The obsession with seeing portions of the Suttanipāta as early is a holdover of the mid-20th century enthusiasm for discovering a “Buddha before Buddhism”, seeking a “truly authentic” teaching before it was institutionalized as rigid doctrine. Somehow, this search always ends up conflated with the racially-charged effort to divest Buddhism of its “cultural” (read “Asian”) elements.
A new translation of the Sutta Nipāta which doesn’t shy away from its cultural context.
]]>How does one cross over the flood?
How does one cross over the ocean?
A yakkha demon challenges the Buddha with riddles and threatens to “hurl out his mind, rip open his heart, or hurl him across the River Ganges” if he doesn’t solve the riddles to the yakkha’s satisfaction.
]]>Those who thus abide, ever remain invincible, in happiness established. These are the greatest blessings.
]]>I saw this population flounder,
like a fish in a little puddle.
Seeing them fight each other,
fear came upon me.
The Buddha speaks in poignant terms of the saṁvega that led him to leave the household life. He concludes with recommendations for practice and a description of the person who has attained the goal.
]]>Get up and meditate!
What’s the point in your sleeping?
Don’t let an opportunity for practice pass you by.
]]>The notion of poetry I have in mind relates not so much to its formal properties, but to the realms of experience or types of consciousness it involves.
When we look at the texts assembled in the KN, we find that the concern with the character of the Buddha, and in a broader sense with Buddhist holy men and women, is a central, constitutive interest of the collection.
The employment of metaphor points us in aesthetic directions, suggesting meanings that emphasize experience, rather than theory.
This article discusses the antiquity of the Aṭṭhakavagga of the Suttanipāta seeing it not as an attempt to lay out the earliest Buddhist teachings, but instead as an example of early Buddhist poetry meant mainly to inspire our faith in the goal.
]]>Someone who formerly lived alone
and then resorts to sex
is like a chariot careening off-track;
The drawbacks of falling away from the celibate life.
]]>One such as that is
like a sewer
brimful with years of filth
for it’s hard to clean one full of grime.
The Buddha encourages the monks to just expell those who are wicked and stubborn.
]]>A diligent layperson observing these duties
Ascends to the gods called Self-luminous.
The proper code of conduct for followers of the Dhamma.
]]>Abstaining from perceptions of sensuality,
overcoming all fetters,
having totally ended delight in becoming,
one doesn’t sink
into the deep.
The Buddha explains to a yakkha how one crosses over the flood.
]]>What is this body full of piss and shit?
I wouldn’t even want to touch it with my foot.
Māgandiya offers the Buddha his daughter in marriage. The Buddha refuses and further subdues Māgandiya’s pride by describing a state of peace Māgandiya doesn’t even understand.
]]>Whoever should take to himself certain views, thinking them the best…
The conceit that comes from clinging to practices or views—even if they’re supreme—is a fetter.
]]>As I strove to subdue myself
beside the broad Nerañjarā…
Māra attempts to dissuade the Bodhisatta from his path.
]]>… seeing this danger in association,
fare singly as the rhino’s horn.
If you can’t find a good teacher, it’s better to wander alone than to consort with fools.
]]>Linked together by bones and sinews,
plastered over with flesh and hide,
and covered by the skin …
Gain victory over the defilements with this one weird trick (contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body).
]]>Then there is the hollow head
all filled with brains.
Governed by ignorance,
the fool thinks it’s lovely.
Whenever there are arguments and quarrels, tears and anguish, arrogance and pride, and grudges and insults to go with them, can you explain how these things come about?
The Buddha is questioned on the source of quarrels and disputes, and on the highest level of spiritual attainment.
]]>such a monk gives up the here and the beyond,
just as a serpent sheds its worn-out skin
As we advance along the path, we shed our old attachments.
]]>We must recall here that it is attachment to these five aggregates that has to be given up and that this is a gradual process. We must not expect our habitual likes and dislikes, our enjoyments and desires to vanish all at once; nor can they be broken by force.
