TALK PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2014 AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2024 (REVISED)

The Discourse to Potthapada

Digha Nikaya 9

Country: Kosala

Locales: Jeta’s grove in Anthapindika’s Park, Savatthi; the debating hall near the tinduka tree, in the single-halled park of Queen Mallika

Speakers: Potthapada, the Buddha, Citta

Date of composition: 400-250 BCE

At the time of the Buddha, Savatthi was one of the six largest cities of India. It was the capital of Kosala, ruled by King Pasenadi, a follower of the Buddha. According to Buddhaghosa, the city had a population of almost sixty thousand families. Even today, this would be a medium-sized city. It seems the Buddha spent slightly more than half of his time here.

Anathapindika is the chief lay disciple of the Buddha. Extremely wealthy, he gave Jeta Park (or Grove) to the order. Queen Mallika is the wife of King Pasenadi. The tinduka tree must have been a popular meeting spot. Other names for the tinduka are the Gaub tree, Malabar ebony, black and white ebony, or pale moon ebony. Tinduka trees grow to thirty-five meters in height with large black trunks and yellow, astringent fruits. Impervious to insects, they have medicinal and other uses.

Often in the Pali Canon we read that the Buddha rises early; sometimes he is awake in the early morning hours as well. In any case, it is too early to go to Savatthi for alms, so the Buddha stops at the debating hall of Queen Mallika, which (one assumes) is on the way. There, Potthapada, a wandering ascetic or mendcant, is sitting with a crowd of wanderers, engaged in loud and boisterous talk.

A wanderer is essentially a philosopher. When Potthapada sees the Buddha approaching, he shushes the wanderers out of respect for the Buddha. Potthaapada welcomes him as though he had been hoping for a long time that he would see or meet him. The Buddha must know (of) Potthaapada, since the discourse says that the Buddha goes to Jeta’s Grove with the intention of seeing Potthapada.

The Buddha asks Potthapada what he and the other wanderers are talking about. Instead, Potthapada wants to find out what the Buddha thinks of a hot topic of conversation among the ascetics and Brahmans, viz., the “higher extinction of consciousness” (in the translation of Maurice Walshe). The term is not necessarily Buddhist, but certain wanderers used it. However, the Buddha makes the term his own in his explanation of it.

The conversation turns on how this takes place. According to one view, “perceptions” arise and cease without cause or condition. Consciousness is just this arising of perceptions, unconsciousness (or “non-percipience,” according to Access to Insight) the non-arising of perceptions. Therefore, the higher extinction of consciousness is just random chance. This sounds like modern speculations about the origin of life. This is the first view put forward, which happens to be the view of Western secular materialism today.

According to another view, what I am calling “cognitive sensory perception” is the self. As the self comes and goes, so does cognitive sensory perception. Therefore, for example, during sleep the self leaves the body. Another theory is that powerful ascetics, Brahmans, or divine beings draw consciousness in and out of the body. This last description sounds like shamanism, where shamans and spirits wield powerful effects over consciousness.

The Buddha categorically denies that perceptions arise without causes or conditions. Thus, the Buddha asserts the absoluteness of the Law of Causality.  This should tip one off immediately that cauality is part of the teaching, which, being coterminous with reality, is the only permanent “thing.” It is the motive force, so to speak, that underlies the whole process of infinitely intervolved differentiation.

Perceptions are amenable to training. Today we would call this “neuroplasticity.” This training consists of morality followed by meditation. In this classification, there are two divisions. Meditation consists of the eight meditative attainments. Etymologically, its English cognate is ‘gnosis’ or ‘knowledge.’ Jhana is the Pali of Sanskrit dhyana, meaning ‘attention,’ which became the penultimate trance state prior to samadhi in Patanjali’s yoga. Jhana is thus a kind of concentrated trance state in an ascending hierarchy of seven or eight states. These states are not “merely” psychological in the modern sense. They are also ontological, so the attainment of each state is essentially the attainment of rebirth in the world corresponding to that state. Thus, there is a correspondence of states and worlds.

Jhanas	Deva Worlds (simplified)	Properties
The Formless Realm
7	Sphere of No-thing	Transcends dimension of infinite consciousness
6	Sphere of Infinite Consciousness	Transcends dimension of infinite space
5	Sphere of Infinite Space	Transcends perceptions of physical form, perceptions of resistance disappear, perceptions of diversity not heeded, perceives infinite space
The Form Realm
4	Five Pure Abodes of the Arhants	Abandons pleasure and pain
3	Glorious Devas	Rapture fades, equanimous, mindful, alert, senses pleasure with body
2	Radiant Devas	Stills directed thoughts and evaluations
1	Brahma Worlds	Withdraws from sensual pleasures and unskilful mental qualities

Perhaps the seven or eight meditative attainments were the basis of Buddhist cosmology, which elaborated the thirty-one planes of existence.  Walshe translates the essential faculty present in this aspiration as ‘controlled perception.’ This seed develops through stages into the “limit of perception.” At this stage one transcends thinking altogether, coarse perceptions cease and one achieves the complete emancipation of consciousness.

