This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Ajahn Sujato: “So they said to the Buddha …” Class 4 of 4. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

“So they said to the Buddha …” Class 4 of 4 - Bhante Sujato

The following talk was given by Bhante Sujato at The Sati Center in Redwood City, CA on May 29, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

“So they said to the Buddha …” Class 4 of 4

Introduction

Hi everyone, good to be back with you for the fourth in this series. I'm here on the land of the Burramattagal people of the Dharug nation, and I pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

For today, we are looking at one of the most interesting and quite difficult suttas¹. It's a sutta which has received a considerable degree of attention over the last 50 years now, since Venerable Ñāṇananda² wrote his seminal treatise, Concept and Reality. Bhikkhu Ñāṇananda's book is kind of like the favorite book of your favorite teachers a lot of the times, and it's actually been incredibly influential in the way that we think about certain aspects of Dhamma³, certain aspects of meditation. So it's a text which is not just theoretically interesting, but also has wide-ranging implications for the way that we think about and talk about meditation as well.

One of the interesting things that Ñāṇananda did in his study was that he took up a comparison with some of the Brahmanical and Upanishadic texts which dealt with similar issues. That's something which is kind of almost unprecedented for Theravada studies at that time, and still fairly rare. So as you know, the last three classes I've been looking a lot at those kinds of links and ideas. I'm not going to be following that up particularly, like Ñāṇananda's take on that, but it is interesting if you want to pursue that further.

But for this week, rather than looking at context in terms of a religious and spiritual and cultural context, we're going to be looking at context in terms of a personal context, specifically a family drama. Sometimes we find in the suttas that these kinds of personal histories are left very much to implication, so the stories are very much beneath the surface and need to be teased out. A good example of that would be Dīgha Nikāya number two, the Sāmaññaphala Sutta, where the whole drama with King Ajātasattu and his father Bimbisāra is left mostly to the subtext. So I believe that with the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, it's a similar kind of idea that there's a personal drama behind it, but that is left mostly in subtext—so much so that most of the discussions of the sutta that I've seen have really ignored that subtext. But I think that understanding it gives an added dimension to the sutta.

When I was doing my research on this, I think it was last year, one of the things I do here in Sydney is I help to teach a course on Buddhism and Psychotherapy. We do a two-year post-grad diploma, and last year I was asked to teach a module on addiction, which is not something I have particular knowledge or skills in. I was thinking how to do this, and it occurred to me that the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta actually gave quite an interesting and very powerful model of addiction, showing how we become addicted to our own thoughts, to our own ideas, and become a victim of and subject to our thoughts, rather than our thoughts being something that are useful for us or something that are meaningful. They become something that subjugate us.

So let's have a look at the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta. As usual, I'm going to share my screen. I'll begin by just reading the first passage.

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying in the land of the Sakyans, near Kapilavatthu, in the Banyan Tree Monastery. Then the Buddha robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Kapilavatthu for alms. He wandered for alms in Kapilavatthu. After the meal, on his return from alms-round, he went to the Great Wood, plunged deep into it, and sat at the root of a young wood-apple tree for the day’s meditation.

Daṇḍapāṇi the Sakyan, while going for a walk, plunged deep into the Great Wood. He approached the Buddha and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, he stood to one side leaning on his staff and said to the Buddha, “What is the ascetic’s doctrine? What does he assert?”

The Buddha replied, “Sir, my doctrine is such that one does not conflict with anyone in this world with its gods, Māras, and Brahmas; this population with its ascetics and brahmans, its gods and humans. And it is such that perceptions do not underlie the brahman who lives detached from sensual pleasures, without doubting, stripped of worry, and rid of craving for rebirth in this or that state. That is my doctrine, that is what I assert.”

When he had spoken, Daṇḍapāṇi shook his head, waggled his tongue, raised his eyebrows until his brow puckered in three furrows, and he departed, leaning on his staff.

All right, so this is the opening passage in the Madhupiṇḍika Sutta, and this gives us a nicely dramatic introduction to this conversation.

First thing is that we are in the Sakyan country, so obviously the place of the Buddha's family. Second thing is that we're introduced to this character, Daṇḍapāṇi⁴. Now, Daṇḍapāṇi is kind of otherwise unknown; he's not a well-known person, but clearly at the very least is sort of associated with the same clan as the Buddha. According to the various commentaries and stories about it, Daṇḍapāṇi was either the brother of Māyā and Mahāpajāpatī—so Māyā was his mother, Mahāpajāpatī was his foster mother—and Daṇḍapāṇi was their brother. So this is one story. Another story says that he was the father of Yasodharā⁵, the Buddha's wife. Both of them agree that he had a close family connection to the women in the Buddha's life, which is kind of interesting. Now, are those two accounts contradictory? Well, not necessarily, but if they're both true, that means that the Buddha married his cousin. Quite possible that that did happen. Or else, it could also be that these are sort of separate—there was a memory that Daṇḍapāṇi was a relative of the Buddha, and it played out in different ways.

