PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2014 AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2024 (REVISED)

The Discourse on the Fruits of the Contemplative Life

Digha Nikaya 2

Country: Magadha

Locale: Jivaka Komarabhacca’s mango grove, Rajagaha

Speakers: Ajatasattu Vedehiputta, Jivaka Komarabaccha, the Buddha

Date of Composition: c. 3rd cent. BCE

The second discourse of the Digha Nikaya is the Samannaphala Discourse. The immediate source of this title is not a samana, or  wanderer, but rather samanna, which refers to the state of being a monastic (lit. ‘conformity,’ ‘generality’). According to the Access to Insight website, it also refers to an instrument tuned on pitch, the subject of a famous metaphor of the Buddha. The root sam refers to ‘calmness,’ ‘tranquility,’ ‘mental quiet,’ whereas anna also has the meaning of ‘knowledge,’ especially the ‘knowledge of an arhant.’ In Sanskrit, sama has the meaning of ‘middling,’ ‘good,’ and ‘happy,’ whereas anya has the meaning of ‘extraordinary.’ Phala means ‘product,’ ‘fruit,’ ‘reward.’

The Buddha is staying in the Magadhan capital of Rajagaha, in the mango grove of Jivaka Komarabhacca, the royal physician, with a large monastic entourage. The king, Ajatasattu Vedeheputta, is reclining on the roof of his palace during the sacred Catumasya festival or rains retreat, surrounded by his ministers, yet stricken in heart. The king murdered his father to gain the throne, yet, despite this appalling fact, he is contrite. This festival marks the night of the full moon of the final month of the four-month hybrid rainy/autumn season ending in October/November, the month of Kattika. This is when the water lily blooms. Hence, they also called the festival Komudi (‘water lily’). It is sacred to Krishna, and is the holiest month of the year for Vaishnavas.

The evening being fine and clear, the king expresses the desire to visit a sage, so his ministers list off the well-known teachers who are still in the area: Purana Kassapa; Makkhali Gosala; Ajita Kesakambali; Pakudha Kaccayana; Sanja Belatthaputta the agnostic in discourse 1; and Nigantha Nataputta (Mahavira), the leader of the Jains. The king shows no interest in any of them. The royal physician remains silent during all of this time. The king asks Jivaka why he is silent. Jivaka tells the king that Gotama the Buddha is residing with his entourage in Jivaka’s mango grove, and invites the king to meet him, to which the king readily agrees. The Buddha is the only one of the seven that the king has not met.

King Ajatasattu assembles his royal household, and he, Jivaka, and his harem of wives travel by elephant to the mango grove. When the king comes near, it is dark and deathly quiet. He suspects a trap, but Jivaka assures him that it is safe. In the distance, he is able to see torches burning inside a round pavilion, so he makes his way there on foot, to find the Buddha sitting inside against the middle column of the pavilion, with many monastics sitting, facing him, all dressed in the simple patchwork robes of the Buddhist order. The king has to ask Jivaka which monastic is the Buddha, though the Buddha is sitting in the centre of the pavilion.  Alternatively, the discourse states that the unlikely figure of 1,250 monastics are present in the Round Pavilion, so perhaps he is lost in the crowd.

As the king approaches the Buddha and stands beside him, “the order of monks continued in silence like a clear lake.”  The king, marvelling at the composure of the assembly, compares the calm of the monastics unfavourably to his son, Udayabhadda.  The Buddha’s first words are, “Do your thoughts go to the one you love, Your Majesty?”

The king prostrates before the Buddha and, turning, acknowledges the monastics, and then sits to one side, facing the Buddha. Ajatasattu asks the Buddha if there is any fruit or reward to leading a homeless life, instead of contributing to society through productive work and gaining merit for a favourable rebirth. Before answering, the Buddha asks the king to tell him what the other ascetics and Brahmins he has consulted say. The king tells him that:

Pūraṇa Kassapa explicitly denied the existence of moral responsibility, rejecting both good and evil karma. He claimed that no action, no matter how violent or destructive, has ethical consequences. His infamous statement that even if one were to “cut the earth into one mass of flesh with a sharp wheel,” no evil would result from it, illustrates his extreme moral nihilism. Today, we would label this view as amoralism or nihilism, not just because of its denial of moral causality, but because it rejects the very existence of ethical distinctions.

