PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2015 AND AGAIN ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2024 (REVISED).
The Discourse on Sakka’s Questions
DN 21
Country: Magadha
Locale: Indasala Cave, Mt. Vediya, near Ambasanda, east of Rajagaha
Speakers: Sakra, Pancasikha, the Buddha
Date of composition: 3rd cent. BCE
The Buddha stays in Indasala Cave. The discourse identifies the exact location of this cave on Mount Vediya, near a village called Ambasanda, east of Rajagaha, in the country of Magadha. I can do no better than to quote the description from the BuddhaNet website:
This remote and beautiful cave serves as the place where the Buddha delivered one of his most profound discourses, the Sakkapanha Sutta. He also uttered verses 206, 207, and 208 of the Dhammapada while staying here. Followers of Tibetan Buddhism will be interested to know that Buddhasrijnana, the famous commentator on the Guhyasamaja Tantra, also once lived in this cave. The Indasala Cave rests at the base of a sheer cliff halfway up the side of Giriyek Mountain.
Further up, on the very top of the mountain, stands the Hansa Stupa, the most complete stupa still existing in India. Hiuen Tsiang visited this stupa and recorded the interesting story behind its construction.
This discourse follows discourse 18, in which Sakra and, ultimately, Sanat Kumara, in the form of the young boy Pancasikha, preside over a council of divine beings from the realm of the Thirty-Three. Sakra decides to visit the Buddha to learn the secret of success in the spiritual quest and, discerning his location, informs the gods of the realm of the Thirty-Three of his intention and invites Pancasikha along. Pancasikha, a musician, brings his yellow beluva-wood lute. Sakra and Pancasikha, with Sakra’s attendant, surrounded by the thirty-three gods, instantly transport themselves to Mount Vediya. They appear as an aerial luminous display: “Then a tremendous light shines over Mount Vediya, illuminating the village of Ambasanda.” Apparently, this display is so bright that the inhabitants of neighboring villages feel dread. Once again, we see the now familiar UFO phenomenology, right down to such minute details as the mountain appearing to be on fire—a common UFO report—as well as the universal apprehension of dread.
Sakra worries that he might not be able to approach the Buddha, who is “enjoying the bliss of meditation” in seclusion, so he suggests to Pancasikha, who is renowned among the gods for his beauty (and, therefore, their favourite), that he approach the Buddha and charm him.
Consequently, Pancasikha goes to the cave with his lute; he stands near the entrance, plays his lute, and sings a song to the Buddha of the Buddha, the teaching, the arhants, and love. Walshe refers to “attracting the ear” of the Buddha. Rhys Davids has “win over.” In any case, Pancasikha’s intention is to charm the Buddha with his song as a prelude to Sakra’s visit. Although nothing untoward is implied, it is hard to escape the note of homoeroticism, similar to the story of the friendship of Sariputta and Moggallana. The romantic friendship of David and Jonathan in the Book of Samuel of the Hebrew Bible also comes to mind. David is also a musician and singer.
The song praises the beauty of Bhadda Suriyavaccasa, the daughter of Timbaru, who are mentioned in discourse 20 in the list of the divine hosts who visit the Buddha and the monastics in Kapilavastu. Her name means ‘sunshine.’ Pancasikha compares her to the teaching and entreats her for release from the flames of desire, which he proposes to assuage by plunging into her sweet bosom like an elephant plunging into a pool of water. The Buddha is also compared to an elephant in the Pali Canon, with erotic overtones as discussed by John Powers in A Bull of a Man. He declares that his mind transforms because of his love for her:
Come, embrace me, maiden fair of thighs,
Seize and hold me with your lovely eyes,
Take me in your arms, it’s all I ask.
My desire was slight at first, O maid
Of waving tresses, but it grew apace,
As grow the gifts that Arahants receive. (1.5)
However, Bhadda is already smitten by Sikhaddi, the son of Matali the charioteer. Pancasikha expresses the wish that he might convert his merit accrued by giving to the order into her love, an interesting transposition of the transfer of merit principle, which he seeks with the same ardour as the Buddha seeks timelessness (deathlessness). He compares the bliss of enlightenment to actual converse with Suriyavaccasa that, he says, he craves. Alternatively, Pancasikha suggests that Sakra might grant him the boon of her love.