You can see from this story that it's already framed in a conflictive kind of way. He comes across the Buddha. The thing I love about this story is that Daṇḍapāṇi goes into the forest, he sees the Buddha meditating, and he immediately goes up to him and starts talking to him. I mean, who does that? Right? Would you walk into a meditation center and then see somebody sitting there meditating and just go up to them and start talking? I doubt it. If it was the Buddha meditating in the forest, would you do that? Hardly likely. And hardly likely that a respectful family member would do something like that. So clearly, Daṇḍapāṇi's kind of got a bit of a thing going here.

His name, Daṇḍapāṇi, also suggests that. Names in Pāli⁶ tend to be much more meaningful than names in modern English. In Pāli, the line between a name and an epithet is not quite as clear as we would like it to be. Anyway, Daṇḍapāṇi means "one with a stick in their hand." A daṇḍa⁷ is a staff. So he's sort of one who's leaning on his staff. I'm reminded of Gandalf when he went to Meduseld and Théoden said, "Would you take away the leaning staff of an old man?" Of course, it was much more than that, but this is a similar kind of idea. [Laughter] In fact, it is against the Vinaya⁸ to teach the Dhamma to somebody with a staff in their hand, or with a stick in their hand, because it is considered to be a weapon. More than that, someone who's called Daṇḍapāṇi is also in Sanskrit literature associated with someone who's angry. So this is a whole web of associations behind the name Daṇḍapāṇi, that he's a fairly belligerent fellow who's coming up to the Buddha and challenging him in this way.

Then he comes up and asks fairly bluntly, "What is your doctrine and what is it that you assert?" The Buddha gives a somewhat elliptical answer. It would have been easy enough for the Buddha to say, "Well, what I teach is suffering and the ending of suffering," as he said in other cases. Or, "I teach about causality and the arising and ceasing of all things." There are many ways in which he could have expressed this, and yet he answered this giving a very particular and quite convoluted response. So it seems clear that that response is very much targeted for Daṇḍapāṇi himself.

He says, "My doctrine is such that one does not conflict with anyone in the world." Daṇḍapāṇi is coming up with this aggressive attitude, so the Buddha immediately deflects it. I remember a story told to me long ago by one of the monks, I think it might have been Ajahn Sumedho if I remember correctly, who was challenged by someone who thought, "What are you on about?" His response was, "Well, we're really on about not making a problem out of anything." And then they responded saying, "Oh yeah, that's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah." So, basically using exactly the same technique as the Buddha.

He continues, "perceptions do not underlie..." This is an unusual framing. What is the Buddha meaning here by perceptions? If we look at how the word "perception" is used in Buddhism, typically a perception is basically the way that we see or interpret things based on what we've learned and what our past experience is. We learn to distinguish things and, in a way, lump things together so that we can see something as a whole. Perception is essential for us to recognize things and to make our way in the world, but perceptions can also create this kind of unity based on someone's experience or ideas that doesn't really necessarily reflect reality.

I remember a story told to me long ago. There was an Aboriginal Elder who was visiting us at Bodhinyana Monastery, and we were having a talk about things. He said he was talking with one of the local politicians, and they were going for a walk through the bush. The politician was complaining about the Aboriginal youth. He said, "Oh, these kids, you know, they're out there stealing cars and doing this and doing that." As they were going along, the Elder was just kind of nodding. Then he would occasionally point to a plant that was growing beside the path and say, "Oh, by the way, do you know what that plant is?" The politician said, "Oh no, this looks just like a weed to me." They'd go along. "Oh, what do you know, what that plant is?" "Oh no, just a scrub." "Do you know what that one is?" "No, no, just another plant." And then the Elder said to him, "Well, you know, see that first one that I pointed to? Actually, there's a tuber which grows underneath it, so that if you need something to drink, you can dig it up and squeeze it. And the second one has medicinal properties, so if you take the leaves from that one and pound them up, you can use them as a paste which is going to be helpful for your wounds. And then the other one has a resin that comes out of it, which you can take and use for binding things, like a glue from nature. But to you, they're all weeds." So this is a thing of perception.

