TALK PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2015 AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2024 AND SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2024 (REVISED)

The Discourse to Subha

Digha Nikaya 10

Country: Kosala

Locale: Anathapindika park in Savatthi

Speakers: Ananda, Subha

Date of composition: 400-250 BCE

The location of this discourse is the same as the previous discourse: Jeta’s Grove in Anathapindika Park in Savatthi, except that instead of the Buddha, Ananda is speaking and the Buddha is deceased. At the same time, Subha, the young son of the Brahman Todeyya, is also in Savatthi on some business.  Learning that Ananda is nearby, he sends his servant to invite Ananda to come to his house. However, Ananda demurs due to sickness and suggests that he come the next day. Early the next morning, Ananda goes to Subha’s home, accompanied by the venerable monastic Cetaka, for their morning meal.

Subha would like Ananda to tell him which things the Buddha praised and dispraised during his life. Ananda says that the Buddha praised the Threefold Division of the Noble Eightfold Path: Morality, Concentration, and Wisdom, reiterating, however, discourse 1, where the Buddha says that the practice of morality alone is inadequate. Ananda’s statement makes the Threefold Division a kind of summative doctrine of the teaching, which explains its subsequent popularity.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 22, 2025

The Discourse to Kevaddha

Digha Nikaya 11

Country: Magadha

Locale: Pavarika’s mango grove in Nalanda

Speakers: Kevaddha, the Buddha

Date of composition: 400-250 BCE

The location of this discourse is Pavarika’s mango grove, in Nalanda, which almost a thousand years later would become the site of the first Buddhist university. Nalanda is rich, populous, prosperous, and strongly Buddhist. The householder Kevaddha, possibly a fisher, suggests that since the Buddha has so much support in the town already, if a monastic performed some superhuman feat or miracle, that would increase the town’s faith in the Buddha even more. The Buddha rather sharply informs Kevaddha that this is not how he trains the monastics of the Buddhist order. When Kevaddha presses the Buddha, the Buddha says that there are three kinds of miracle:

• “Psychic” powers;
• Telepathy; and
• Instruction.

The distinction made here between psychic powers and telepathy seems to be between powers experienced, somewhat paradoxically, in the body (e.g., self-replication, invisibility, passing through solid objects, etc.), and the mind (i.e., telepathy). Finally, the text compares and contrasts the “miracle of instruction” with these.

The Buddha says that he “dislikes and despises” miracles, such as psychic powers and telepathy, not because they do not exist, but because those who see such a display of power may simply think that they are the result of some kind of personal power or some technical or magical procedure, rather than crediting the teaching that is the real cause of these things. Thus, they may go toward sorcery rather than salvation. In the West, we might call this “occultism.”

Against these, the Buddha posits the miracle of instruction or teaching. Why is “teaching” a miracle? The Buddha refers specifically to the Power of Truth. This doctrine pervades the Pali Canon, especially in the Jataka tales, where truth itself, especially the truth of the teaching, the pre-eminent truth of reality, is intrinsically efficacious (the so-called Act of Truth). In other discourses, the Buddha says that the teaching and things related to the teaching are supremely efficacious. The Buddha makes it clear that we are discussing a philosophy: “Consider in this way, don’t consider in that; direct your mind this way, not that way, give up that, gain this and persevere in it.”  In addition to philosophy, the Buddha refers to practices of renunciation and cultivation and refers to the significance of perseverance. Thus, one may speak of practice as involving a kind of ‘energy.’

Moreover, Buddhist philosophy requires action and leads to the highest goal. Buddhism is, pre-eminently, a philosophy of action (i.e., practice). As we have seen before, one accomplishes this by the attainment of the unity of morality, meditation, and wisdom, because of which one attains cessation. This is the supreme ontological attainment, the supreme “psychic power.” Although the Buddha says he rejects them, he also says that he has mastered psychic powers and telepathy in addition to the third miracle of instruction. Here the Buddha appears in the guise of a tantric guru. We have seen how the Buddha teaches that spiritual realization leads to psychic powers as well, possibly the first Indian to make this association. There may also be other ways of looking at these, which we will discuss in later discourses.

Kevaddha’s request to the Buddha to prove himself by means of psychic powers is impertinent. The Buddha tells him the story of another impertinent monastic. This monastic, who is not named, meditated or concentrated on the question, “I wonder where the four great elements—the earth element, the water element, the fire element, the air element—cease without remainder.”  Today we would call this insight, discernment, or clear seeing, but in this context it is almost a kind of divination.