This remarkable passage has many parallels in Mahayana and Vajrayana, with their veneration for female bodhisattvas, female dancing spirits, and the Tibetan ‘father-mother’ archetype, depicted as a buddha or a bodhisattva in sexual union with a female consort, representing the primordial union of wisdom and compassion, heart and mind. Interestingly, Bhadda is also associated with dancing in the discourse. We may regard this song as an early precursor of the cult of Tara, for example, as well as the tantric doctrine that the force of desire can be directly transmuted into enlightenment itself. The universal association of erotic feeling and enlightenment is unmistakable. This has correspondences in other traditions, too, where the spiritual idea assumes a female form, including the Shekinah (Judaism); Sophia (the Holy Spirit) and the Virgin Mary (Christianity), the latter evidenced in the cult of Mariolatry; the celestial maidens of the Qur’an; numerous similar female figures in Gnosticism and Sufism; the Shakti in Hinduism in all her multitudinous guises; and the female bodhisattvas of Mahayana and Vajrayana. In the earth-touching gesture, the Buddha calls upon the divine being of the earth (usually represented as female) to attest to the fact of his enlightenment.
The discourse seems definitely non-Buddhist to us, yet here it is, included in the Pali Canon, despite the redaction of the Sri Lankan monastics who gave it its final shape and, to all appearances, inserted pious forgeries into the Pali Canon to convince one that the Buddha was a misogynist. Scholars consider it one of the most profound discourses of the Pali Canon, like the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible, or Aurobindo’s Savitri.
Rousing from his meditation, the Buddha compliments Pancasikha for the pleasing harmony of his voice and music, despite the seventh precept, against dancing, singing, and music. The Buddha asks Pancasikha when he composed this song. Pancasikha tells him that he composed it when the Buddha dwelled on the bank of the river Neranjara, near the goatherd’s banyan tree, shortly before the Buddha’s enlightenment experience. Apparently, the song is inspired by Pancasikha’s unrequited love for Bhadda, the daughter of King Timbaru. Because of the song, Pancasikha finally wins her love through their shared love for the Buddha.
Having broken the ice, as it were, or smoothed the way, Pancasikha asks the Buddha if Sakra may come. The Buddha consents, and Sakra and the thirty-three gods enter the cave and pay homage to the Buddha. A strong sense of transition fills the air; the cave becomes sacralized, not merely by the presence of the Buddha, but by his presence in the act of meditating, a spiritual gestation culminating in the emergence of the Buddha as a spiritual rebirth. The cave also becomes a womb. The cave itself becomes resplendent, illuminated by the worshipful presence of the divine beings.
There, in the Indasala Cave, the rough passages become smooth, the narrow parts become wide, and the pitch-dark cavern becomes bright, owing to the power of the divine beings, clearly alluding to the symbolism of birth.
The Buddha, in return, utters a variation of the famous aphorism, popularized by the Dalai Lama, “May [all beings] be happy, for they all desire happiness.” The Buddha greets Sakra using an epithet of Indra. Sakra reiterates his statement, made in discourse 18, that when a tathagata arises in the world, the numbers of divine beings increase and the number of anti-gods decrease.
Sakra then tells the Buddha the story of a Shakyan girl named Gopika, a resident of Kapilavastu, whose faith and moral restraint cause her to aspire to be reborn as a god in the realm of the Thirty-Three.
