportunity to listen to the Buddha’s discourses. What he heard from the Master he independently worked over in his own mind and he methodically penetrated to clear understanding of the fundamental nature of phenomena. He needed fourteen days to reach arahantship, the utter destruction of all cankers (āsavakkhaya).

Moggallāna, however, for reasons not specified in the texts, resorted to a forest near the village of Kallavālaputta in Magadha. With great zeal, he meditated there while sitting or walking up and down, but despite his determination he was often overcome by sleepiness. Though he struggled to keep his body erect and his head upright, he kept on drooping and nodding. There were times when he could keep his eyes open only by sheer force of will. The tropical heat, the strain of his long years of a wandering life, and the inner tensions he had gone through all bore down on him at once, and thus, at the very end of his quest, his body reacted by fatigue.

But the Awakened One, with a great teacher’s solicitude for his disciples, did not lose sight of him. With his supernormal vision he perceived the difficulties of the new monk, and by psychic power he appeared before him. When Moggallāna saw the Master standing before him, a good part of his fatigue had already vanished. Now the Awakened One asked him:

“Are you nodding, Moggallāna, are you nodding?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Well then, Moggallāna, at whatever thought drowsiness descends upon you, you should not give attention to that thought or dwell on it. Then, by doing so, it is possible that your drowsiness will vanish. But if, by doing so, drowsiness does not vanish, then you should reflect upon the Teaching as you have heard it and learned it, you should ponder over it and examine it closely in your mind.

Then, by doing so, it is possible that your drowsiness will vanish. But if, by doing so, drowsiness does not vanish, then you should repeat in full detail the Teaching as you have heard it and learned it…you should pull both ear-lobes and rub your limbs with your hands…you should get up from your seat and, after washing your eyes with water, you should look around in all directions and upwards to the stars and constellations…you should give attention to the perception of light, to the perception of day: as by day so by night, as by night so by day; thus, with your mind clear and unclouded, you should cultivate a mind that is full of brightness…with your senses turned inward and your mind not straying outward, you should walk up and down, being aware of going to and fro.

Then, by doing so, it is possible that your drowsiness will vanish.

But if, by doing so, drowsiness does not vanish, you may, mindfully and clearly aware, lie down lion-like on your right side, placing foot on foot, keeping in mind the thought of rising; and on awakening, you should quickly get up, thinking, ‘I must not indulge in the comfort of resting and reclining, in the pleasure of sleep.’

“Thus, Moggallāna, should you train yourself.”

Here the Buddha gives Moggallāna a graded sequence of advice on how to overcome drowsiness. The first and best device is not to pay attention to the thought causing or preceding the state of drowsiness. This, however, is the most difficult method. If one does not succeed with it, one may summon some energizing thoughts or one may reflect upon the excellence of the Teaching, or recite parts of it by heart. If these mental remedies do not help, one should turn to bodily activity such as, for instance, pulling one’s ears, shaking the body, activating the circulation by rubbing one’s limbs, refreshing one’s eyes with cold water, and, at night, looking at the grandeur of the starry sky. This may make one forget one’s petty drowsiness.

If these measures are of no avail, then one may try to arouse an inner vision of light, suffusing the entire mind with luminosity.

With this self-radiant mind, one will then be able to leave behind, like a Brahmā deity, the whole realm of days and nights as perceived by the senses. This line of advice suggests that Moggallāna had experienced such states before, so that the Buddha could refer to them as something known to Moggallāna. This ‘perception of light’ (ālokasaññā) is mentioned in the texts as one of four ways of developing samādhi and as leading to ‘knowledge and vision’.

If this method, too, does not help, one should walk up and down mindfully, and thus, by resorting to bodily movement, try to get rid of fatigue. If, however, none of these seven devices proves helpful, one may just lie down and rest for a short while. But as soon as one feels refreshed, one should quickly get up, without allowing drowsiness to return.

The Buddha’s instruction on that occasion, however, did not stop here, but continued as follows:

“Further, Moggallāna, you should train yourself in this way. You should think, ‘When calling at families (on the alms round), I shall not be given to pride.’

Thus should you train yourself. For in families it may happen that people are busy with work and may not notice that a monk has come. Then a monk (if given to pride) may think,

“Who, I wonder, has estranged me from this family? These people seem to be displeased with me.”