So intense is the monastic’s concentration that a vortex opens before him, leading to the transcendent divine worlds. In the Western esoteric tradition this is called “rising on the planes.” Thus, he travels vertically through the divine worlds, including the worlds of the Four Great Kings, the Thirty-Three Gods, the Yamas, Tusita, the Nimmanarati, the Paranimmita-Vasavatti, and the brahma devas governed by the Great Brahma. This list recapitulates the higher divine worlds, planes, realms, or divisions above the human world in the realm of desire and the lowest world of the form realm above the desire realm, consisting of guardian devas, Indra’s court, retributive spirits, the bodhisattva realm, manifesting spirits, illusory devas, and transcendent beings respectively. He speaks to the inhabitants and the rulers of these realms, none of whom know the answer.

To the theist, Indian or Abrahamic—and we must remember that Hinduism is theistic—the Buddhist view of God seems sacrilegious and, it seems, deliberately so, similar to the Gnostic demiurge, whether or not Gnosticism is influenced by Buddhist ideas, as suggested by Edward Conze and Elaine Pagels.  One cannot escape the note of irony and humour in the Buddha’s story, which need not imply that the Buddha does not believe in the vertical planes or dimensions of reality or even in the divine beings themselves. Great Brahma is unpredictable—“we do not know when, how, and where Brahma will appear. However, when one sees the signs—when a light appears and radiance shines forth—then Brahma will appear. Such signs are an indication that he will appear.”

We noted the literal meaning of devas as ‘shining ones.’ The text does not identify Brahma himself with the radiant light. Rather, the radiant light is a prelude to the appearance of Brahma, who is invisible, unknown, and unpredictable. After a short time, Brahma appears and the monastic asks him, “Friend, where do the Four Great Elements—earth, water, fire, air—cease without remainder?” The Great Brahma replies, “I am Brahma, Great Brahma, the Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All-seeing, All-Powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Ruler, Appointer and Orderer, Father of All That Have Been and Shall Be.”

However, Great Brahma is not answering the question! The monastic points this out. Great Brahma merely repeats, parrot-like, his declaration: “I am Brahma,” etc.  After one more try by the monastic, Brahma takes the monastic aside: “Monk, these devas believe there is nothing Brahma does not see, there is nothing he does not know, there is nothing he is unaware of. That is why I did not speak in front of them. But, monk, I don’t know where the four great elements cease without remainder.”

Great Brahma is like the Wizard of Oz! He does not know where the four great elements cease without remainder. God is not omniscient. The back story to God’s ignorance is told in another discourse, which we will defer until then.

Great Brahma then reprimands the monastic for going behind the Buddha’s back: “you have acted incorrectly by going beyond the Blessed Lord, and going in search of an answer to this question elsewhere. Now, monk, you just go to the Blessed Lord, and put this question to him, and whatever answer he gives, accept it.”  So stepping into the vortex once again, the monastic appears before the Buddha and asks him the question.

The Buddha compares the monastic to a land-sighting bird. A land-sighting bird, like Noah’s dove, returns to the ship if it does not find land. Similarly, the monastic returns to the Buddha in search of an answer to their question. It seems that the redactors inserted another story into the discourse, and in the process, they omitted the first part of the story—when the monastic was first with the Buddha—implied but never told. Perhaps the Buddha is refusing to answer the monastic’s question, which, the Buddha says, he puts wrongly.

It is not that the four great elements cease, but that they find no footing. The Buddha frames this as a “place” where duality is destroyed. The Buddha’s reply sounds almost like the riddle of the sphinx:

Where do earth, water, fire, and air no footing find?
Where are long and short, small and great, fair and foul—
Where are ‘name and form’ wholly destroyed? (85)

The binary unity of name and form, the psychosomatic complex (subject and object), sometimes translated “mind and matter,” itself dual and transdual, refers to the Five Complexes as well as the links of the chain of cause and effect.