Sakra then tells the Buddha the story of a Shakyan girl named Gopika, a resident of Kapilavastu, whose faith and moral restraint lead her to aspire to be reborn as a man. She is, in fact, reborn as a male in the “Threefold Heaven,” another name for the realm of the Thirty-Three, where she becomes Gopaka, the divine beings’ son. She rebukes three monastics born as mere celestial musicians or spirits, the lowest possible spiritual rebirth, because of their addiction to sensuality. Her rebuke causes such intense shame that two of them instantaneously attain self-awareness and, after a life of aspiration, are reborn in the Brahma world. The third, however, remains addicted to sensuality. She emphasizes that each person must realize the teaching “for himself,” a point we have encountered in other discourses. This story seems to illustrate that a devout female householder, or any low-born spiritual being, can attain a higher spiritual status than a male monastic or high-born spiritual being who, although appearing to follow the Buddhist rule, is, in fact, addicted to sensuality. Therefore, the story’s somewhat unusual point is that being a male monastic does not guarantee realization. On the other hand, a female householder is not necessarily unrealized. This story universalizes the same principle by which the Buddha repudiated the caste system.
A sorry sight it is to see
One’s Dhamma-fellows sunk so low
That, gandhabba-spirits, you
But come to wait upon the gods,
While as for me—I am transformed.
From household life, and female, I
Am now reborn a male, a god,
Rejoicing in celestial bliss. (1.12)
The lesson is that those who do not follow the Buddhist way will experience a menial rebirth.
SAKRA’S QUESTIONS
Sakra asks the Buddha for permission to pose ten questions, and the Buddha assents, recognizing Sakra’s purity.
- By what fetters do various classes of being bind themselves into mutually self-destructive dysfunctional patterns?
- What is the origin of jealousy and avarice?
- What is the origin of like and dislike?
- What is the origin of desire?
- What is the origin of thinking?
- What practice eliminates proliferation?
- What practice leads to self-restraint?
- What practice leads to the control of the sense faculties?
- Do all ascetics and Brahmans teach the same doctrine and practice the same practice?
- Are all ascetics and Brahmans proficient in the teaching?
These questions fall into three categories. The first six introduce a new principle of interconnectedness. We have encountered this explanatory structure before in discussions about how old age, suffering, and death result from ignorance, and how social discord arises from craving. Here, the questions reveal how the fetters that bind beings to hatred and harming each other—social discord, again an important theme to the Buddha—result from the ontological principle of “proliferation.” Questions 6, 7, and 8 focus on practice. Questions 9 and 10 pertain to the character of other ascetics and Brahmans.
A NEW INTERDEPENDENT ORIGINATION
In discourse 15, we see how everything arises interdependently with everything else, all chains of cause and effect creating infinitely differentiated and differentiating cycles, all interacting with each other in endlessly recurring, varying, and complex patterns. This is interconnectedness, usually identified with a model of twelve links in which the Buddha progressively identifies the underlying causes of anguish—old age, sickness, and death—ending (and thus beginning, ontologically) with ignorance. Interconnectedness is the process. Similarly, the Buddha applies the same method to identify a sequence that leads from social violence to craving, its root cause. This forms the basis of the Buddha’s process theory of existence, where infinitely interwoven causes and effects underlie the world’s structure, which he compares to a hairball.
Sakra asks the Buddha to explain the fetters that bind beings to dysfunctional relationships, so the Buddha traces the sequence of cause and effect from hatred, harmfulness, hostility, and malignancy to jealousy and avarice, to feeling (like and dislike), desire, thinking, and finally to the principle of proliferation, the ultimate cause.
PROLIFERATION
The first cause of interconnectedness ends with the fetters by which beings bind themselves to the “tendency to proliferation.” As a result of this tendency, thinking arises (cf. Padmasambhava’s “thinking’s thinking”), which in turn leads to desire, like and dislike (we might say, feeling), jealousy, and avarice, which immediately cause beings to live in hatred. This clearly refers to the political state of fifth-century BCE India, not so different from our own time.
The final term in any such series is ontological. The ‘tendency to proliferation’ must be the original and innate volitional formation. It also means ‘obstacle,’ ‘impediment,’ ‘a burden causing delay,’ ‘hindrance,’ ‘illusion,’ ‘obsession,’ ‘hindrance to spiritual progress,’ ‘diffuseness,’ or ‘copiousness.’
In any case, the word refers to the innate intentionality of reality/sentience itself, which inherently posits proliferation/differentiation. This is the ultimate condition on which all constructions and appearances arise, creating the pseudo-world and the desirous attachment thereto that obstructs spiritual progress—the quantum froth of reality.