Makkhali Gosāla taught a doctrine of fate, where defilement is inherent in beings, and they must pass through preordained cycles of reincarnation and suffering, over vast cosmic ages (sometimes described as 8.4 million lives). Liberation, according to him, comes only after naturally progressing through all of these ages, not through any effort or practice, such as yoga or asceticism. He denied the value of self-effort or moral action, advocating instead a deterministic view. His philosophy is clearly fatalistic, as it eliminates the role of personal effort or intention in achieving liberation.

Ajita Kesakambalī is the earliest materialist in Indian philosophy. He denied the existence of an afterlife, soul, or karmic retribution. According to him, after death, the body disintegrates into the four elements (earth, water, fire, and air), and the mind dissolves into space, ceasing to exist. Today, his view aligns with secular materialism, as he saw all reality in purely physical terms, with no spiritual or moral dimensions.

Pakudha Kaccāyana taught that the universe consists of seven eternal, unchanging elements: earth, water, fire, air, joy, sorrow, and life. These elements are fundamentally unalterable and actions or interactions cannot affect them. This teaching resembles a form of atomism, where permanent substances make up everything, and no moral actions (such as harming others) can change these eternal elements. This view implicitly denies the law of moral causality because it negates the possibility of actions leading to moral consequences.

Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta was a radical skeptic who refused to take a stance on any metaphysical or ethical question. When asked about the nature of the soul, moral causality, or the afterlife, he consistently answered with “I don’t know”, “It could be this, or it could be that.” His evasiveness reflects an agnostic stance, where no firm conclusions are drawn about fundamental truths. While this stance avoids the denial of moral causality and morality outright, it effectively leaves his followers in moral and philosophical uncertainty, as he provides no clear path of action or ethics. This is of course the philosophical position, if one can call it that, called the ‘eel wriggler’ which the Buddha disdains in the Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1).  

All of these teachers, with the possible exception of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta (who was agnostic), denied the doctrine of moral causality and moral responsibility in various ways. Pūraṇa Cassava rejected morality outright, Makkhali Gosāla replaced personal responsibility with fate, Ajita Kesakambalī dismissed the afterlife and moral consequences entirely, and Pakudha Kaccāyana viewed the universe as governed by unchangeable elements that human actions cannot influence.

Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta (Mahāvīra) taught one achieves liberation through extreme asceticism and self-mortification, which he considered essential for “burning off” karmic bonds. In Jainism, every action generates karma, even unintentional actions, which bind the soul to the cycle of birth and rebirth. Liberation is possible only by avoiding the creation of new karma altogether through complete non-violence and self-denial. While Jainism places great emphasis on action, it sees action through the lens of non-violence and restraint, not intention.

In contrast: In Buddhism, action matters, but intention is what determines the moral quality of the action. This distinction is crucial, as it underscores that intention is the moral causal factor in Buddhism, while in Jainism, all actions, even unintended ones, generate karma.

The Buddha’s time saw a variety of teachings that either rejected or severely modified the doctrine of moral causality and moral responsibility. These doctrines challenged the Buddhist emphasis on intention and ethical action as the basis for liberation. The Buddha’s Middle Way—which stresses personal effort, ethical conduct, and intention—was a response to these divergent views, which were fatalistic, amoral, or deterministic.

What all of these teachers have in common is that they offer no fruits for the homeless life. Thus, the king’s quest was quite literally fruitless.

In the next section of the Samannaphala Discourse we see another side of King Ajatusattu, that of a devout man, for only a devout man would approve of the going forth so readily. The dialogue provides the Buddha with the opportunity to instruct the king in the fruits of the homeless life, illustrated by the use of metaphors.

In the first illustration, joining the order delivers a slave from his slavery. When the Buddha asks him if the king would demand his return, the king protests that instead he would worship him. These are the words of a devout man. So devout is Ajatasattu that, when he departs, the Buddha says “the King is done for, his fate is sealed, monks. But if the king had not deprived his father that good man and just king of his life, then, as he sat here the pure and spotless Dharma Eye would have arisen in him.”  Here we see the principles that bad karma can inhibit realization, and that the Dharma Eye arises in response to knowledge.

