The Great Discourse to Sakuludayi

Majjhima Nikaya 77

Date of Composition: 380-250 BCE

The location of this discourse is the Squirrel’s Sanctuary in the Bamboo Grove, located in or near Rajagaha (modern Rajgir) in Magadha. The Buddha is frequently portrayed in the Pali discourses as an early bird, waking up too early to go on alms round, as is the case here. Therefore, he goes to the Peacocks’ Sanctuary. Here some well-known wanderers are staying, including Sakuludayin. The Buddha addresses Sakuludayin as Udayin. Here we encounter another familiar motif of the wanderer surrounded by a noisy group of wanderers, discussing and debating with each other in the early morning hours (cf. MN 76). This must have been a common occurrence in northeast India in the fifth century BCE;  the Tibetan monastic schools seem to have imitated this, where they used formal debates as a training technique. At the Buddha’s approach, Udayin shushes the crowd of wanderers.

Udayin welcomes the Buddha, and deferentially sits beside him on a low stool, whereupon the Buddha asks about the topic of discussion he has interrupted. Deferring the Buddha’s question, Udayin asks a question of his own. We have seen this familiar trope in other discourses too.

Udayin tells the Buddha that they are discussing the leaders of the sects of the time, including Purana Kassapa, Makkhali Gosala, Ajita Kesakambali, Pakudha Kaccayana, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, Nigantha Nataputta (Mahavira), and Gotama himself, asking who is honoured, respected, revered, and venerated by his disciples? How many live in dependence on him? On the contrary, all of these sects are notorious for dissension, except for that of Gotama.

We recognize in these names the major sectarian philosophies of the Buddha’s time: amoralism, fatalism, materialism, eternalism, agnosticism, asceticism (Jainism), and Buddhism, respectively.

The Buddha then asks Udayin to name five qualities for which he honours and reveres the Buddha. The Buddha clearly enjoys setting these sorts of didactic traps, in which he undermines his interlocutor’s assumptions by asking seemingly innocuous but probing questions. Udayin names:

1. Moderate eating;
2. Indifference as to clothing;
3. Indifference as to food;
4. Indifference as to abode; and
5. Seclusion.

All of these are essentially ethical precepts. However, the Buddha says that they are all untrue and gives examples to prove it. Thus, the Buddha says that sometimes he overeats; he wears fine robes; he accepts invitations to eat fine foods; he lives in gabled mansions; and he is surrounded by an entourage, both monastic and sectarian, both male and female. In other words, the Buddha does not lead an ascetic lifestyle! He freely admits in this passage that there are many monastics that live more ascetic lives than he does. Remember the Buddha’s derisive dismissal of the ethical precepts and practices in the Brahmajala Sutta, the first discourse of the Sutta Pitaka. Rather, the Buddha says, than honouring and respecting him for such qualities, Udayin should praise him for the higher virtues, knowledge and vision, the higher wisdom, the Four Noble Truths, and the Way to Develop Wholesome States. The difference between these qualities and the former ones is clear. The five qualities that Udayin praises are clearly external, superficial, rote observances of the same sort that the Buddha criticizes in other discourses. The qualities for which one should truly praise him, on the contrary, are internal, profound, and mindful. Similarly, elsewhere the Buddha states that the Three Higher Trainings supersede the Vinaya! In addition, in the Brahmajala Sutta the Buddha says that one should praise the Tathagata for his wisdom, not for his morality.

Thus, the Buddha declares that he possesses the supreme aggregates of virtue and wisdom; direct knowledge, or gnosis; the truths concerning suffering or angst; and the way to develop wholesome states, consisting of awareness; striving; spiritual power; transcendence; the meditative objects; the spiritual faculties; the powers; the factors of enlightenment; the path; the liberations; the meditative attainments; insight; the mental body; psychic powers; memory of past lives; and the destruction of the taints, the latter synonymous with emancipation. These nineteen components of the Way to Develop Wholesome States constitute a classification of the Buddhist path, more extensive than the Noble Eightfold Path, wherein the Noble Eightfold Path is merely one part. Each of the nineteen components seems to be independently able to lead to consummate and perfect gnosis, since each one ends with a repetition of the statement that “thereby many disciples of mine abide having reached the consummation and perfection of direct knowledge.”  At the same time, the sequence presents a kind of development leading to emancipation. We have encountered most of the components of this way to develop wholesome states in previous discourses, especially the Four Foundations of Awareness, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Meditative Attainments, the memory of past lives, and the destruction of the taints. However, here I would like to discuss the Ten Meditative Objects.

