TALK PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2015 AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2024 (REVISED).

The Discourse on the Great Sudassana

Digha Nikaya 17

Country: Malla  

Locale: Kusinara

Speakers: Ananda, the Buddha

Date of Composition: late 4th to early 3rd cent. BCE 

This discourse takes place at Kusinara shortly before the Buddha’s passing, which is perhaps why it follows the Mahaparinibbana Sutta. The discourse is an expansion of the conversation referred to between Ananda and the Buddha in which Ananda entreats the Buddha not to allow himself to die “in this miserable little town of wattle and daub, right in the jungle in the back of beyond.”  To refute Ananda’s description of the town, the Buddha tells the story of King Mahasudassana, whose name means ‘Great King of Glory.’ This story also occurs in the Jatakas. Under the name of Kusavati, Kusinara was the capital of the king’s realm. The Buddha compares it to a divine city, Alakamanda.

One lunar holiday—we do not know the month—the king is fasting on the roof of his palace when he has what we can only describe today as a close encounter with a UFO. It appears to him as the disk of the sun, thousand-spoked, complete with rim, hub, and all appurtenances, not unlike the famous Miracle of the Sun at Fatima (1917). In other words, he experiences a celestial solar wheel similar in appearance to the wheels of Ezekiel plunging in and out of the sea.  According to the account, the wheel shows the king where he should expand his territory, which he did with great success. The countries that the king “invades” surrender willingly, and the king establishes a pacific society based on the principles of the teaching.  Once the king’s new dharma kingdom is established, the UFO hovers over the king’s palace. Clearly, the UFO is associated with the power of the truth of the teaching.

It does not matter whether this story is a fabrication or not. The point is that at this remote place and time we find exactly the same archetype that we find repeated all through human history, in all times and climes, and that is still being propagated today as the story that we call “the UFO/UAP phenomenon.” Other civilizations may have seen it differently or given it different names, but the phenomenology is clear, by whatever name one chooses to call it.

The discourse gives the familiar list of five precepts—do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, and do not drink strong drink, together with a sixth, “be moderate in eating.” Walshe admits that the meaning is uncertain, but it seems to be the secular equivalent of the monastic vow to eat only in the morning.

After establishing his kingdom, the king receives a succession of six treasures. These symbolize the characteristics of the ideal king:

1. The Elephant Treasure (a.k.a. Precious Elephant): mental strength, noble gentleness, and calm majesty. The name of the Precious Elephant is Uposatha, the Indian lunar holiday symbolically associated with soma, probably a psychedelic
2. The Horse Treasure (a.k.a. Precious Horse): transcendence of worldly existence, Valahaka (‘Thunder Cloud’) by name. This horse has the head of a crow.
3. The Jewel Treasure (a.k.a. Precious Jewel): omniscience (the jewel is like a crystal ball in which one sees everything, which also appears in the symbology of Dzogchen). The jewel is a beryl, literally ‘precious blue-green colour of sea water stone,’ cut into eight facets. In Sanskrit, it is Vaidurya, ‘brought from Vidura.’ Vidura is also a character in the Mahabharata, renowned as a paragon of truth, dutifulness, impartiality, and steadfastness. The Sanskrit name originally referred to lapis lazuli, a deep blue semi-precious stone.
4. The Woman Treasure (a.k.a. Precious Queen): radiating, piercing joy, characterized by a more than human, divine-like beauty.
5. The Householder Treasure (a.k.a. Precious Counsellor): the power to provide wealth and strength of will.
6. The Counsellor Treasure (a.k.a. Precious General): the power to overcome enemies.

We already identified the Precious Wheel with the teaching.

Described in minute detail suggestive of visionary phenomena, these “treasures” are “the Seven Jewels of Royal Power.” One also finds them in the mandala offering ritual, in which one offers the entire universe to the buddhas.  Mandala offering is the fourth inner preliminary of ngondro, the introductory Tibetan Buddhist practices, which purifies attachment (and thus represents the attainment of dispassion). This shows the close tie between Tibetan ritual and the Pali Canon. By analogy, the treasures also represent the qualities of the spiritual aspirant.

The king also enjoys the Four Attainments: personal beauty, longevity, health, and reputation. The king beautifies his city with lotus ponds, and builds public baths, food banks, plumbing, clothing dispensaries, public transportation, hostels, even places where one can find a wife or obtain money (the very opposite of brothels and banks). The aristocrats are so satisfied with the king’s rule that they want to build him a palace, but Sakra (Pali Sakka), the ruler of the gods, steps in and has his personal architect, Vissakamma, build him a fabulous palace. This is the Palace of the Teaching, described with the same attention as the precious treasures. These surreal, highly detailed, symbolic, and aesthetic descriptions suggest the paradises in Pure Land Buddhism or the mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism. Walshe suggests that the description influenced the description of Sukhavati, the Western Land of Bliss, in Pure Land Buddhism.

