The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [617]
SUTTA 85
816 Prince Bodhi was the son of King Udena of Kosambı̄; his mother was the daughter of King Ca˚ḍappajjota of Avantı̄. The portion of the sutta from §2 through §8 is also found at Vin Cv Kh 5/ii.127–29, where it leads to the formulation of the rule mentioned in the following note.
817 MA explains that Prince Bodhi was childless and desired a son. He had heard that people can fulfil their wishes by making special offerings to the Buddha, so he spread the white cloth with the idea: “If I am to have a son, the Buddha will step on the cloth; if I am not to have a son, he will not step on the cloth.” The Buddha knew that by reason of past evil kamma, he and his wife were destined to remain childless. Hence he did not step on the cloth. Later he laid down a disciplinary rule prohibiting the bhikkhus from stepping on a white cloth, but subsequently modified the rule to allow bhikkhus to step on a cloth as a blessing for householders.
818 Pacchimaṁ janataṁ Tathāgato apaloketi. The Vin version here reads anukampati, “has compassion,” which is preferable. MA explains that Ven. Ānanda said this with the thought in mind: “In later times people will come to regard honour to the bhikkhus as a way of ensuring the fulfilment of their mundane wishes and will lose faith in the Sangha if their displays of honour do not bring the success they desire.”
819 This is the basic tenet of the Jains, as at MN 14.20.
SUTTA 86
820 The name “Angulimāla” is an epithet meaning “garland (mālā) of fingers (anguli).” He was the son of the brahmin Bhaggava, a chaplain to King Pasenadi of Kosala. His given name was Ahiṁsaka, meaning “harmless one.” He studied at Takkasilā, where he became his teacher’s favourite. His fellow students, jealous of him, told the teacher that Ahiṁsaka had committed adultery with his wife. The teacher, intent on bringing Ahiṁsaka to ruin, commanded him to bring him a thousand human right-hand fingers as an honorarium. Ahiṁsaka lived in the Jālinı̄ forest, attacking travellers, cutting off a finger of each, and wearing them as a garland around his neck. At the time the sutta opens he was one short of a thousand and had made a determination to kill the next person to come along. The Buddha saw that Angulimāla’s mother was on her way to visit him, and aware that Angulimāla had the supporting conditions for arahantship, he intercepted him shortly before his mother was due to arrive. Matricide is one of the five terrible crimes that lead to immediate rebirth in hell. Thus the Buddha intercedes to prevent Angulimāla from committing this crime.
821 MA explains that Angulimāla had just realised that the monk before him was the Buddha himself and that he had come to the forest for the express purpose of transforming him.
822 MṬ explains the expression mūḷhagabbha to mean that the fetus had turned over only partly in the womb and was being expelled horizontally, so that its exit was blocked. MA says that although Angulimāla had killed almost a thousand people, he had never given rise to a thought of compassion. But now, through the power of his ordination, compassion arose in him as soon as he saw the woman in painful labour.
823 Even today this utterance is often recited by Buddhist monks as a protective charm (paritta)for pregnant women close to their time of delivery.
824 MA explains that any volitional action (kamma) is capable of yielding three kinds of result: a result to be experienced here and now, i.e., in the same life in which the deed is committed; a result to be experienced in the next existence; and a result to be experienced in any life subsequent to the next, as long as one’s sojourn in saṁsāra continues. Because he had attained arahantship, Angulimāla had escaped the latter two types of result but not the first, since even arahants are susceptible to experiencing the present-life results of actions they performed before attaining