The Pali Canon just glosses the teaching. This is especially true of the practices or exercises, which are often merely alluded to. The Ten Meditative Objects are like this. The Buddha simply refers to contemplating the earth, water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, space, and consciousness as meditative objects, which one contemplates “above, below and across, the undivided and the immeasurable,”  like loving kindness.

The meditative objects represent ten cosmic elements (kasinas) of being—four elements, four colours, space, consciousness; above, below, undivided, and immeasurable. By contemplating progressively more elemental and subtle states of being, the “vibration” or “frequency,” for lack of a better word, of the state of one’s consciousness adjusts to that level. Thus, one can induce progressively subtle levels of meditation by means of meditating on the meditative objects, which also develops the mental power of concentration or will. Like the Four Roads to Power, which appear in this list as the Four Bases of Spiritual Power, consisting of zeal, energy, mind, and investigation, the meditation on the meditative objects has a tantric flavour inasmuch as it emphasizes visualization and concentration much like some, admittedly more complex, later tantric practices associated with mandalas. The meditative objects are like the elements (tattvas) of the Hindu tantric tradition, which also entered the Western esoteric tradition through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Thus, it regarded with some suspicion as “edgy” or potentially dangerous, even though the Buddha clearly recommended it.

The Visuddhimagga  describes the system of meditation on the meditative objects, written by Buddhaghosa about eight hundred years after the Buddha’s passing on. All that the discourse says is that “one contemplates the…kasina above, below and across, undivided and immeasurable. And thereby many disciples of mine abide having reached the perfection and consummation of direct knowledge.”  The method as taught today in the Theravada tradition involves focusing the attention on a representation of the element, such as a clay disk for earth. Over time, one develops an eidetic image in the mind, which then becomes the object of concentration. This is like how an unnamed monastic visited the divine realms in discourse 11 of the Digha Nikaya. This requires great mental concentration as well as involving the visualization faculty of the brain, which we now know stimulates the latent right hemisphere, associated with “oceanic” and mystical experiences. We know that the brain processes images very differently from verbal or textual information, and that images encode information much more efficiently than text, which is why symbols are psychologically powerful. This is how ancient and medieval memory systems worked, called the method of “loci of memory” or the “mind palace.”  Visualization is a core tantric technique too.