We suspect, because this is a very personal teaching given to Daṇḍapāṇi, that the Buddha is hinting at something. He's hinting that Daṇḍapāṇi has some perceptions, something that's fueling his attitudes. So then we can ask ourselves, what is that? What is the actual perception that the Buddha is referring to here?

If we come back to Daṇḍapāṇi's family situation, if he was the brother of Māyā and Mahāpajāpatī, then well, when the Buddha was born, Māyā died seven days later. And then when he went forth, Mahāpajāpatī was distraught at losing her son. So that gives Daṇḍapāṇi two fairly good reasons for not liking the Buddha. On the other hand, if Daṇḍapāṇi was the father of Yasodharā, then the Buddha walked out on his wife, walked out on Daṇḍapāṇi's daughter, leaving her behind, giving him another fairly good reason for not liking the Buddha. I mean, if he was both, then he's got many good reasons for not liking the Buddha.

So I think that gives us an explanation for why Daṇḍapāṇi is behaving in that kind of way. It's the emotional fallout of the Buddha's life that Daṇḍapāṇi is dealing with, and which is coming out in this aggressive attitude. This, it seems to me, fuels the Buddha's response as well. First of all, diffusing the situation by saying he teaches a doctrine of not conflict. The second thing is talking about perceptions. What I think this means is that the perceptions are the perceptions that Daṇḍapāṇi had of the Buddha. Remembering that the Buddha was his nephew, something like that. Anyway, he's probably seen him growing up, knew him from when he was a boy, and he's got this perception about him. And he's trying to gently remind Daṇḍapāṇi not to get trapped in these perceptions.

I think there's some kind of wisdom emerging from this. It's true, of course, that traumatic things happen to us, and that those traumatic things shape us, and that they create who we are in many ways. But I think it's also true that by lingering on those things, turning them over, going over them again and again, then that can sometimes just reinforce those pathways and those traumas. People need to be shown a path forward, out of this.

Despite the Buddha's very skillful and gentle response, it obviously didn't really have the desired effect, because Daṇḍapāṇi still didn't really get it and wandered off.

In the late afternoon, the Buddha came out of retreat and went to the Banyan Tree Monastery, sat down on the seat spread out, and told the mendicants what happened. When he'd spoken, one of the mendicants said to him, “But sir, asserting what doctrine does the Buddha not conflict with anyone...? And how is it that perceptions do not underlie the brahman who lives detached from sensual pleasures...?”

So the Buddha gives an explanation here.

Mendicants, judgments driven by proliferating perceptions beset a person. If they don’t find anything worth approving, welcoming, or getting attached to in the source from which these arise, this is the end of the underlying tendencies to desire, repulsion, views, doubt, conceit, the desire to be reborn, and ignorance. This is the end of taking up the rod and the sword, the end of quarrels, arguments, and disputes, of accusations, divisive speech, and lies. This is where these bad, unskillful qualities cease without anything left over.

That is what the Buddha said. When he had spoken, the Holy One got up from his seat and entered his dwelling.

Curious, curious explanation. Not only did the Buddha teach a fairly obscure teaching to Daṇḍapāṇi and then leave that matter unresolved, but then when he was asked to explain it to the monks, he kind of did the same thing. He took an obscure teaching and explained it in a fairly obscure way, which then required more explanation. So the monks who were present then wanted to seek even further explanation. That two-layered explanation is an unusual structure to find in the suttas. Normally, the Buddha's teaching is explained in a way to try to make the meaning as clear as possible, but in certain cases he would present a puzzle or an enigma or a paradox to try to stimulate some response from people. Perhaps that's what he's doing here.

Let's untangle a few of the details of this. "Judgments driven by proliferating perceptions." Saṅkhā⁹ is judgments, an appraisal or assessing how we are in relation to others. "Proliferating perceptions" comes from papañca-saññā-saṅkhā. Papañca¹⁰ is the compulsion of the mind to spread out in endless inner commentary that hides reality. The fundamental nature of the word papañca is the main theme of Venerable Ñāṇananda's book Concept and Reality. That idea of proliferation is fairly commonly used in meditation circles these days. "I was sitting meditating and my mind was proliferating." That usage of the word really comes from Ñāṇananda and from his study.