Therefore, the realization of the transdual destroys name and form. The four great elements, which arise out of the interdependent unity of name and form, are sensory-cognitive modes and, as such, essentially dual in character, as is reason itself. The cessation of the four great elements suggests a physical place, whereas the Buddha’s answer pertains to mind, specifically, the transcendence of dualistic rational sense-bound consciousness. Therefore, the answer is “in the mind,” but even this is false if one objectifies the mind, for the mind is not an “object.” The mind, properly understood, is the precondition of all objectification:

Where consciousness is signless (anidassinam), boundless, all-luminous (pabham),
That’s where earth, fire, water and air find no footing,
There both long and short, small and great, fair and foul—
There ‘name and form’ are wholly destroyed.
With the cessation of consciousness, this is all destroyed. (ibid)

The Buddha’s reference to “both long and short, small and great, fair and foul” reminds one of chapter 2 of Laozi’s Tao Te Ching:

being and non-being give rise to one another;
difficult and easy define one another;
long and short shape each other;
high and low create perspective;
tone and sound harmonize through contrast;
before and after follow each other. (2)

Trans-dual consciousness has three qualities:

• Signlessness;
• Boundlessness; and
• All-luminosity (abandonment?)

The first quality refers to the invisible or the unseen. All-luminosity is Pali pabham. Pabham means ‘radiant.’ Walshe gives an alternative form of this word that presumably appears in some editions of the Pali Canon: paham. Paham is obscure and may mean the steps leading down into the cleansing water (of emancipation) or even ‘abandonment.’ Although Buddhaghosa favours the latter interpretation, Walshe prefers the former.

Kevaddha delights and rejoices in these words of the Buddha, his answer found, his riddle solved.

Pali Name of Realm	English Translation	Name of Ruler(s)
The Form Realm (Rupaloka)
Brahma-Parisajja	Retinue of Brahma	Brahma[a]
The Sensual Realm (Kamaloka)
Paranimmita-Vasavatti	Devas Wielding Power Over Others’ Creations	Vasavatti
Nimmanarati	Devas Delighting in Creation	Sunimmita
Tusita	Contented	Santusita
Yama	Blissful	Suyama
Tavatimsa	Thirty-Three Gods	Sakka[b]
Catumaharajika	Four Great Kings	Four Great Kings[c]

a. Brahma is more of a title than a name. Several Brahmas are referred to in the Pali Canon, including Baka; Sahampati, who convinced the Buddha to teach the dharma; and Sanatkumara, of Theosophical fame.
b. Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Varuna, Daksa, Amsa, Tvastr, Pusan, Vivasvat, Savitr, Indra, Vishu (12 “personified deities” or adityas); Ananda, Vijnana, Manas, Prana, Vac, Isana, Tatpurusa, Aghora, Vamadeva, Sadyojata, Atma (11 forms and followers of the god Rudra-Shiva, consisting of five abstractions, five names of Siva, and the Atma or ‘self’);   Prithivi, Agni, Antariksa, Jal, Vayu, Dyaus, Surya, Naksatra, Soma (eight deities of material elements, or Vasus); Indra, Prajapati (two solar deities). These are also not named in the sutta.
c. The names of the Four Great Kings, not given in this sutta,are Vaisravana, “he who hears everything”; Virudhaka, “he who causes to grow”; Dhrtarastra, “he who upholds the realm”; and Virupaksa, “he who sees all.”

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 22, 2025

The Discourse to Lohicca

Digha Nikaya 12

Country: Kosala

Locale: Salavatika

Speakers: Lohicca, Bhesika, the Buddha

Date of Composition: 400-250 BCE

The location of this discourse is Salavatika, where the Buddha stayed during a tour of Kosala, accompanied by a large entourage. The people describe it as a prosperous place, and the Brahman Lohicca runs it, having received the town from King Pasenadi.

Lohicca obsesses over the thought that altruism, as we would term it, is unskilled and an expression of attachment: “for what can one man do for another?” Therefore, whatever good one gains—in the broadest sense of wealth, possessions, property, knowledge, truth, expertise, etc.—in short, everything of value that one can take for oneself—should be kept for oneself, giving nothing to and sharing nothing with others. This ethical philosophy of selfishness (or self-interest) enjoys a certain renascence in “latter-day” capitalism within ideologies such as social Darwinism, capitalism, libertarianism, neo-conservatism, neo-liberalism, and objectivism. However, Lohicca must also harbour some doubts; he seeks the Buddha’s opinion by inviting him to breakfast through his friend, the barber Bhesika. Bhesika tells the Buddha about Lohicca’s “evil thought.” Nevertheless, Lohicca has sufficient reverence for the Buddha to serve him choice foods himself. The discourse informs us that Lohicca sits to one side of the Buddha on a low stool.