Thus, by not receiving an offering from them, he is perturbed; being perturbed he becomes excited; being excited he loses self-control; and if he is uncontrolled, his mind will be far from finding concentration.

Further, Moggallāna, you should train yourself in this way:

“I shall not speak contentious talk.”

Thus should you train yourself. If there is contentious talk, there is sure to be much wordiness; with much wordiness, there will be excitement; one who is excited will lose self-control; and if he is uncontrolled, his mind will be far from finding concentration.

Here the Buddha points out two kinds of behaviour that lead to excitement and restlessness. In the first case, the monk is proud of his status and counts on respect from the laity, but if the laypeople pay more attention to their own business than to him, he becomes perturbed and falls away from concentration. In the other case, he takes intellectual delight in discussions, becomes aroused by differences of opinion, and finds pleasure in defeating others in debate. By all this, his mental energy is diverted into futile and unprofitable channels. If one cannot keep one’s senses under control, or easily allows one’s mind to become excited or diverted, one grows slack and careless in the practice and thus cannot find the unification of mind and inner peace to be obtained in meditation.

After the Buddha had given him these instructions on the over- coming of drowsiness and the avoidance of excitement, Moggallāna asked the following question:

“In what way, Lord, can it be briefly explained how a monk becomes liberated by the elimination of craving; how he becomes one who has reached the final end, the final security from bondage, the final holy life, the final consummation, and is foremost among devas and humans?”

“Here, Moggallāna, a monk has learned this: ‘Nothing is fit to be clung to!’ When a monk has learnt that nothing is fit to be clung to, he directly knows everything; by directly knowing everything, he fully comprehends everything; when he fully comprehends everything, whatever feeling he experiences, be it pleasant, painful, or neutral, he abides contemplating impermanence in these feelings, contemplating dispassion, contemplating cessation, contemplating relinquishment. When thus abiding, he does not cling to anything in the world; without clinging he is not agitated; and without agitation he personally attains the complete extinction of defilements. He knows: ‘Rebirth has ceased, the holy life has been lived, the task has been done, there is no more of this or that state.’

After Moggallāna had received all these personal instructions of the Master, he resumed his training with great ardour, fighting vigorously against the inner hindrances of the mind. During his many years of ascetic life he already had, to a great extent, suppressed sensual desire and ill will, the first and the second of the five hindrances.

Now, with the help given by the Buddha, he fought against sloth-and-torpor and restlessness-and-worry, the third and fourth hindrances. By overcoming these hindrances he was able to attain meditative states transcending the world of material form, which prepared the way for the penetrative knowledge of reality.

He first attained and enjoyed the overwhelming bliss of the first jhāna, a state of profound absorption and concentration. Yet, gradually, some worldly thoughts arose and claimed his attention, dragging him down to the level of sensory consciousness. The Buddha came to his aid, this time, however, not with detailed instructions as before, but with a brief indication that helped him to break through the impasse. The Exalted One warned him that he should not light-heartedly believe himself to be secure in the attainment of the first jhāna, but should strive to master it and bring it fully under his control. When Moggallāna followed this advice he became proficient in the first jhāna and could no longer be disturbed by mundane thoughts.

Having thus gained a firm footing in the first jhāna, he next gained the second jhāna, which is called ‘the noble silence’ because within this absorption all discursive thought is silenced. Thus, in stages, he advanced to the fourth jhāna. From there he proceeded still further in the scale of concentration to the four formless or immaterial absorptions (arūpajjhāna) and the cessation of perception and feeling (saññāvedayita-nirodha). Then he gained the ‘singles concentration of mind,’ which is free from all that ‘marks’ or signifies conditioned Existence.

But this attainment, too, was not final. For even here he developed a subtle attachment to his refined experience—an attachment which is still a delusive ‘sign’ or ‘mark’ superimposed on a high spiritual attainment of greatest purity. But aided by the Master’s instructions, he broke through these last, most subtle fetters and attained to the final fruit, perfect liberation of mind and liberation by wisdom in all their fullness and depth. The Venerable Mahāmoggallāna had become an arahant.