So the idea here is that you have a perception. As we already talked about, a perception is almost like a presumption or an assumed way of seeing things. And then those perceptions proliferate. If those perceptions are driven by the anusayas¹¹, by those underlying tendencies, then they tend to proliferate in us. Once we've got that perception in our mind—and it might be a personal one, as in this particular case, or a racial one, as in the example I talked about before, maybe in terms of gender, nationality, ideas, food, brands of cars, it could be anything—once this is driven by those seven underlying tendencies, it results in judgments, the saṅkhā. You're good, I'm bad, this is better, this is worse, and so on.

The verb here, "to beset," is very specific. The idea here is that they beset a person. The person is not doing those things; they are done to them. This is that point where you're becoming almost like a victim of your own thoughts.

If they don't see anything worth approving, welcoming, or getting attached to in the source from which these arise... The text doesn't tell us what that source is yet. Then, this is the end of the underlying tendencies: desire, repulsion, views, doubt, conceit, the desire to be reborn (bhavarāga¹²), and ignorance. This list of seven anusayas is a standard list in the suttas. These are things that lie unconscious. The Buddha gives an example of a young baby who doesn't have views, for example, but that underlying tendency to views remains within them. Those anusayas can be active and driving us, or they can be just there, waiting.

The monks were still puzzled, so they approached Venerable Mahākaccāna¹³, who was praised by the Buddha for his wisdom. Mahākaccāna gives a simile:

“Reverends, suppose there was a person in need of heartwood... he’d come across a large tree standing with heartwood, but he’d pass over the roots and trunk, imagining that the heartwood should be sought in the branches and leaves. Such is the consequence for the venerables. Though you were face to face with the Buddha, you overlooked him, imagining that you should ask me about this matter.”

After some polite back-and-forth, Mahākaccāna agrees to explain. He repeats the Buddha's statement and then goes on to analyze that statement in terms of the six senses, which is his characteristic approach.

Eye-consciousness arises dependent on the eye and sights. The meeting of the three is contact. Contact is a condition for feeling. What you feel, you perceive. What you perceive, you think about. What you think about, you proliferate. What you proliferate is the source from which judgments driven by proliferating perceptions beset a person. And this occurs with respect to sights known by the eye in the past, future, and present.

And the same for the other senses: ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.

This is another case where we have a short passage that explains the previous enigmatic passage, but then is also itself quite enigmatic. But I believe that we now have enough detail to be able to understand this passage with a good degree of clarity. The subtleties of this passage were largely unearthed by Venerable Ñāṇananda in his analysis.

In this passage, Mahākaccāna deftly unfolds the meaning inside the syntax. For consciousness, contact, and feeling, he repeats the standard analysis of sense experience linked to dependent origination, where each item expressed as a noun leads to the next like falling dominoes. There's no sense of an agent or a choice; it's just a mechanical process.

Then, the syntax changes. It pivots on feeling. He then switches to verbs: what you feel, you perceive; what you perceive, you think about; what you think about, you proliferate. In Pāli, the subject of the verbs is implicit, assuming an agent who is feeling, perceiving, thinking, and proliferating. This is the subtlety of the syntax Mahākaccāna is using. There is a self which is getting involved in this process. That self is now driving that process along, but that self is not even expressed; it's still left entirely implicit, something you can't quite capture in translation. This self is starting to creep in under the surface, still unrecognized and unexpressed, but nonetheless fueling the responses to the things that happen to us. This is psychologically acute. The first things that happen—eyes and sights giving rise to eye-consciousness—that's just how it is. You come along to life and there it is. But we are operating as agents within this, but often we hide our agency from ourselves. It’s what Sartre called "bad faith," this idea that you pretend that you didn't have any choice.

The sequence moves from something relatively passive, like you just feel something, to perceiving, which is a bit more active, then to thinking about it, which is more active again, to proliferating about it. One of the distinctions this sutta is making is between thinking (vitakka¹⁴) and proliferating (papañca). Thinking as such is not considered to be something bad. There are good vitakka and bad vitakka—thoughts of kindness and thoughts of greed. Wise thoughts and foolish thoughts. Thought in and of itself is not considered to be bad. This is something often overlooked by meditators. They sit down, their mind is not quiet, and they think there's something wrong with them. Actually, that's just how minds work. The problem isn't the thought; the problem is the forces driving the thoughts, which in meditation we usually talk about as the five hindrances. This sutta is going to a deeper level and talking about the underlying tendencies. What is considered unwholesome is proliferation, where the thought spins out of control.

"What you proliferate is the source..." Ah, so this is now answering the question from the previous passage. The source is proliferation itself. "...is the source from which judgments driven by proliferating perceptions beset a person."