The 19 Ways to Develop Wholesome States

1. Four Foundations of Awareness: body, feelings, mind, mind-objects. Discussed in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (DN 22).
2. The Four Right Kinds of Striving: non-arising of unarisen evil states, abandoning of arisen evil states, arising of unarisen wholesome states, continuance of arisen wholesome states.
3. Four Bases for Spiritual Power: zeal, energy, purity of mind, investigation. These are identical with the Four Roads to Power that appear in several discourses in the Digha Nikaya.
4. The Five Faculties or Powers: faith, energy, awareness, concentration, wisdom.
5. The Five Powers: same
6. The Seven Enlightenment Factors: awareness, investigation of states, energy, rapture, tranquility, concentration, equanimity.
7. The Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration.
8. The Eight Liberations: (1) Possessed of material form, one sees forms; (2) Not perceiving forms internally, one sees forms externally; (3) One is resolved only upon the beautiful; (4) Space is infinite; (5) Consciousness is infinite; (6) There is nothing; (7) Neither perception nor non-perception; (8) Cessation of perception and feeling. Note the similarity of the Eight Liberations to the Eight Meditative Attainments.
9. The Eight Bases for Transcendence: (1) Perceiving form internally, one sees forms externally, limited; (2) Perceiving form internally, one sees forms externally, immeasurable; (3) Not perceiving forms internally, one sees forms externally, limited; (4) Not perceiving forms internally, one sees forms externally, immeasurable; (5) Not perceiving forms internally, one sees forms externally, blue; (6) Not perceiving forms internally, one sees forms externally, yellow; (7) … red; (8) … white. Note the similarity of the reference to blue, yellow, red, and white corresponding to the fifth through the eighth meditative objects that follow.
10. The Ten Meditative Objects: earth, water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, space, consciousness. Compare the Hindu tattvas—spirit, air, fire, water, earth, represented by a black oval, a blue circle, a red triangle, a white moon, and a yellow square, respectively.
11. The Four Meditative Attainments: seclusion, concentration, rapture, pure bright mind. Note the similarity of the typification of the fourth meditative attainment as “pure bright mind” to the ‘Buddha nature’ or ‘clear light’ doctrines. One does not find this association of the fourth meditative attainment with pure bright mind in the Digha Nikaya, where the fourth meditative attainment is simply associated with equanimity and awareness.
12. Insight Knowledge: The meaning is that blue, yellow, red, and white threads, like the colours of the meditative objects, represent the four great elements. The body, made up out of the same four elements, is like the threads, on which a beautiful eight-faceted beryl gem of purest water, well cut, clear and limpid, possessed of all good, is strung, representing consciousness. Thus, the body supports consciousness, with which it is bound up, without being identical with it. Similarly, in his statement on his reincarnation, the Dalai Lama says that “things are preceded by things of a similar type.” Thus, mental and material causes result in effects of the same kind. Material causes produce physical effects and mental causes create psychological effects. The body may obstruct the manifestation of consciousness, but the body, unconscious and inanimate, cannot be its cause. Therefore, consciousness and body are distinct but commingled.
13. The Mind-Made Body: Similarly, the psychosomatic complex generates the mental body, like pulling a reed from its sheath, a sword from its scabbard, or a snake from its slough. We know from other discourses that the way to create the mental body to which the Buddha alludes involves the attainment of the fourth meditative attainment.
14. The Kinds of Supernormal Power: Self-multiplication, invisibility, passing through matter, levitation. We have encountered these before, of course, where I have noted the similarity of these powers to powers exhibited in three contexts that are known to us: dreaming, psychedelic experience, and the UFO experience, which is related to paranormal experiences in general. Although rare, these are experienced.
15. The Divine Ear Element: This is commonly termed clairaudience, and includes hearing both divine and human sounds, both far and near.
16. Understanding the Minds of Others: The description does not rise to the level of telepathy, since only broad mental states are intuited, but it comes close, including the ability to recognize minds that are liberated and not liberated. This is also a power of a buddha.
17. The Memory of Past Lives: Note the cosmological reference to ages of world-contraction and expansion. The memory of past lives is paradoxical. Since the world has no beginning, one’s past lives should be infinite, but since memory is finite, how can one remember all one’s past lives? Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence comes to mind.
18. The Divine Eye: The Divine Eye confers the capacity to discern the karmic patterns of cause and effect including the state of other individuals’ rebirths.
19. The Destruction of the Taints: Note that the Mahasakuludayi Sutta represents the destruction of the taints, in which mind becomes like a clear, limpid, and undisturbed lake, as a way rather than as the goal or result of the way, likely corresponding to a mode of meditation. According to the postscript, Udayin is satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One’s words, but there is no indication of conversion.

Bibliography

Dalai Lama. “Reincarnation.” http://www.dalailama.com/messages/statement-of-his-holiness-the-fourteenth-dalai-lama-tenzin-gyatso-on-the-issue-of-his-reincarnation.

Michael Shermer. “The Drake Equation.” Scientific American. http://www.michaelshermer.com/tag/drake-equation/.

“Scientific Study of the UFO Phenomenon.” http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/publicopinionpolls.htm.