PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2015 AND AGAIN ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2024 (REVISED)

The Discourse on the Great Lineage

Digha Nikaya 14

Country: Kosala

Locale: Kereri hutment, in Anathapindika’s park in the Jeta Grove, Savatthi; Subhaga Grove, Ukkattha

Speaker: the Buddha

Date of Composition: late 5^th to early 4th cent. BCE

The Mahapadana Sutta opens the second part of the Digha Nikaya, called the Great Division. Most discourses in the Great Division include maha (‘great’) in the title, although three do not, while a few outside of this section, particularly in the Majjhima Nikaya, also feature maha in their titles. This pattern highlights the curious organization of the Sutta Pitaka.

While Walshe translates the discourse as the “Great Discourse on the Lineage,” a more literal translation might be “The Discourse of the Great Transmission” (lit. ‘giving,’ ‘bestowing’). In this discourse, the Buddha resides at Savatthi, in the Kareri hutment, situated in Anthapindika’s park within the Jeta Grove. We first encountered Savatthi in the Potthapada Sutta, where the Buddha discussed the “higher extinction of consciousness” with Potthapada.

Several monastics gather at the Kareri pavilion in the late morning after their meal and engage in a discussion about rebirth. The Buddha joins them and asks what they are discussing. He then delivers a dharma talk on past lives, naming eight Buddhas who appeared in the world across different ages, as summarized in the following table:

Past Buddhas	Time Ago	Caste	Clan	Lifespan (years)
Vipassi	91 eons	Kshatriya	Kondanna	80,000
Sikhi	31 eons	Kshatriya	Kondanna	70,000
Vessabhu	31 eons	Kshatriya	Kondanna	60,000
Kakusandha	Current	Brahman	Kassapa	40,000
Konmagamana	Current	Brahman	Kassapa	30,000
Kassapa	Current	Brahman	Kassapa	20,000
Gotama	Current	Kshatriya	Gotama	100

Interestingly, Gotama’s inclusion skews the number slightly in favour of warrior over priestly Buddhas, at least among the recent seven. People during Gotama’s time experienced “short, limited, and quick” lifespans. This reduced longevity may relate to Gotama’s teachings, which (as he remarks in his metaphor of the Simsapa forest) focus narrowly rather than encompassing the entirety of the teaching.

The text elaborates on various elements associated with each Buddha, such as the trees under which they attained enlightenment, their two noble disciples, the size of each order of arhants, their personal attendants, their parents, and the royal capital. Most names hold little significance to us apart from those relating to our Buddha, Gotama, as outlined here:

• Tree: Assattha (Ficus religiosa)
• Noble disciples: Sariputta, Moggallana
• Number of arhants: 1,250
• Personal attendant: Ananda
• Father: Suddhodana (‘Pure Rice’)
• Mother: Maya (‘Illusion’)
• Capital: Kapilavastu

By comparison, the arhant count for earlier Buddhas varies from 6.98 million to twenty thousand, declining progressively. The Buddha uses this decline to illustrate the doctrine of degeneration or entropy, an “arrow of time” concept fundamental to Buddhist history as well as modern science.

Since Buddhas appear rarely, these prior Buddhas likely predate human history or even may come from other worlds. We will revisit this topic later in relation to an implied rate of progression in another discourse. At this point, the Buddha takes his afternoon siesta, when he either naps or meditates, and the monastics continue discussing whether the Buddha gained his knowledge through personal realization or divine communication. Later, the Buddha returns and asks the monastics about their discussion.

In response, the Buddha clarifies his source of knowledge. He explains that both his understanding of dharma principles and his communication with divine beings contribute to his insights. This statement implies memory of past lives and interaction with spiritual entities, a theme that reappears in the Burmese and Thai editions of the Pali Canon. The Buddha’s interaction with divine beings serves almost to affirm his insights, similar to the poetic invocations of the rishi shamans. In the Taoist tradition, “spirit communications” also form part of a hybrid Buddhist-Taoist canon, as seen in the Qingjing Jing of Ge Xuan within the Lingbao tradition. However, unlike the ecstatic mythopoeic expressions of the rishis, Taoist spirit writings tend to emphasize metaphysics, aligning more closely with the Buddha’s focus on “penetrating the principles of dhamma.”