The king is eager to hear more. The Buddha goes on to cite the fruits of the homeless life that follow:

1. Freedom from servitude (¶36);
2. Solitude (¶38);
3. Joy of detachment (first meditative attainment) (¶76);
4. Joy of concentration (second meditative attainment) (¶78);
5. Joy devoid of delight (third meditative attainment) (¶80);
6. Mental purity and clarification (fourth meditative attainment) (¶82);
7. Perfection of insight (¶84);
8. Production of a mind-made body (¶86);
9. Visionary experiences (¶88);
10. Clairaudience (¶90);
11. Telepathy (¶92);
12. Recollection of past lives (¶94);
13. The Divine Eye (whereby one perceives the karma of others) (¶96); and
14. Perfect awareness and full awakening (¶98).

After the fruit of solitude, the king asks the Buddha if he can name another fruit of the homeless life. The Buddha describes the coming of a Tathagata, an arhant as well as a buddha, fully enlightened, endowed with wisdom and morality, one who follows the path and knows the worlds, trains people who are capable of training, and teaches divine beings and people. This is the stock description of the spiritual attainments of a tathagata. He is self-ordained, possessed of gnosis, and proclaims the world with its divine beings, harmful spirits, brahmas, princes, and people—presumably a reference to his understanding of metaphysics, ontology, and cosmology.

The householder, hearing the Tathagata, believes him, and resolves to become homeless to acquire merit. In this state, he cultivates morality, self-restraint, and contentment, followed by reflective and clear awareness, and he rejoices and becomes glad, freed from the five hindrances, obstructions, fetters, or obstacles of sensory desire, anger, sloth-torpor, restlessness-worry, and doubt. He is like one freed from debt, sickness, bonds, slavery, or the perils of the desert. This leads to the realization of the first meditative attainment, the third fruit of the homeless life.

The Samannaphala Discourse presents a comprehensive overview of the whole Buddhist path, and is widely regarded as a literary masterpiece of the Pali Canon.

In his description of the path, the Buddha repeatedly emphasizes the body: “just as a skilled bathman or his assistant, kneading the soap powder which he has sprinkled with water, forms from it, in a metal dish, a soft lump, so that the ball of soap powder becomes one oleaginous mass, bound with oil so that nothing escapes—so this monk suffuses, drenches, fills and irradiates his body so that no spot remains untouched.”  The sensuality of the description is striking. Sarah Shaw, in her anthology of Pali meditation texts, writes,

One of the distinguishing features of the Buddha’s system of meditation is the emphasis placed upon the physical body both as a foundation for practice and as the means of experiencing and exploring reality.… Because there is also a mixture of painful and happy experience, the human bodily form is considered the most suitable for spiritual development. …the discourses of the Pali canon do not dismiss bodily and sensory experiences as illusion, or a delusion, or sensory experience as in itself negative or debilitating. …The comprehensiveness of the practice, and its applicability to so many diverse areas of life is, I think, also peculiarly Buddhist. Buddhaghosa says that as a meditation subject it is only taught in the dispensation of a Buddha.

Such a distinctive emphasis, which Buddhaghosa and others note, is surely key, suggestive of cognate practices such as hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, Chöd, Qigong, etc., based on a hypothesized psychophysical energy variously referred to as tapas, kundalini, tumo, qi, etc. in the Hindu, Tibetan, and Chinese traditions respectively, in addition to many others, including shamanism. There is something singularly significant about the body in the context of spiritual development in the Buddhist worldview.

The second fruit answers the king’s question, but the Buddha elaborates twelve more fruits of the homeless life, segueing into a spiritual teaching. The first two pertain to the outer, bodily life. The next five (#3–7) pertain to the cultivation of the mind and the path of meditation based on the meditative attainments.

Jhana is another of those words for which no completely satisfactory translation exists. It comes from Sanskrit dhyana, root DHI, ‘to shine’ or ‘perceive.’ The PED says it “never means vaguely meditation. It is the technical term for a special religious experience, reached in a certain order of mental states.” The PED goes on to itemize these states:

1. The mystic, with his mind free from sensuous and worldly ideas, concentrates his thoughts on some special subject (for instance, the impermanence of all things). This he thinks out by attention to the facts, and by reasoning. 2. Then uplifted above attention & reasoning, he experiences joy & ease both of body and mind. 3. Then the bliss passes away, & he becomes suffused with a sense of ease, and 4. he becomes aware of pure lucidity of mind & equanimity of heart. The whole really forms one series of mental states….The state of mind left after the experience of the four jhanas is described as follows…‘with his heart thus serene, made pure, translucent, cultured, void of evil, supple, ready to act, firm and imperturbable.’ It will be seen that there is no suggestion of trance, but rather of an enhanced vitality. In the descriptions of the crises in the religious experiences of the Christian saints and mystics, expressions similar to those used in the jhanas are frequent….Laymen could pass through the four jhanas….The jhanas are only a means, not the end.