Like Sāriputta, Moggallāna was an arahant of the type called ‘liberated in both ways’ (ubhatobhāgavimutta). Although all arahants are identical in their perfect liberation from ignorance and suffering, they are distinguished into two types on the basis of their proficiency in concentration. Those who can attain the eight deliverances (aṭṭha vimokkhā), which include the four formless attainments and the attainment of cessation, are called ‘liberated in both ways’—liberated from the material body by means of the formless absorptions, and from all defilements by the path of arahantship. Those who lack this mastery over the eight deliverances but have destroyed all defilements through wisdom are called ‘liberated by wisdom’(paññāvimutta).

Even more, Moggallāna had not only mastered the successive planes of meditative concentration but had also explored the ‘roads of psychic power’ (iddhipāda), and thus had achieved facility in the modes of supernormal knowledge (abhiññā). In his own words, he was one of whom it could be declared,

“Supported by the Master the disciple attained to greatness of the super knowledges.”

This entire development took place within a single week. These were, indeed, seven days of tremendous internal transformation, packed with dramatic ordeals, struggles, and triumphs. The intensity and depth of Moggallāna’s determination during this short period must have been staggering. A person like him, endowed with such an active mind and such a wide range of natural gifts, would have had to make a truly valiant effort to cut through all the fetters binding him to this world of vast potentialities. For such an immensity of inner experience to have been compressed into one short week, the dimensions of space and time must have virtually contracted and dissolved. It is reported that on the occasion of his own Enlightenment the Buddha had recollected ninety- one aeons in the first watch of the night.

Moggallāna too, in perfecting his super knowledges, would have called up before his mind’s eye many past aeons of world contraction and expansion. Here notions of the measurable duration of time fail entirely. For an ordinary person, immured in the prison of the senses, one week is no more that seven days, but for one who has pierced the veil of manifest phenomena and reached the subliminal depths of reality, infinities can burst through the very boundaries of finitude.

Moggallāna later said that he attained arahantship by quick penetration (khippābhiññā), that is, in one week, but his progress was difficult (dukkha-paṭipadā), requiring the helpful assistance of the Master. Sāriputta, too, attained arahantship by quick penetration, in two weeks, but his progress was smooth (sukha-paṭipadā). Moggallāna had advanced to the goal more speedily than Sāriputta because the Buddha directed and inspired him personally and intensively, and also because he had a lesser range to comprehend. Sāriputta was superior to him in regard to the independence of his progress and also in the detailed scope of his knowledge.

To be Continued……

(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)

The post Arahant Moggallana2 first appeared on Buddhist Nuns of Mahamevnawa.

Arahant Moggallana1

Dhammadayadā — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:12:08 +0000

Youth

In a small town named Kolita, near Rājagaha, capital of the kingdom of Magadha, a child was born who was destined to become the second chief disciple of the Buddha. The boy’s parents named him Kolita, after the town. The family belonged to the Moggallāna clan, one of the most illustrious brahmin clans of the period, which claimed direct descent from the ancient Vedic seer Mudgala. The town was inhabited entirely by brahmins, and in its religious attitudes and social customs it was extremely conservative. Kolita’s father was born of the most prominent family, from which the town’s mayor was usually appointed.

Being a member of such a high caste and of the town’s most respected family, his father was almost a petty king. Thus Kolita was raised in an environment of wealth and honour, and his favourable circumstances shielded him from direct contact with the sorrows of life. He was educated entirely in the brahmanic tradition, which upheld the belief in the reality of an afterlife and in the law of kamma and its fruits. These beliefs permeated the everyday life of the brahmins and determined the form and content of their rituals, which governed all aspects of their lives.

Kolita’s family lived on very friendly terms with another brahmin family from a neighbouring village. On the very day of Kolita’s birth, a son was born to this other family, whom they named Upatissa. When the children grew up, they became fast friends and before long were inseparable. Whatever they did, they did together, whether it was play or study, pleasure or work. Always the two boys were seen together, and their undisturbed friendship was to last until the end of their lives.

In their temperaments the two were quite different. Upatissa was more adventuresome, daring, and enterprising, while Kolita’s tendency was to preserve, to cultivate, and to enrich what he had gained. Their places within their families were also different: Kolita was the only child, but Upatissa had three brothers and three sisters. Yet, despite the differences in their characters, they never quarrelled or came into conflict but always dwelt on amicable terms, maintaining a steadfast loyalty and self-sacrificing devotion.