The Buddha asks Lohicca if what he has heard is true: that Lohicca has developed such an evil argument. Lohicca admits it. Therefore, the Buddha asks him, “If anyone should say, ‘The Brahman Lohicca resides at Salavatika, and he should enjoy the entire fruits and revenues of Salavatika, not giving anything away to others’—would not anyone who spoke like that be a source of danger to your tenants?” Lohicca agrees that such a person would be dangerous. Thus, the Buddha guides Lohicca through a progression of ideas, beginning with being a source of danger and segueing through not being solicitous of their welfare, a heart full of hatred, wrong view, and rebirth.

Finally, the Buddha declares that wrong view leads to an evil rebirth (nirayam va tiracchanayonim va). Walshe conventionally translates this as “hell or an animal rebirth,” noting, however, that “it is doubtful whether either term originally meant what it was later taken to mean,” referring, I assume, to the objectification of hell (niraya) and animal (tiracchana). Interestingly, “rebirth” is the Pali word yoni.

The first thing to note here generally is that the Buddhist concept of “hell” differs significantly from the Judaic concept. As is often the case, using a Judaeo-Christian English word to translate a Buddhist concept misleads an English reader, given all of the historical connotations that such words imply. We encounter this problem repeatedly in many English translations of the Pali Canon, even including modern ones, though less so today than previously.

Second, as Walshe points out, in the Pali Canon the concept of “hell” appears far less hellish than in later Buddhist iconography (a similar phenomenon occurs in Christianity). For example, in the Angulimala Sutta, a small crowd beating someone equates, perhaps surprisingly, with “many thousands of years” in hell. This relates to other references of the Buddha to the efficacy of the teaching. Nirayan equates to Vedic nirrti, meaning ‘adversity,’ ‘dissolution,’ ‘bottom or lower depths of the earth,’ ‘evil,’ ‘calamity,’ ‘destruction,’ ‘death,’ or ‘the genius of death.’

Tiracchana only means ‘animal’ by implication. Literally, it means ‘not erect.’ Finally, yoni is a word rich in significance in Indian spirituality and refers to the ‘womb.’ Therefore, a better translation of this sentence might be: “Truly, Lohicca, I declare that (this) groundless opinion dooms one to one of two rebirths—to be born in a wretched or a brutish state.” Walshe’s concern for modern sensitivities notwithstanding, it is clear from the Pali Canon that the Buddha sees all of sentience as a universal continuum that includes five or six classes of rebirth; this implies that any one class may be reborn as any other class, either ascending or descending. Thus, “hell-beings” and animals are obviously included. Anyone with a pet will understand this perfectly, and this doctrine provides a logical basis for the ethical prohibition against cruelty to animals, which does not always hold true and which lacks little logical basis otherwise. Providing a logical, which is to say, an ontological, basis for ethics (i.e., the Law of Causality) constitutes one of the great contributions of the Buddha to moral philosophy, as I have mentioned elsewhere.

Incidentally, “hell-beings” serves poorly to describe an inhabitant of the Buddhist purgatories, but what is the English word for an inhabitant of purgatory? Nevertheless, they form a distinct class of being, separate from anti-gods, humans, and ghosts, who suffer intensely as their bad karma ripens. They are reborn in temporary states of enormous suffering and woe, through which they purge themselves of bad karma; when good qualities preponderate, they may be reborn as divine beings or even as people.

The Buddhist hells bear such charming names as “burst blister,” “shivering,” “lamentation,” “chattering teeth,” “black thread,” “crushing,” “great screaming,” and “great heating.” Others sound less threatening, such as “lotus,” “reviving,” and “uninterrupted.” The lotus hell is so cold that it makes the skin turn blue (like a lotus) and crack. The “reviving” hell has ground made of molten iron. Inhabitants of the “uninterrupted” hell roast in an oven for 339,738,624 × 10^10 years! Despite these names and enormous durations, the doctrine of cause and effect requires proportionality, in which effects align proportionately to causes, and good and bad effects precisely cancel each other out. Thus, each rebirth calibrates precisely to the net karmic quality at death. Although people do not usually remember their past lives, divine beings, ghosts, and hell-beings seem to. Since it seems doubtful that animals remember their past lives, this places humans closer to the animals in terms of conscious development, despite our arrogant belief otherwise. The Buddhist view regarding the closeness of humans and animals stands in striking contrast to the Judaic religious worldview, in which angels and humans reflect the Godhead while animals and the earth itself exist only as objects for exploitation by humans, thus inherently soulless; the Buddhist view intriguingly aligns with the doctrine of biological evolution.