After setting out the arhant path in the sixth discourse, the Buddha delineates the bodhisattva path here. Bhikku Bodhi acknowledges that the bodhisattva doctrine logically underpins the arhant doctrine, inhering within the concept of Buddhahood, although it remains in the background in the Pali Canon. The Buddha outlines sixteen principles concerning these great beings, including himself. Some principles convey symbolic or metaphorical meanings, yet they retain their significance. These include:

1. Bodhisattvas are reborn from the Joyful realm (tusita) into their mother’s womb.
2. At conception, an immeasurable, splendid wave of light-energy-information manifests throughout the multiverse, creating a profound evolutionary vibration.
3. Four divine protectors from the four quarters appear.
4. The Bodhisattva’s mother becomes virtuous.
5. She also becomes spontaneously pure.
6. She delights in the five senses but without sensuality.
7. The Bodhisattva’s mother remains free from any illness associated with gestation.
8. She passes away seven days after giving birth, reborn in the Tusita world.
9. The Bodhisattva’s gestation period is precisely ten lunar months (295 days).
10. She gives birth standing up.
11. Divine beings welcome the Bodhisattva first.
12. The Bodhisattva’s birth occurs without touching the earth.
13. Nothing impure defiles him.
14. Two streams of warm and cold water bathe the mother and child.
15. The newborn Bodhisattva faces north, takes seven steps under a white sunshade, scans the four quarters, and declares, “I am chief, supreme, and eldest in the world. This is my last birth; I will not be reborn.”
16. The immeasurable, splendid light-energy wave manifests everywhere again, as described in #2.

The Tusita world serves as a Bodhisattva’s dwelling before their final rebirth as a human. This conception initiates a negentropic information wave, radiating indefinitely and creating a new dharmic “world-age.” Buddhas are constantly born across the universe, each emitting evolutionary patterns that interweave to create spiritual civilizations.

In his comment on the Digha Nikaya, Buddhaghosa interprets these symbols: standing on earth represents the Four Roads to Power; facing north refers to the beings one may win; the seven steps symbolize enlightenment’s seven factors; and the sunshade signifies liberation. Thus, symbolic meaning is not foreign to the Theravada tradition.

The Buddha recounts the story of Prince Vipassi, the earliest Buddha on the list, who lived ninety-one ages ago. Vipassi’s story mirrors the Buddha’s, featuring elements such as:

• Examination by Brahmans skilled in signs,
• The thirty-two marks of a great man,
• A prophecy to become a World Ruler or Buddha,
• Indulgence in pleasure within a palace during the rainy season,
• The Four Sights (an old person, a sick person, a corpse, and a renunciate),
• Renouncing worldly life,
• Realizations regarding interconnectedness, name-form, suffering, change, and ultimate liberation.

Vipassi realizes that he has rediscovered the path to enlightenment through insight. This recognition of insight corresponds to the jhana practice in Sanskrit, identifying the Buddha as a jhana yogi. This path establishes Buddhism as fundamentally a Way of Wisdom, evident in both the Pali Canon and the Mahayana Prajnaparamita literature.

The Doctrine of Interconnectedness

The Digha Nikaya presents a version of the doctrine of interconnectedness consisting of ten links, rooted in the mutually dependent duality of mind-matter and cognition. This differs from the full twelvefold version found, for example, in the Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving (Mahatanhasankhaya Sutta, M 38). As discussed previously, the essential meaning is “everything arising from causes,” implying the absoluteness of the Law of Causality—that every cause produces an effect, and every effect emerges from a cause. From this, we may deduce the beginninglessness of the world, the innate tendency of reality to differentiate (proliferate), the universal interconnection of phenomena, the complementarity of mental and material causes, and the efficacy of volition or intention (the Power or Act of Truth).

