• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2265 0

its realism, bare in its naturalism, striking in its ability to convey deep psychological insights with minimal descriptive technique. In Text II,3(1) we read about his renunciation, his training under two famous meditation teachers, his disillusionment with their teachings, his solitary struggle, and his triumphant realization of the Deathless. Text II,3(2) fills in the gaps of the above narrative with a detailed account of the bodhisatta’s practice of self-mortification, strangely missing from the previous discourse. This text also gives us the classic description of the enlightenment experience as involving the attainment of the four jhānas, states of deep meditation, followed by the three vijjās or higher types of knowledge: the knowledge of the recollection of past lives, the knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings, and the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. While this text may convey the impression that the last knowledge broke upon the Buddha’s mind as a sudden and spontaneous intuition, Text II,3(3) corrects this impression with an account of the Bodhisatta on the eve of his enlightenment reflecting deeply upon the suffering of old age and death. He then methodically traces this suffering back to its conditions by a process that involves, at each step, “careful attention” (yoniso manasikāra) leading to “a breakthrough by wisdom” (paññāya abhisamaya). This process of investigation culminates in the discovery of dependent origination, which thereby becomes the philosophical cornerstone of his teaching.

It is important to emphasize that, as presented here and elsewhere in the Nikāyas (see below, pp. 353-59), dependent origination does not signify a joyous celebration of the interconnectedness of all things but a precise articulation of the conditional pattern in dependence upon which suffering arises and ceases. In the same text, the Buddha declares that he discovered the path to enlightenment only when he found the way to bring dependent origination to an end. It was thus the realization of the cessation of dependent origination, and not merely the discovery of its origination aspect, that precipitated the Buddha’s enlightenment. The simile of the ancient city, introduced later in the discourse, illustrates the point that the Buddha’s enlightenment was not a unique event but the rediscovery of the same “ancient path” that had been followed by the Buddhas of the past.

Text II,4 resumes the narrative of Text II,3(1), which I had divided by splicing in the two alternative versions of the bodhisatta’s quest for the path to enlightenment. We now rejoin the Buddha immediately after his enlightenment as he ponders the weighty question whether to attempt to share his realization with the world. Just at this point, in the midst of a text that has so far appeared so convincingly naturalistic, a deity named Brahmā Sahampati descends from the heavens to plead with the Buddha to wander forth and teach the Dhamma for the benefit of those “with little dust in their eyes.” Should this scene be interpreted literally or as a symbolic enactment of an internal drama taking place in the Buddha’s mind? It is hard to give a definitive answer to this question; perhaps the scene could be understood as occurring at both levels at once. In any event, Brahmā’s appearance at this point marks a shift from the realism that colors the earlier part of the sutta back toward the mythical-symbolic mode. The transition again underscores the cosmic significance of the Buddha’s enlightenment and his future mission as a teacher.

Brahmā’s appeal eventually prevails and the Buddha agrees to teach. He chooses as the first recipients of his teaching the five ascetics who had attended on him during his years of ascetic practices. The narrative culminates in a brief statement that the Buddha instructed them in such a way that they all attained the deathless Nibbāna for themselves. However, it gives no indication of the specific teaching that the Buddha imparted to them when he first met them after his enlightenment. That teaching