Walshe notes that the Buddha declares non-belief in the doctrine of rewards and punishments for moral and immoral deeds to be particularly reprehensible. Thus, the Buddha equates Lohicca’s doctrine of militant self-interest as equivalent to immoralism itself.

The Buddha clearly sees the outcome of such a system when one or another actor takes up all available goods. In a scenario where every actor seeks only their own good and no one else’s, maximizing and retaining as much good as they can for themselves without regard for any other consideration—a system that today we would call laissez-faire (“free market”) capitalism—such a system falls into increasing competition for the diminishing quantity of good still available, until the only good remaining comes from others. At this point, all of the actors prey upon each other with increasing ferocity until only one actor remains through a process of vicious struggle. Thus, capitalism leads to increasingly tyrannical monopolies until eventually we are left with a global dictatorship (“new world order”), where the arbitrary desires and self-interest of a few, and ultimately of one, govern the entire system of social relationships. As we now know, such a system also destroys the natural environment and thus remains inherently nihilistic. We see the effects of this phenomenon most clearly today in the United States of America, as well as China, Russia, North Korea, and elsewhere.

At this point, the Buddha neatly segues from a discussion of a wrong teaching (Lohicca’s evil argument) to a discussion of wrong teachers. The Buddha identifies three types of blameworthy teacher:

• A teacher who has not attained the goal of asceticism, and whose disciples do not listen to them;
• A teacher who has not attained the goal of asceticism, but whose disciples listen to them; and
• A teacher who has attained the goal of asceticism, but whose disciples do not listen to them.

The fourth type of teacher is the blameless one who has attained the goal of asceticism and whose disciples listen to them. The Tathagata stands as the supreme example.

Lohicca sees the error of his ways and immediately takes Refuge in the Buddha, the Teaching, and the Order. The reference to “as long as life shall last” shows that the ideal expectation involves not leaving the Buddhist order, although the monastic code provides a way for the monastic to withdraw without dishonouring themselves should they choose to do so.

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 22, 2025

Notes

1. In the Western Esoteric Tradition this is called “Rising on the Planes.”

2. “It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asks all passersby the most famous riddle in history: ‘Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?’ She strangled and devoured anyone unable to answer.” (Wikipedia)

3. Pali paticca, ‘following from anything as a necessary result’+ sam, ‘together’+ pada, ‘cause.’ At least 12 English translations have been proposed, none of which has less than six syllables. There are already two English words that have approximately this meaning: ‘codetermination’ and ‘coproduction.’ Personally, I prefer either of these to such tongue torturers as   ‘interdependent origination’ and ‘interdependent co-arising.’ The essential meaning of the phrase is that effect and the cause are mutually involved – there is no effect without a cause, there is no cause without an effect. Therefore, they are the same. Hence, the unity of cause and effect is paticcasamuppada. From this various inferences follow, including the beginninglessness of samsara, the “now,”  non-locality, and trans-duality. The term also refers to a specific ‘chain’ (nidana) of 12 cause/effects that shows samsara as an essential, though illusory, aspect of reality. Although the “wheel” of samsara seems to represent a closed system, two links are subject to will, i.e., ignorance (avijja), the root of the whole system, and craving (tanha), resulting in two paths to transcendence – the primary path of wisdom, corresponding to ignorance, and the secondary path of dispassion, corresponding to desirous attachment. The former is the path of the bodhisattva, which leads to Buddhahood, the latter the path of the stream entrant (sotapanna), which leads to Arhantship.

4. The Pali phrase that Walshe translates as “good doctrine” is kusalam dhammam. From the examples that the Buddha gives – enjoying the entire fruit and revenues, not giving anything away to others, not being solicitous of their welfare, being uncompassionate – it is clear that the implication of kusalam dhammam extends far beyond doctrine. The word dhamma has a wide range of meanings, including (according to the PED) ‘thing,’ while the basic meaning of kusala is productive of merit (i.e., value). Therefore, a kusalam dhammam is a ‘valuable thing.’

5. The term ‘friend’ (avuso ‘friend, brother’) was also used in the sangha during the Buddha’s lifetime, but was changed to “Lord” or “Venerable Sir” (when referring to a monk of greater seniority, or to any monk when a nun) after the Buddha’s passing (parinibbana). The term appears to be a conventional mode of polite address, as amongst the Quakers, or the use of “comrade” by communists.