In addition to highlighting the universal principle of interconnectedness itself, the word refers specifically to a chain of causes and effects from which the Buddha deduces both suffering and its solution. This chain exhibits a peculiar bidirectionality of cause and effect: one entropic and the other negentropic, revealing the two “weak links” in the chain that lead to the interrelated paths of wisdom and renunciation, alongside the primacy of psychophysical consciousness. The following diagram illustrates this chain:

The Tenfold Chain of Interconnectedness

English	Pali
1. Cognition	Vinnana
2. Mind-body	Namarupa
3. Sense bases	Salayatana
4. Contact	Phassa
5. Feeling	Vedana
6. Craving	Tanha
7. Clinging	Upadana
8. Becoming	Kammabhava
9. Birth	Jati
10. Ageing, death, and suffering	Jaramarana

In this analysis, which may precede other formulations, mind and body (or “name and form”) and cognition form a mutually interdependent triadic dyad that underlies the entire system. Therefore, starting with his knowledge of “the whole mass of suffering,” the Buddha proceeds “backwards,” so to speak, through a series of causes and effects, beginning with birth, then moving back through becoming, clinging, craving, feeling, contact, the six sense faculties (Buddhism includes the mind or brain as a sensory organ), and finally cognition and the psychosomatic complex—fundamental to the dyad of mind and matter.

Nama refers to the psychological elements of the human being, which, together with rupa, constitute the psychosomatic individual composed of the Five Complexes—form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and cognition. Cognition also represents the dynamic principle of the body and the discerning mind, rather than a merely reflective process.

The list further exhibits bidirectionality. Beginning with (mind-body)-cognition, one can trace the progressive development of the person, culminating in birth, ageing, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and distress. The Buddha’s insight reveals that because everything is subject to change, liberation from causality itself is achievable. The perpetuating process can thus transform into a “ceasing” process that leads to emancipation. This is akin to the “arrow of time” with its dual aspects: entropy (following the natural order) and negentropy (arising from reflexive self-consciousness).

However, not all effects respond equally to volition. Some remain outside the immediate influence of volition due to the inertia of karma, the result of previous intentions. Therefore, we cannot directly alter the process of ageing, death, birth, becoming, or our bodily form. Killing the body, a heresy that emerged during the Buddha’s time and persists in certain Buddhist sects, does not interrupt the continuity of cause and effect but rather adds the karma of killing to one’s karmic debt. Two “weak links” exist in this chain: the clinging-craving dynamic that defines the polarity of desirous attachment, and the essence of the (mind-body)-cognition dynamic, identical with the karmic potential at the core of intention, which creates volitional formations or predispositions. One can overcome these links by renouncing desirous attachment through the concentration of and on consciousness, or radical reflexivity. Through this, one perceives reality directly, realizing the inherently unsatisfactory nature of becoming and renouncing it after recognizing its role as the source of all suffering, given the innate desire for happiness. Practicing renunciation—consisting of morality or self-control and the cultivation of wisdom or gnosis—disrupts and transcends the binding force of interconnectedness, which one may also diagram as a quaternary.

The Buddha applies this principle of interconnectedness to an analysis of the origins of private property and government.

Another set of principles embedded within these links is the Five Aggregates of Attachment. By contemplating the rise and fall, appearance and disappearance—the changeability—of the Five Aggregates, Vipassi attains emancipation. These aggregates are as follows:

The Five Aggregates of Grasping

English	Pali
1. Form	Rupa
2. Feeling	Vedana
3. Perception	Sanna
4. Volitional formations	Sankhara
5. Cognition	Vinnana

The Five Aggregates and the tenfold chain of interconnectedness in aspects such as form or body, feeling, and cognition.