To both youths, their friendship meant so much and filled their daily life to such an extent that they displayed little interest in the opposite sex.

Nevertheless, like other young men of their background—wealthy and high ranking brahmins—the two friends were enamoured with the intoxications of youth, health, and life. Each was the leader of a group of friends with whom he engaged in play and sport. When they went to the river, Kolita’s companions came on horseback and those of Upatissa were carried in palanquins.

Each year Rājagaha hosted a grand public celebration called the Hilltop Festival, which featured popular shows and amusements. The two friends looked forward to this event with keen anticipation and reserved seats from which they could comfortably watch the entertainment, a mixture of folk comedies and old legends. On the first day of the festival, they were fully engrossed in the entertainment. When there was something to laugh at, they joined in the laughter; and when there was something exciting, they became excited. They enjoyed the show so much that they returned on the second day and closely followed all the performances.

Inexplicably, however, far from satisfying them, the entertainment left them with a deep feeling of discontent. Nevertheless, they made reservations for the third day too, as a new program had been announced in glowing terms.

That night strange thoughts haunted their hearts and disturbed their sleep. As Kolita tossed and turned in his bed, he kept on asking himself:

“What is the use to us of this frivolity? Is there anything here really worth seeing? What benefit comes from a life devoted to enjoyment and pleasure seeking? After a few years, these glamorous actors will all be old and feeble; they will leave the stage of life and continue their migrations through existence, driven on by craving, and we too will also have to move on. These actors cannot even help themselves to solve the problem of existence. How then can they help us? Instead of wasting our time with these festivities we should seek a path to deliverance!”

Upatissa, too, had spent a restless night, disturbed by quite similar thoughts. He reflected how the ancient myths and legends dramatized in those performances presupposed the reality of rebirth; but the jokes and frolics overlaying those ideas in the plays insinuated that one need be concerned with this present life alone. Was this not an artificial suppression of truth by pretence and vain illusions?

The next morning, when they took their seats, Kolita said to his friend:

“What is the matter with you? You are not your usual merry self. Is something troubling you?”

His friend replied:

“Last night, while I lay in bed, I kept on asking myself, ‘What is the use to us of all these pleasures of eye and ear? They are absolutely worthless! Shouldn’t we rather seek to find release from the devastating law of impermanence, to liberate ourselves from the fleeting illusions of life, which lure us on yet leave us empty?’ That is what has been weighing on my mind. But you, too, dear Kolita, seem morose today.”

Kolita replied:

“I have been thinking exactly the same thoughts. Why should we stay here any longer, in this unholy vanity show? We should seek the way to deliverance!”

When Upatissa heard that his friend had the very same wish, he happily exclaimed: “That was a good thought that came to us both, independent of each other. We have wasted our time long enough with worthless frivolities. But if we earnestly seek a teaching of deliverance, we shall have to give up home and possessions and go forth as homeless wanderers, free of worldly and sensual bonds, rising above them like birds on the wing.”

So the two friends decided to undertake the life of ascetics—homeless mendicants who then wandered along the roads of India, as they still do now, in search of a spiritual teacher, a guru who could guide them to the liberating knowledge of enlightenment. When they told their followers about their decision, these young men were so deeply impressed that most decided to join their friends in their spiritual quest. So all of them said farewell to their families, took off the sacred brahmanic thread, cut off their hair and beards, and put on the pale saffron garments of religious wanderers. Discarding all distinguishing marks and privileges of their caste, they entered the classless society of ascetics.

WANDERING AND SPIRITUAL SEARCH

At about the same time that Prince Siddhattha, the future Buddha, married—and thus for the time at least stepped more deeply into worldly life—the two friends Kolita and Upatissa left behind their homes and embarked upon the difficult quest for inner peace and salvation. Together with their retinues, they began a period of training under a spiritual teacher, just as the Bodhisatta did later.

