Presented to the members of the Buddha Center on Sunday, December 6, 2015.
The Discourse to Ratthapala
Majjhima Nikaya 82
Date of composition: 3rd to 2nd cent. BCE
The Buddha is wandering with his entourage in Kuru, in the northwest area of the sixteen great states, descended from the quasi-mystical land of Uttarakuru, when he arrives at the town of Thullakotthita.
Ratthapala, a young man, of the dominant clan, the only son of a wealthy family, has decided to become a monastic, so he vis-its the Buddha with a group of Brahman householders. After the Buddha gives a talk on the teaching, he stays behind and asks for ordination.
The Buddha asks Ratthapala if he has his parents’ permission to join the order. Suddhodana, the Buddha’s father, had asked the Buddha to institute this rule shortly after the Buddha’s enlightenment. However, Ratthapala’s parents do not consent, as he is their only son and they fear that, since they raised him in privilege, he would not be able to adjust to the life of a renunciate.
Ratthapala is so distraught that he collapses on the floor and declares that he will die there rather than not join the order. His parents call on Ratthapala’s friends to encourage him to get up and enjoy the householder life, including making merit as an alternative to the holy life. The Thai edition of the Pali Canon states that Ratthapala fasted for seven days (otherwise the discourse simply states that Ratthapala is weak when he finally gets up). However, Ratthapala cannot be prevailed upon, so his friends encourage his parents to allow him to ordain with the argument that they can still see him from time to time and, if he does not like the monastic life, he can go back. Therefore, his parents relent on the condition that he visit them from time to time.
Ratthapala goes to the Buddha and informs him that he now has his parents’ permission. The Buddha gives him full ordination. Later the Buddha declares Ratthapala to be the foremost of those gone forth in faith.
Subsequently, the Buddha wanders on to Savatthi (Shravasti), the capital of Kosala, where he stays in Jeta’s Grove in Anathapindika’s Park. Meanwhile Ratthapala works on himself in seclusion and attains arhantship. Bodhi notes that, whereas the text says that this occurred “before long,” the commentary states, somewhat surprisingly, that it took twelve years, whereupon he resolves to visit his parents as agreed. The Buddha gives his permission, Ratthapala returns to Thullakotthita, staying in King Moravya’s Migacira Garden. Going on alms round, he comes to his father’s house.
However, he is not welcome at his father’s house, since his father blames the order for the loss of his son. The Buddha is not popular everywhere or with everyone. It is not clear whether this abuse is at the hands of his father, who, the text points out, only sees him “in the distance,” while he is having his hair done in “the hall of the central door,” but when Ratthapala asks a slave woman for some porridge that she is about to throw out, she recognizes him. She tells this to Ratthapala’s mother, who frees her out of gratitude, and tells Ratthapala’s father. Meanwhile, Ratthapala is eating the porridge beside a shelter, showing that monastics also wandered solitary and took the alms for themselves, and even asked for alms. Ratthapala’s father goes to him. He seems to have no problem recognizing him but is overcome by emotion and invites him to eat the porridge in his own house. Ratthapala, however, refuses, declaring that he has eaten for the day, but he agrees to come the next morning for his daily meal.
Ratthapala’s father then hatches a plan to seduce his son back to the household life and calls upon Ratthapala’s wives to put on their finery. He also piles up a large sum of money. Finally, he prepares a meal of tasty food of various kinds. Next morning, he calls upon Ratthapala to come. When Ratthapala comes, his father offers him the gold—his inheritance—and entreats him to return to the home life. Ratthapala, however, advises his father to dump the gold in the Ganges since it will bring him nothing but trouble.
His wives then ask Ratthapala what the nymphs are like for whose sake the monastics lead the life of renunciation. This is a theme that comes up elsewhere in the Pali Canon, where the Buddha lures his stepbrother, Nanda, into the monastic life with the promise that he will encounter nymphs more beautiful than any woman, but Ratthapala tells them that this is not the goal of the Buddha’s monastics. Ratthapala refers to his wives as “sisters,” and they faint away from shock or surprise. Ratthapala becomes impatient and asks his father to stop harassing him but to give him the food. His father serves him with his own hands. After eating, Ratthapala spontaneously composes and recites a poem in which he compares his wives to puppets, describing their bodies as sick, filthy, covered with sores, and skeletons in fancy dress. He concludes:
The deer-hunter set out the snare
But the deer did not spring the trap;
We ate the bait and now depart
Leaving the hunters to lament.
Ratthapala returns to King Koravya’s Magacira garden to spend the day in meditation at the foot of a tree, where the King’s gamekeeper sees him and tells the king. The king goes to pay his respects, along with his most eminent officials. He brings an elephant rug for Ratthapala to sit on, but he disdains to do so.
The king observes that there are four reasons why many people undertake the monastic life, including ageing, sickness, poverty, and loss of family, but Ratthapala has not experienced any of these. Therefore, the king asks Ratthapala why he undertook the monastic life. Ratthapala’s response is a fourfold summary of the teaching of transience or craving:
- “Life in any world is unstable, it is swept away.”
- “Life in any world has no shelter and no protector.”
- “Life in any world has nothing of its own; one has to leave all and pass on.”
- “Life in any world is incomplete, insatiate, the slave of craving.”
Note Ratthapala’s rejection of “life in any world.” The goal of Buddhism is not rebirth in a higher world or a mythical heaven, but rather the transcendence of the entire world system altogether.
The first principle relates to the doctrine of transience or change, one of the three characteristics of the world. The second principle refers to the absence of any redemptive principle, whether a God or otherwise. Rather, one’s karma is one’s own and one must bear it by oneself alone. The third principle refers to the ubiquity of death, which is just another aspect of transience. At death, one abandons everything. There is no continuity of property or possessions. The fourth principle refers to craving, which means that one is never satisfied and always seeking more than one has, in a vicious round (since everything is impermanent) that leads to unhappiness.
Ratthapala reasserts the primacy of wisdom as the essential salvific principle:
Better is wisdom here than any wealth,
Since by wisdom one gains the final goal.
Finally, he reiterates that moral causality follows one from life to life, perpetuating suffering.
Dharmata 