Vipassi concludes by identifying the path with self-control (morality) and mental self-purification (meditation) through the cultivation of wisdom (gnosis).

It is essential to avoid the mistaken belief that Vipassi was the “first Buddha,” although he is the first buddha to whom Gotama refers. Vipassi himself states, “This the Buddhas teach.” Presumably, Vipassi has his own list. Buddha lineages like these represent specific lineages rather than an exhaustive list of all buddhas. Gotama’s lineage, therefore, begins with Vipassi, who establishes a paradigm for all future buddhas in that lineage. The world’s infinitude logically implies the existence of infinite numbers of buddhas.

To this point, the discourse remains continuous. However, some ancient redactor appears to have added a new narrative here, placing the Buddha in Ukkattha, at the Subhaga Grove, sitting alone beneath a sal tree. The Ambattha Sutta describes this location as a prosperous agricultural village.

The Buddha, contemplating his lengthy absence from the divine beings of the Five Pure Abodes, resolves to visit them. These realms are the abodes of non-returners, stream entrants who have transcended the human condition and will no longer be reborn on the earthly plane. As a bodhisattva, the Buddha himself has never been reborn there. As a person in his final existence, however, he now resolves to complete his world tour by visiting these Pure Abodes. The abodes are Devas Not Falling Away, Untroubled Devas, Beautiful Devas, Clear-Sighted Devas, and Peerless Devas. When he arrives, divine beings introduce themselves as arhant-followers of Vipassi. Other beings then come forward to identify as arhant-followers of previous buddhas—Sikhi, Vessabhu, Kakusandha, Konagamana, and Kassapa—associated with our present “fortunate age.” This age is fortunate because of the buddhas who are born within it, making it a fivefold blessing, which might explain the many virtues we observe in it. In multiverse theory, multiverses are thought to be numerous, possibly infinite, and many are likely devoid of life.

In each Pure Abode, the Buddha encounters the same reception by divine beings.

The similarity between this description and high-order psychedelic experiences associated with entheogens like soma, ayahuasca, psilocybin, and Salvia divinorum is striking. The Vedic spiritual tradition, which Buddhism evolved from, contains experiences of this nature. Psychedelics, interestingly, also often correlate with the recollection of past lives.

Gotama declares that as a tathagata, he will no longer reincarnate, having “penetrated the fundamentals of dhamma” and “cut through multiplicity.” His recollection of past buddhas emphasizes a unique twist on the idea of past life recall that appears elsewhere in the Pali Canon as a testament to the Buddha’s attainment. It suggests that all buddhas share a common nature, a concept later expanded by Mahayana.

Walshe’s translation of the Pali phrases “fundamentals of Dhamma” and “cutting through multiplicity” is worth examining. The first is Dhammadhatu; the second, papanca. Dhamma, or dharma, encompasses meanings from ‘thing’ to ‘natural law’ to ‘truth.’ Dhatu means ‘element,’ ‘natural condition,’ ‘relic,’ ‘root’ (of a word), or ‘bodily humor,’ or ‘sense faculty,’ similar to dharma but more concrete. Dhatus, the component elements of things (especially the four elements—fire, water, air, earth), align more with “states” or “phases” in modern terms than with “elements.”

Papanca, as interpreted by most Pali dictionaries, means ‘obstacle,’ ‘impediment,’ ‘delay,’ ‘illusion,’ or ‘obsession,’ that which hinders spiritual progress,’ but Walshe follows an etymology, mentioned but not preferred by Rhys Davids in the PED, which means essentially ‘expansion,’ ‘diffuseness,’ ‘manifoldness,’ hence, ‘multiplicity.’

Thus, we might translate this passage, “so it is, monastics, that by his analysis of reality into its component states, the Tathagata recalls the past buddhas who have attained final emancipation, cut through the illusion of appearances, blazed a trail, and exhausted rebirth, having passed beyond suffering.”

Buddha Centre, Saturday, November 9, 2024