At that time, northern India teemed with spiritual teachers and philosophers whose views ranged from the demonic to the Super divine. Some taught a moralism, others fatalism, still others materialism. Both friends realized the hollowness of such teachings early enough and thus felt no attraction towards them. In Rājagaha, however, there was one teacher who appealed to them. His name was Sañjaya, who, according to tradition, was identical with Sañjaya Belatthaputta, mentioned in the Pāli Canon as one of six non-Buddhist teachers. Under him the group of friends were ordained, which added considerably to Sañjaya’s reputation.

The texts do not give us detailed information about Sañjaya’s teachings, but from a number of brief indications we can roughly reconstruct the substance of his doctrine. Unlike other ascetic teachers who made definite dogmatic statements about specific topics, Sañjaya maintained a rigorous scepticism in regard to the deep existential problems with which the thinkers of the period wrestled. He formulated this scepticism around the chief questions debated by his philosophical contemporaries: Is there another world beyond the visible order? After the death of this material body, does one appear in the world beyond by way of a purely mental birth process as a spontaneously arisen being? Will the good and bad actions one has performed in this present existence bear good and bad fruits in the next life? What, finally, is the destiny of a Tathāgata or Perfect One after death? How are we to conceive and describe his post-mortem condition?

Whenever such questions were raised by the Indian thinkers of this period, four alternative types of answers were thought possible: affirmation, negation, partial affirmation and partial negation, and neither affirmation nor negation. Sañjaya, however, taught that with regard to the questions mentioned, none of those four positions was acceptable as a solution; they all contained unresolvable contradictions or antinomies, and therefore, he held, one should refrain from any judgment about these problems. Here it may be noted that, of the four sets of antinomies which often occur in the Pāli, only the fourth set is identical with Sañjaya’s problems, namely, the one concerning the after-death state of a Perfect One.

While other ascetic teachers always advocated one of the four logical alternatives as a solution to these problems—yes, no, yes and no, neither yes nor no—Sañjaya did not commit himself to any of them.

He especially did not commit himself dogmatically to the unprovable assertion (made, for instance, by popular natural science) that there is no world beyond, no mind-made (astral) body, no law of kamma, and no survival after death. In that attitude, he clearly differed from the materialists of his time. He taught rather that, in view of the unresolvable nature of these problems, one should keep to a stance of detachment and impartiality, not tolerating the slightest bias toward approval or disapproval of any of these theories and their consequences. From this we can see that he was a confirmed agnostic who tried to develop a consistent scepticism built upon a recognition of the dialectic tensions inherent in speculative thought.

In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta, the king of Magadha, Ajātasattu, reported to the Buddha the following talk he had with the ascetic Sañjaya. Although this account may reflect the way the Buddhists understood Sañjaya rather than his own way of formulating his doctrine, it offers us a glimpse into his philosophical stance:

“One day I went to Sañjaya of the Belattha clan and I asked him: ‘Can you, sir, declare to me an immediate fruit, visible in this very world, of the life of a recluse?’

Being thus asked, Sañjaya said:

“If you ask me whether there is another world—well, if I thought there were, I would say so. But I don’t say so. And I don’t think it is thus or thus. And I don’t think it is otherwise. And I don’t deny it. And I don’t say there neither is nor is not another world. And if you ask me whether there are beings reborn spontaneously; or whether there is any fruit, any result, of good or bad actions; or whether a Tathāgata exists or not after death—to each and all of these questions do I give the same reply.”

Thus, Lord, when asked about the immediate fruit and advantage in the life of a recluse, Sañjaya of the Belattha clan showed his manner of prevarication.”

Kolita and Upatissa initially must have felt that Sañjaya’s philosophy was something more than mere evasion. Not having met a better teacher, they were probably attracted to him because of his apparent freedom from dogmatism and his dialectical skills.

After a short time, however, they clearly realized that Sañjaya could not offer them what they were really searching for: a cure for the illness of universal suffering. Besides, we may suppose that by reason of their mental formations from past existences they must have intuitively felt that there actually was another world, that there were mind-born beings (e.g., deities), and that there was moral recompense of actions. In this respect their understanding went beyond that of their sceptical teacher. Hence one day the two friends approached Sañjaya and asked him whether he had still other teachings more advanced than those they had already learned from him. To this he replied:

“That is all. You know my entire teaching.”