The Buddha’s answer shows intimate acquaintance with the meditation asked about. It also describes the process of meditation itself; despite the fact that the Buddha rejected his first two teachers, he continues to teach their methods to a degree. Thus, controlled perception is beyond the seventh meditative attainment, the highest “perception attainment,” which raises the question of its relationship to the eighth meditative attainment, which is not included in this description.

Potthapada repeats the gist of the Buddha’s comments on the higher extinction of consciousness: “from the moment when a monk has gained this controlled perception, he proceeds from stage to stage until he reaches the limit of perception. He attains cessation, and that is the way in which the cessation of perception is brought about by successive steps.”  Thus, the cultivation of ‘controlled perception’ is the essential task of meditation. This cultivation is, moreover, a continuous and progressive process, a.k.a. the gradual path. Literally ‘becomes own-perceiving,’ more properly, ‘own-cognitive sensory perception becoming,’ Walshe interprets this as implying increasing control, as in concentration. Moreover, the essence of concentration is awareness. Thus, the reflexivity of consciousness dissolves the gross sensations in perception, which dissolves into consciousness itself and so disappears in the act of reflexive self-becoming. This is the whole process of awareness.

Potthapada then asks the Buddha about “the summit of perception,” presumably the same as the “limit of perception” and the goal of controlled perception that is automatically transformed into its opposite, the higher extinction of consciousness: Is it one or many? Does perception arise before knowledge? Is perception a person’s self? Is the world eternal? Is the soul the same as the body? Does the Tathagata exist after death?

The Buddha begins by answering Potthapada’s questions, which contradicts the common view that the Buddha has no ontology and always refuses to answer metaphysical questions. Rather, the Buddha posits metaphysical transdualism—a mental world characterized by infinite differentiation and non-differentiation, the latter the ineffable essence of sentience itself. This world is real. Hence, perception precedes knowledge, a fact that neuroscience has proved. Potthapada wants to know whether perception is the self, or is the self something else? The Buddha shows Potthapada that no matter how he thinks about the self—whether as the physical body, a mental (or “astral”) body, or formless—perceptions and the self have to be different. Perceptions change continuously, but the “identity” is unchanging.

Potthapada then wants to verify this empirically. How can he know the non-perceptual self? The Buddha implies that one must know the teaching in order to know this, implying that knowledge precedes attainment. So far, the Buddha has been happy to answer all of Potthapada’s questions. Rather than penetrate the teaching, Potthapada begins to shy away and ask the Buddha unrelated speculative questions about cosmology, the soul, and the post-mortem state.

The Buddha’s attitude toward Potthapada changes. He tells Potthapada that he refuses to discuss these questions because they are not conducive to enlightenment. Potthapada had his chance when he was discussing the nature of the self with the Buddha—surely a metaphysical question. However, he erred when he decided that the question was too deep for him, meaning he was not willing to step outside the frame of reference of “his own” sect as the Buddha was implicitly inviting him to do. Some think that the Buddha’s use of paradox here implies that the questions are intrinsically meaningless, but the Buddha never says that, only that he has “not declared that.” Rather, he says, he has declared the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths are ontological statements about the suffering nature of the world too.

After the Buddha leaves, the wanderers mock Potthapada for kowtowing to the Buddha, professing that they do not understand why he refused to answer Potthapada’s questions about cosmology, the soul, and the post-mortem state. Apparently, such questions were standard fare for other teachers. Potthapada agrees that he does not understand the Buddha’s reticence, but that his practice is sound, so why should he not acknowledge that?

A few days later Potthapada goes to visit the Buddha along with Citta, the son of an elephant trainer. Potthapada tells the Buddha what the wanderers said, to which the Buddha replies by calling them “blind and sightless.” The Buddha explains that speculations about cosmology, the self (or soul), and the post-mortem state of a tathagata are declared to be “uncertain” because they are not conducive to emancipation. On the other hand, the Four Noble Truths are subjects that are conducive to emancipation. Thus, the Buddha distinguishes between “uncertain” or “undeclared” teachings and teachings conducive to emancipation. The Buddha contrasts his way to ascetics and Brahmans who speculate based on beliefs, the implication being that the Buddha’s way is directly experienced and empirical—a yoga, in effect.