These vivid architectonic descriptions also suggest the psycho-ontological allegories of Padmasambhava.  The king then makes a Dharma Lake to complement the Dharma Palace.

It is clear that the Buddha, living in a time of terrible corruption and violence, was seeking not only to instigate a spiritual or a cultural reformation, but a political one as well.

Establishing himself in the Palace of the Teaching, King Mahasudassana ruminates on the chain of cause and effect that brought him to this place, and he identifies three kinds of causality that are responsible:

• The cause of giving, which returns to him as wealth;
• The cause of self-control, which returns to him as political power; and
• The cause of abstinence, which returns to him as great opportunity.

Entering the great gabled chamber, the king declares, “May the thoughts of lust, ill will, and cruelty cease,” rather like a mantra or an affirmation (or an Act of Truth). Seated cross-legged on the golden couch, he bans all sense desires and unwholesome thoughts from his mind, and immediately enters the first meditative attainment; he rapidly progresses through the second through fourth meditative attainments. He then leaves the great gabled chamber, enters the golden gabled chamber, and sits down on the silver couch, where he practises loving-kindness meditation, pervading the four quarters with love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (called the ‘Four Divine Abidings’).

We can infer several things from this description. First, the significance of the vow (Power of Truth). Second, the cross-legged posture, the posture of meditation that goes back at least to the Indus Valley civilization (c 2500 BCE). Third, the cultivation of dispassion, the key to the realization of the meditative attainments. Fourth, that a king or a householder can engage in these practices with success. Fifth, the relationship between the meditative attainments and loving-kindness meditation.

A notable detail is that the king attains the fourth meditative attainment, practises loving-kindness, and is reborn in the Brahma world. However, the fourth meditative attainment is the attainment of an arhant who should be reborn in one of the Five Pure Abodes at least. To me this description is a prefiguring of the path of the bodhisattva, who, having attained the meditative attainments, chooses to pursue loving-kindness rather than final emancipation, thus ensuring his rebirth for an indefinite period. Elsewhere the Buddha specifically states that he has not been born in any of the Five Pure Abodes because that would preclude any human rebirth in the future, further distinguishing the nature of his attainment from that of an arhant.

The story of King Mahasudassana takes place when humanity exists in a higher state. The king meditates in the great gabled chamber for a long time until Queen Subhadda, thinking that she had not seen him for many years, comes to the palace with her retinue. The king moves his golden couch outside the great gabled chamber (presumably, so that a woman would not defile the sacred space) and lies down in the doorway on his right side, mindful and clearly aware, like the Buddha at his passing. This posture is also a physical posture having spiritual symbolic significance.

The Queen notices the clarity and brightness of the King’s complexion, and fears he might be dead. The Queen entreats the king to live, reminding him of his worldly possessions and responsibilities, but the king rebuffs her, saying, “All things that are pleasing and attractive are liable to change, to vanish, to become otherwise. … To die filled with longing is painful and blameworthy.”  Shortly thereafter the king dies. The discourse points out that “he felt the sensation of passing away,”  and is reborn in the Brahma world.

The Buddha then reveals to Ananda that he, Gotama, is in fact King Mahasudassana from a former life:

Six times, Ananda, I recall discarding the body in this place, and at the seventh time I discarded it as a wheel-turning king, a righteous king who had conquered the four quarters and established a firm rule, and who possessed the seven treasures. But, Ananda, I do not see any place in this world with its devas and maras [demonic beings] and brahmas, or in this generation with its ascetics and Brahmins, princes and people, where the Tathagata will for an eighth time discard the body. (2.17)

This passage attests both to the Buddha’s recollection of past lives and to the transcendent nature of a tathagata.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 30, 2024.

Notes

1. A significant difference between the conception of the bodhisattva in the Pali Canon compared with the Mahayana tradition is that in the Pali Canon the bodhisattva is represented as a being striving for Buddhahood, which is achieved, albeit after a period of hundreds or thousands of rebirths (the Jatakas include 547 such stories, dating from the 4th century BCE, and are regarded as canonical by some early Buddhist sects), culminating in the attainment of Tathagatahood and the cessation of rebirth, whereas in the Mahayana the bodhisattva vows not to attain Buddhahood till all beings in samsara have attained emancipation (essentially forever). The former is called the king-like bodhisattva, the latter the shepherd-like bodhisattva. A third category is the boatman-like bodhisattva, who vows to attain Buddhahood along with all other sentient beings.

2. Elsewhere human beings are stated to live between 10 and 84,000 years, comparable to the longevity of the devas of the world of the Four Great Kings in the Vibhajyavada tradition.

Bibliography

“A View on Buddhism: General Buddhist Symbols.” http://viewonbuddhism.org/general_symbols_buddhism.html.