Hearing this, they decided to leave and to continue their search elsewhere. After all, they had not left their families for the sake of endless and futile agnostic arguments but to find a path to final deliverance from suffering.

Thus, for a second time, they took up the life of wanderers in search of truth. They walked across India for many years, from north to south, from east to west. They endured the dust of the road and the tormenting heat, the rain and the wind, spurred on by thoughts that moved deep within the Indian soul:

“I am a victim of birth, aging and death, of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. I am a victim of suffering, a prey of suffering. Surely, an end to this whole mass of suffering can be discovered!”

In their travels they met many ascetics and brahmins who were reputed to be exceptionally wise. With them they had religious discussions on God and the world, on heaven and hell, on the meaning of life and the way to salvation. But with their keen and critical minds trained by Sañjaya’s scepticism, they very soon realized the emptiness of all those assertions and the learned ignorance of these philosophers. None of these teachers could answer their probing questions, while the two friends themselves were quite able to reply when questioned.

The records do not tell us who their other teachers were, but it would be surprising if the two truth-seekers had not met such mystics and sages as, for instance, Bāvari, a seer of great meditative power, or Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, the two teachers of formless infinity under whom the Bodhisatta had studied. From their life story, however, one thing is clear: until they encountered the Buddha the two had failed to find even the tracks of a path to the world- transcending experience of liberation. What may have been the reason? Spiritual seekers at the time of the Buddha pursued either of two aims: to gain inner peace and serenity by deep meditation (samādhi) or to acquire a clear view of the ultimate meaning of existence.

Those who sought to understand the nature of existence generally proceeded through speculative flights of the intellect and tended to spurn the path of meditative absorption. In contrast, those who had achieved inner peace through the meditative path for the most part remained content with their attainment, believing this to be the final goal. Lacking the guidance of a Buddha, they did not even suspect that this meditative peace, so tranquil and sublime, was still mundane and thus merely a force of kammic construction within the cycle of repeated birth and death.

Their meditative attainments would bring them a blissful rebirth in one of the super sensual Brahma-worlds, where the life span is inconceivably longer than in the sensual world; but eventually such kammic force would be depleted, followed by a rebirth elsewhere, leaving the meditators in the same saṃsāric imprisonment as before. In their former lives as meditating hermits, this must have happened often to the Bodhisatta as well as to Kolita and Upatissa. This is one aspect of existential misery, of prisonlike ignorance: either, like the mystics, one settles down at the gate, regarding it as one’s true home of peace and bliss; or, like the speculative thinkers, one bypasses it quickly and becomes lost within the labyrinths of the intellect. Though the two friends had no recollection of jhānic experiences from previous lives, they obviously had an intuitive feeling that meditative bliss and its rewards were not the final goal but only a temporary relief within the continuing cycle of suffering.

Hence their foremost quest was for clarity about the concatenation of existence, for understanding how things hang together in the complex web of saṃsāra. In ages devoid of a Buddha’s appearance, their search would have been as futile as the recurring attainment, enjoyment, and loss of samādhi. It may have been an undefinable inner urge within them that did not allow them to rest until they had found the Enlightened One who, like them, had gone forth in search of liberation during the last years of their own quest.

If even the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha, could discover how to integrate meditative absorption with penetrating insight only when he reached a critical impasse in his own spiritual search, it was not to be expected that the two friends on their own could find the subtle key to mind’s emancipation, for they had neither the wide meditative experience nor the far-reaching independent mental range of a Buddha.

In retrospect, the friends’ wandering in search of truth was just a running in circles, which would end only when their uncompromising integrity and insatiable thirst for truth finally led them to the feet of the Enlightened One.

FINDING THE DHAMMA

Without knowing anything of the Buddha, the two friends gave up their life of wandering and returned to their home country of Magadha. Both were about forty years of age. Despite their many disappointments they still had not given up hope. Having made a pact that the one who found a genuine path to the Deathless first would quickly inform the other, they set out on their search separately, thereby doubling their chances of meeting a competent spiritual guide.

It was shortly before this happened that the Buddha had set in motion the Wheel of the Dhamma at Benares, and after his first rains retreat he sent out his first batch of disciples, sixty arahants, to proclaim the Dhamma for the well-being and happiness of the world.

To be Continued……

(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)

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