A translation and analysis of Snp 1.1.
]]>Knowledge of Silence I’ll convey,
hard to do, to master difficult,
so be both firm and resolute
and I’ll speak upon this thing.
Understand this by the way streams move
in clefts and crevices:
the little creeks flow on babbling,
while silent flow the great rivers.What is unfilled makes noise
but silent is what’s full,
the fool is like the pot half-filled,
the wise one is like a lake
A sutta in two parts. The first part gives an account of events soon after the birth of the Bodhisatta. The second part describes the way of the sage.
]]>When a mendicant meditates rightly contemplating a pair of teachings in this way—diligent, keen, and resolute—they can expect one of two results: enlightenment in the present life or, if there’s something left over, non-return.
Not all dualities are misleading. This sutta teaches ways to contemplate the duality of the origination and cessation of stress and suffering so as to reach awakening.
]]>Kokālika has been reborn in the Pink Lotus hell because of his resentment for Sāriputta and Moggallāna.
A follower of Devadatta slanders Ven. Sāriputta and Ven. Moggallāna and, after suffering a painful disease, dies. The sutta then gives a graphic description of the sufferings awaiting him in hell.
]]>Truth, indeed, is deathless speech
A short sutta on Right Speech, equivalent to SN 8.5.
]]>not by weeping & grief
do you gain peace
A poem about facing death squarely and realistically.
]]>A wise man is not deluded by what is perceived by the senses. He does not expect purity by any other way.
Life is short. Possessiveness brings grief. Freedom comes from abandoning any sense of “mine.”
]]>Make sure to also read Bhante’s translation notes as well.
]]>a knowledge master,
evolved, learned, and unflappable—
can help others to contemplate,
so long as they are prepared to listen carefully.
A good teacher, like a good boatman, is one who knows firsthand how to cross to the further shore.
]]>We ask Gotama, the Eye that has arisen in the world:
Is one a brahmin by birth, or by action?
Explain to us what we do not understand –
how to know a brahmin.
What makes someone respectable?
]]>I shall keep reciting the Way to the Beyond
Perhaps the last sutta of the early Pāli Canon, the Pārāyanānugītigāthā extols the virtues of the Buddha and of those who preserve, and realize, his teachings.
]]>The Sutta Nipāta contains older and younger material side by side.
]]>I rejoice, great seer,
in that supreme peace
How can one become freed of all doubts? How does one continue to advance even after stream-entry?
]]>The ignorant dullard who creates acquisition
encounters suffering again and again.
Therefore, understanding, one should not create acquisition, of
contemplating it as the genesis and origin of suffering.
Ordinary and Enlightened beings contrasted, with intimations of the path between the two.
]]>a perilous flood has arisen,
for those oppressed by old age and death,
let me declare an island to you.
Owning nothing, taking nothing:
this is the island with nothing further.
I call this [island] ‘nibbāna,’
the extinction of old age and death.
How to recognize an emancipated person.
]]>Whoso has boys, has sorrow of his boys,
Whoso has kine, by kine come his annoys.
Man’s assets, these of all his woes are chief.
Who has no more, no more has grief.
In this dramatic poem, the Buddha and a cowherd debate who is more prepared for a coming storm.
]]>One who has entirely given up the body, … how should one like that be guided?
How to develop insight after mastering the perception of nothingness.
]]>The person who’s to their body-cave
Clouded by many moods…
Those who remain attached to the body, to sensuality, and to their sense of “mine” will have a hard time freeing themselves from fear of death and from further rebirths.
]]>let a mindful one avoid at every turn
these sense-desires,
with them abandoned,
cross the flood
Faith is the seed, practice the rain,
And wisdom is my yoke and plow.
A simile on the work of the practice as farming.
]]>One should sustain this recollection
The Buddha describes, in this much beloved poem from the Sutta Nipata, how to cultivate loving-kindness.
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