Now the syntax shifts once again. We started with a static series of things happening. Then we started doing things, with the agent still unexpressed. But through papañca, the subject is now in the accusative, the one who is being done to. You are not doing, you are being done to. You are being beset, overwhelmed, swamped by them. At the same time, the person is now fully explicit. Before, the self was absent, then it started to appear underneath, now the self is fully explicit. But at the same time as the self becomes explicit, it's also beset by these things. This is psychologically acute. Think about teenagers grappling with trying to figure out who they are. At the same time, you're feeling like yourself is being constantly overwhelmed. "Everyone's out to get me."

Finally, the concept of time is introduced: "with respect to the past, present, and the future." Time emerges from this process of proliferation. At the beginning, with eye-consciousness, everything is in the present. Now, proliferation is sending us off into the past, present, and future, which occurs at the same time as the self emerges, because one of the functions of the self is to assure one's own personal continuity through time. Once you do that, you're kind of stuck. The person that you are has emerged from that process, and as soon as you're creating a person, you're also creating the failure of agency. You are no longer able to act and shape your future because you are the victim of all of these things.

This, to me, is a key aspect of addiction. The addict is somebody who feels they can't envisage another future for themselves. I think about this with the way our society is conditioned to think about the future, for example, with AI. You hear people say, "Oh, it's inevitable." It’s the language of an addict. We've allowed ourselves to be taught to be fatalistic about the future, to think we have no control over it.

Mahākaccāna wraps up by explaining that this entire process can be observed and deconstructed.

Where there is evidence of contact, it will be possible to discover evidence of feeling... Where there is no eye, no sights, no eye-consciousness, it will not be possible to discover evidence of contact...

This is showing the rationale for many kinds of Vipassanā¹⁵ meditation. When you are noting "hearing, hearing" or "touching, touching," you are coming back to that first stage rather than getting caught up in the proliferation. He shows the path to cessation, to a state where this whole process can no longer manifest, which is talking about enlightenment and even parinibbāna¹⁶.

The mendicants returned to the Buddha and told him what Mahākaccāna had said. The Buddha confirmed the teaching:

Mahākaccāna is astute, mendicants, he has great wisdom. If you came to me and asked this question, I would answer it in exactly the same way... That’s what it means, and that’s how you should remember it.

When he said this, Venerable Ānanda said:

“Sir, suppose a person who is weak with hunger was to attain a honey-cake. Wherever they taste it, they would enjoy a sweet, delicious flavor. In the same way, wherever a sincere, capable mendicant might examine with wisdom the meaning of this exposition of the teaching, they would only gain joy and clarity. So what is the name of this exposition of the teaching?”

“Well then, Ānanda, you may remember this exposition of the teaching as the Honey-cake Discourse.”

Q&A and Reflections

Unfortunately, we don't hear about what happened to Daṇḍapāṇi further in the suttas.

You can see that when the Buddha was placed into a conflictive and challenging situation, it prompted him to express himself in an unusual way and to present the Dhamma in a way that's highly specific for that occasion. The suttas are records of teachings given by a person at a particular time and place; they're not textbooks. Often that personal dimension is subdued, but in this case, it clearly affects the teaching. What's interesting is how it's then explained in a way that can draw out a more universal meaning.

The basic idea is that we get caught up in our perceptions. Something happens to us in the past, and that perception becomes fixed and shapes our underlying perception of not only ourselves but also of the other. Those underlying perceptions, without us really being aware of it, fuel the way that we see things and think about things, and then we can create our sense of self from that perception. We like to think we have agency over who we are, but this sutta is pointing to the idea that the formation of the self isn't as straightforward as that. The Buddha is not saying that we have no agency, but that if we are not aware, we can become trapped and become the victims of our own past.

People get caught up in some event, ruminating over and over again. You can get into a conflict with somebody, and in your head, you're going over it, thinking, "They're like this, they're like that." Then you bump into them, and it's really awkward because you're confronted with the actual reality of the person, who is not just this idea that you're carrying around in your head.

So this sutta gives us a chance to reflect on that and to maybe teach ourselves to be more aware of where that proliferation happens, and on tracing it back so that we can see how our sense of self is emerging from that process. In meditation, we can see that process unfolding and gradually come back to the reality of the present, of just the six senses and how they're operating. The more we remain in the senses, the less opportunity we are giving for that process to unfold, and the less we're going to be trapped by that proliferation.

The good news that Mahākaccāna gives at the end is that all of these things are evident. We can actually see them. And that is so empowering because that is saying that we don't have to be the victim of our own narrative.