PRACTICE
The next three questions really form one, as they all have the same answer: the practice that leads to the elimination of differentiation, self-restraint, and control over the sense faculties is the cultivation of wholesome habits of mind and physical conduct. This raises the question of what constitutes wholesomeness. The Buddha explains that the senses—eye, ear, nose, mouth, skin, and brain—do not merely “flow into” the mind but also “flow out” to the constructions through the senses. In other words, the senses construct their own reality. This reciprocal process is the literal meaning of the Pali word usually translated as ‘taint’ or ‘corruption.’ ‘Taint’ or ‘corruption’ unnecessarily reifies this word, which refers to the dynamic reciprocity underlying sensory perception. Reception and perception are reciprocals in this process, unified in ‘mental bias’ or ‘attention.’
THE ASCETICS AND THE BRAHMANS
Sakra asks whether all ascetics and Brahmans teach and practice the same thing and whether they are all equally adept in their teachings. In other discourses, the Buddha says that he has rediscovered a forgotten primordial teaching. Here, he tells Sakra that the world is made up of many elemental patterns to which beings become addicted, claiming that their pattern alone is true and everything else is false. This dogmatic attachment to belief is what the Buddha warns against, also cautioning us against sectarianism. Regarding attainment, the Buddha declares that only those who have perfected the destruction of craving—those who are perfectly dispassionate—are truly emancipated. Thus, he implies that other teachers follow different paths leading to different goals and are not ultimately emancipated (e.g., Mahavira, leader of the Jains). The goal of final and complete emancipation, arhantship, requires dispassion as its essential requisite.
Sakra echoes the Buddha: “Passion, sir, is a disease, a boil, a dart. It seduces a man, drawing him into this or that state of becoming, so that he is reborn in high states or low.”
Sakra tells the Buddha that he asked these same questions of other teachers, and they were so impressed that they immediately converted to his point of view.
The following passage is difficult to follow but fascinating. The Buddha asks Sakra if he has ever experienced joy and happiness like the one he is experiencing now. Sakra admits that he has felt this only once before, when victorious in the famous war of the divine beings against the anti-gods. To summarize briefly, the divine beings cast the anti-gods out of the realm of the Thirty-Three, demonizing them. These anti-gods, powerful primordial cosmic and telluric spirits, older and stronger than the divine beings, were cast down into the one world ocean, where they continue to struggle against the divine beings, even fostering discord in the human world. Interestingly, even the anti-gods come to honor the Buddha in this discourse. Sakra refers to “the food of the gods,” implying that the reason for the war was the divine beings’ desire to have the anti-gods’ share of this sacred substance. Thus, Sakra’s response may specifically refer to this substance, equating the joy of consuming it with the joy of a stream-enterer.
Oja does not appear in the PED, but in Tamilcube’s Pali English Dictionary, it means ‘essence,’ ‘juice,’ ‘sap,’ as well as ‘strength,’ ‘sap of life,’ and ‘vitality.’ Walshe compares oja to a special divine essence of spiritual origin and the wondrous food that Vimalakirti, a wealthy patron of the Buddha and the model of the ideal lay follower, serves to the bodhisattvas. This term seems to be a synonym for soma, the mind-altering drink of the divine beings. The anti-gods become drunk when they are expelled from the realm of the Thirty-Three. Drinking soma belongs to the gods. Thus, it seems likely that the war in heaven was a war over soma: “Whatever is now the food of the gods, and what the food of the asuras is, henceforth we shall enjoy both.” Consuming soma and entering the stream of the path equate. The discourse says that the teaching is the realization of the highest inspiration and truth, equal to that of the seers.
Nevertheless, Sakra declares that the happiness of the teaching surpasses even the happiness he felt then, because of the passionate character of the former, so that they both are and are not the same. The teaching incorporates and transcends the original Vedic sacrament. Interestingly, the churning of the one world ocean by both the divine beings and the anti-gods is necessary to produce soma.