The seventh fruit, Perfection of Insight, is the imperturbable perfection of metaphysical understanding stemming from complete freedom from all impurities and hindrances to true seeing. This is a transitional element to the next group of six (#8–13), which can only be referred to as “magical” (or perhaps “psychic”), including clairaudience, telepathy, past-life recall, and the Divine Eye.

The psychic powers, so-called, including multicorporeality, invisibility, the ability to pass through matter, levitation, travelling in a mental body, as well as what can only be described as cosmological or astronomical visions, suggest psychedelic visionary experiences. Interestingly, these are also typical characteristics of the UFO phenomenon, which is also attested to in the Pali Canon.

The Divine Eye is the intense realization of the truth of moral causality, whereby one actually perceives and experiences it as real, but it may also be a psychic power in which one perceives the karma of others. It is also transitional, leading to the final and singular fruit—the attainment of a tathagata, awakening itself. This list of fruits is an alternative twelvefold model of the path of the monastic life, leading from ordination to the attainment of a tathagata. This last item is uniquely Buddhist.

Consider the symbolism used by the Buddha in connection with the third meditative attainment, the “joy devoid of delight” or happiness that is the fifth fruit of the homeless life. The Buddha says, “Just as if, in a pond of blue, red or white lotuses in which the flowers, born in the water, grown in the water, not growing out of the water, are fed from the water’s depths, those blue, red or white lotuses would be suffused…with the cool water—so with this joy devoid of delight the monk so suffuses his body that no spot remains untouched.”

The occasion of the discourse is the full moon of Komudi, the water lily or sacred lotus. The lotus is one of the eight auspicious symbols of Buddhism. The Buddha Net website says, “lotuses are symbols of purity and ‘spontaneous’ generation and hence symbolize divine birth. According to the Lalitavistara, ‘the spirit of the best of men is spotless, like the new lotus in the [muddy] water which does not adhere to it,’ and, according to esoteric Buddhism, the heart of the beings is like an unopened lotus: when the virtues of the Buddha develop therein the lotus blossoms. This is why the Buddha sits on a lotus in bloom. In Tantrism, it is the symbol of the feminine principle.”  The Buddha refers to the female principle in the famous earth-touching gesture, in which he calls upon the divine being of the earth to bear witness to the fact of his attainment, thereby overcoming Mara (lit. ‘causing death’).

The seed or root of the lotus is the mud of existence, a remarkable fact in that the lotus is the archetypal symbol of enlightenment itself. This suggests that existence has a function in the scheme of reality. Since reality is all, and includes all, it must also include existence; even if existence is illusory, it is still experienced. Therefore, it is part of the system. The lotus root binds us to existence, but it is also the source of enlightenment, and the source of sustenance before one can cut it. Nevertheless, the lotus does not rise above the level of the water; it is at the intersection of the two polarities of soma and psyche, water/mud and sun/light.

Revised November 8, 2025

Note

1. For a critical review of this topic from an objective historical perspective by the foremost expert in the field, see Jacques Vallee (accessed 2014, Nov. 8), Dimensions, http://iosisrecords.com/libraryofzar/Site/DOWNLOAD_files/Dimensions.pdf. 

Bibliography

Buddhanet. “The Buddhist Calendar.” http://www.buddhanet.net/cal_year.htm. Accessed Nov. 8, 2014.

———-. “The Symbol of the Lotus.” http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/b_lotus.htm. Accessed Nov. 8, 2014.

Shaw, Sarah. Buddhist Meditation: An Anthology of Texts from the Pali Canon. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 140-142. See also p. 217, n. 20 and Visuddhimaga, VIII: 42.

Vallee, Jacques. Dimensions. http://iosisrecords.com/libraryofzar/Site/DOWNLOAD_files/Dimensions.pdf. Accessed Nov. 8, 2014.