I see this whole difference as less of a dogmatic refusal to discuss certain types of philosophical questions than as two different attitudes toward metaphysical knowing, one ontological and speculative (identified here with the “Brahmanic”) and one phenomenological, in the sense of being grounded in experiential immediacy.

Potthapada has already alluded to three ways of thinking about the self—as a physical body, as a mental body, or as a formless self; now the Buddha returns to this topic, confirming that there are three kinds of “acquired” self—gross, mind-made, and formless. In other discourses, the Buddha famously denies the absoluteness of the self. However, it also means self in the conventional sense, or ego-identity. Thus, the person, perhaps the “psyche,” is “built up” of three “levels”— the gross material body, composed of elements and dependent on food; the “astral body” that duplicates the form of the physical body as a kind of template of the latter; and formless perception, i.e., consciousness itself, in a sort of pyramidal structure that reflects Buddhist cosmology.

Some people might be surprised to learn that the Pali Canon refers to a “mind-made self” that is a perfect duplicate of the physical body. This seems to be the root of the tantric concepts of multiple bodies and energy bodies. The mental body is a universal paradigm in experiential spiritualities, including Buddhism, and seems to have its origin in shamanism. The Pali Canon says that this body can separate from the physical body in the fourth meditative attainment; this body can travel anywhere, including to other stars, planets, and worlds, and has the same senses as the physical body but without physicality (i.e., it is virtual). One acquires the “acquired self” in the sense that karma is acquired; thus, it has the connotation of ego or psyche rather than perfect or ideal self.  This “ego-self” is not absolute, but is subject to continuous change in its essence. Therefore, it is malleable. It is the willing self of experience, unlike the vain ontological speculations of the Brahmans.

The Buddha teaches a doctrine for “getting rid of” (the Access to Insight translation has “abandoning”) the “gross acquired self,” thus purifying the mind of defiling mental states. As a result, the purity and perfection of wisdom arise spontaneously, the wisdom beyond wisdom that Walshe translates as “superknowledge.”  The Buddha contrasts this dharma wisdom with the speculative sophistry of the Brahmans, and declares that it is a state of perfect happiness, in contrast to those who think of spiritual states as purely negative and without affect.

Similarly, the Buddha teaches a doctrine for “getting rid of” the mental body and the formless body too, as they are experienced. The Buddha says, “This is the gross acquired self…mind-made acquired self…formless acquired self for the getting rid of which we teach a doctrine.”   Thus, the Buddha implies that he bases his teaching entirely on experience, on what is demonstrable and knowable; one can follow its methods with confidence, knowing that he bases them on sound experiential principles and not theories.

Citta, the son of the elephant trainer, having heard this exchange, wants to know if the three bodies always coexist and if one is fundamental. The Buddha says that only one body is experienced at a time, just as only the now is experienced in time, not the past or the future, which nevertheless exist in some sense. The Buddha says that these terms—gross material acquired self, mind-made acquired self, and formless acquired self—are merely labels, which the Tathagata uses without misconstruing their inherent emptiness.

This, Walshe notes, became the basis of the Buddhist doctrine of two truths, ultimate and conventional. The Tao Te Ching also refers to in the famous first line, “The way that can be told is not the eternal Way. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.”  Walshe’s translation also calls names “expressions, turns of speech, designations in common use in the world, which the Tathagata uses without misapprehending them.”  Alfred Korzybski, the founder of General Semantics, expresses this in the famous aphorism, “the map is not the territory.”  Language inherently distorts reality, and though it communicates a semblance of experience, it cannot duplicate experience itself, which is ineffable in its essence. Thus, the Buddhist project is to access the intuitively immediate prelinguistic experiential consciousness. Being absolutely simple (Laozi’s “uncarved block”) his consciousness is inherently ontologically real and valid.

Potthapada the wanderer becomes a lay follower of the Buddha. Does this mean that he has renounced the wandering life and become a householder? Interestingly, Citta, the son of the elephant trainer, who appears out of nowhere but is clearly metaphysically inclined, asks to join the order and is given the “going forth” and ordained by the Buddha. Citta goes into seclusion and, after a short time, attains arhantship.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 22, 2025

Note

1. The Jhana Sutta describes the summit of perception as “the deathless element … This is peaceful, this is sublime [the summit],  that is, the stilling of all activities, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, nibbana” (Jhana Sutta, in Angutta Nikaya, 9.36).

2. The Pali word abhinna is composed of abhi, ‘over-‘ or ‘super-,’ plus jna in Sanskrit, ‘wisdom’ or ‘knowledge.’ The word is nearly a synonym for psychic powers, but might also refer more broadly to transcendent knowledge or realization, an association which, as I discussed in the last talk, Buddhism appears to have introduced to Indian civilization.