As a result of entering the stream, Sakra will choose to be reborn as a human, a desirable rebirth for a divine being. He will intentionally select the circumstances of his future human rebirth. If he achieves enlightenment, he will live as an enlightened being; if not, he will be reborn as a divine being on the highest plane, the abode of the Peerless devas, where arhants reborn prior to attaining emancipation reside. The Peerless devas are “more glorious than the devas.”
In the summary poem, we encounter the familiar “dart of craving” motif, a major symbolic motif of Buddhism. The Buddha receives praise as the ‘mighty hero, kinsman of the sun,’ referring to the Shakyan lineage, the Buddha’s clan. The Mahavamsa traces the entire genealogy of the Shakyans back to King Okkaka (Skt. Iksavaku), whose ancestral kingdom was Kosala. King Okkaka himself descends from Maha Sammata, the first world ruler and the founder of the Shakya dynasty. Maha Sammata descends from the Solar Dynasty, one of four ruling houses of the warrior caste, which also includes the Lunar Dynasty.
The poem refers to worshipping the Buddha, not as a god, but as a “peerless Lord.” Here we find the epithet Shakyamuni, meaning ‘Shakyan sage,’ referring to his clan name. Rare in the Pali Canon, it became popular in Mahayana literature.
Sakra makes Pancasikha the king of the celestial musicians and gives Bhadda Suriyavaccasa to him as his wife in gratitude for granting him access to the Buddha.
Sakra touches the earth with his hand—the same gesture the Buddha used at his Enlightenment—and recites what is essentially a mantra three times, in an act of power: “Homage to the Blessed One, the arahant, the supremely Enlightened Buddha” (namo tassa bhagavato arahato samma-sambuddhassa). This mantra is chanted in Pali today in sets of three. At that moment, the Dharma Eye arises in Sakra, and he becomes a stream enterer, realizing that everything is transient, along with eight thousand divine beings.
Buddha Centre, Saturday, December 8, 2024.
Notes
1. Although this is widely interpreted as an example of telepathy, it could describe querying a computer database just as well.
2. This may no longer be true, however. Apparently an anonymous poem called Maz’zaroth, an alternative history of the world, weighs in at 40,800 lines (367,000 words), and was published anonymously in 2013. Whether this work has the merit of Savitri, I cannot say, having not read it.
3. Sakka specifically associates meditation (“deep absorption”) with “spurn[ing] the gods.” Cf. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Genesis.
4. “When the mind thinks about something, desire arises; when the mind thinks about nothing, desire does not arise.”
5. The word translated as “wholesome” both here and in Nanamoli and Bodhi’s translation of the Majjhima Nikaya is Pali kusala. Access to Insight translates it as ‘skillful mental qualities.’ PED has ‘clever, skilful, expert; good, right, meritorious.’ Sanskrit has ‘proper, fit for, good, suitable, skilful, competent, healthy, well, able, adroit, in good condition, clever, right, prosperous, conversant with, religious merit, ability, well-being, virtue, benevolence, happily, cheerfully, happiness, cleverness, prosperous condition, welfare, competence, in a good manner, properly, well.’ Ironically, the literal meaning of wholesome is ‘of benefit to the soul.’ The Pali has nothing of the vague moralistic connotations of the English, but rather speaks directly to the law of karma as the foundational principle of Buddhist ethics. Thus, when the Buddha says that the practice that leads to the cessation of the principle of proliferation is the pursuit of happiness based on the kusalas, he is distinquishing between karmically beneficial and karmically non-beneficial pleasures. This is essentially identical with Buckminster Fuller’s theory of morality as an ongoing process of adjustment or adaptation to circumstances, in which one polarity leads to maximum functionality and the other to maximum dysfunctionality. The law of karma says that one experiences the same quality that inheres in one’s conduct. Therefore, if one wants to experience the quality of enlightenment, one should behave as an enlightened being. Such conduct is kusala.
6. “As one-who-knows I’ll dwell, and there await my end” (Aññātā viharissāmi, sveva anto bhavissati). Lit. “living as one who knows, tomorrow the goal must be.” “End” here does not imply annihilation, but rather the ‘end, goal, limit, the other side,’ i.e., transcendence. Bhavissati is the future tense of bhavi, to become.
Bibliography
Dharmata 