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Visions of Freedom - Recollecting the Buddha’s Disciples and Their Teachings

Introduction

It's always a delight to teach for the Sati Center. Such a nice set of students. And today's topic is, I think, a somewhat unusual one. Well, maybe it's not unusual, but maybe we'll see as we go along. Maybe it's unusual for me, maybe that's why it feels that way. So, I called today "Visions of Freedom." It will be a closer look at some of the great disciples of the Buddha who are remembered in the suttas, in the Vinaya, and in the commentarial stories that have been handed down in this tradition.

We're going to talk about people. You know, there's the Buddha, right? We think about him, and he's maybe a sort of a distant, idealized figure in some ways. And then we have our ordinary Sangha members maybe that we see every week, or other practitioners that we know. But it's important to think sometimes about how, in the Buddha's context, there were also a bunch of people around him, and some of them actually were awakened disciples and helped him out. He didn't do all that by himself. Like all the volunteers that you have at the Sangha, he had people like that all around him, as well as people who could help him with teaching, with guidance of people, and so forth.

There are some in particular who are talked about in the suttas as the "great disciples." Why do we have so-called great disciples? What is the notion of these people? In some sense, they are archetypes. They also represent certain ideals that are understood within the tradition as representative of what the practice can bring out in a person. And they also serve, I think, to humanize the Sangha into real people. These are characters in the Buddha's world, and it can be really interesting to contemplate them, recollect them, learn their stories, and we're going to do some of that.

We'll see how each one of them reflects some of the qualities of the Buddha, but not all of them. It's like everyone got a little piece of this great figure that holds so much, almost in an idealized way. And each of them got some gift, some of that beauty, little facets of that gem. We're going to learn a little bit about their background stories, their teachings, and particularly their character traits. I kind of want to focus on those.

One interesting thing to know about all of them is that the commentarial stories say that many of them had an idea that they wanted to be that great disciple. In a long-distant life, they saw one of the former Buddhas. Maybe they were just like one of us, a lay person in the audience listening to some great dharma talk by a Buddha, and they saw one of these disciples, maybe named as, "This is my disciple who's foremost in whatever." And they felt so inspired, of course by the Buddha, but by this person, and they thought, "I'm going to be like that. I'm going to be that disciple in the future. I want to be the one who's foremost in whatever." It's an interesting notion. And so, who knows? Maybe listening to their stories today, one of you will have an experience like that. I wouldn't say that's the main aim for today, but you might see.

So what is the aim? I think it's mainly to inspire us, to consider these qualities in ourselves in some way. And also to understand that awakened beings come in many forms. There are different strengths, different personalities, and different character traits that they have. Sometimes there's a funny idea that being awakened is going to flatten your personality. You're going to have to get rid of all those quirks that you have, because surely you would become the ideal perfect being in some way. And there are perfections that will come about, I suppose, if we're fully awakened, and yet these people are different from each other. So I think there's a real lesson in that too, for our mind that can over-idealize in certain ways, and we'll learn about some of the teachings that they offered.

Maybe we'll reflect on our own path, qualities we aspire to. Maybe we'll relax a little bit about thinking we have to do everything, and that we don't have to flatten our personality. You get to be you. You get to be more you, I think, if you're awake.

There are some commonalities among the great disciples. For example, all of them would be exemplars of the dharma, exemplars of ethical behavior, and of wisdom. And all of them have very deep faith and devotion to the Buddha. That's how you get to be a great disciple: you're really deeply connected to a Buddha. So these commonalities limit a little bit the degree of contrast that there can be between these people. And yet there are meaningful contrasts that help us, I think, to maybe locate ourselves on a spectrum that arrays itself around these disciples. Maybe spectrum is too linear, but they each—kind of like if you imagine a big space like a mandala of some kind—occupy some position there, and we can move around and triangulate between them to understand our own traits, our own strengths, our own beautiful qualities in some way.

We're going to explore two different pairs. I don't know exactly how to name these dimensions, but I called one of them "reclusive and social": Mahākassapa and Ānanda. These are pulls that we feel on the path, reclusiveness and socialness. And then, maybe colloquially we'd say "head and heart," but more precisely, an analytical mind and a mettā-oriented personality: and that's the venerable Dhammadinnā and Sāmāvatī.

So the hope again is that you'll feel into the beauty and the positive traits of these, feeling some resonance with qualities that you have or that you aspire to. Westerners are not always good at this. That's why I'm belaboring this point. We tend to make negative comparisons: "I don't have anything like that" [Laughter] or "I have so far to go," when you hear about these people. This is our tendency, but don't bother with that. If you find your mind doing that, just turn in a different direction. The Buddha is very clear in his teachings that it is wholesome and skillful to recognize our own goodness and to incline toward qualities that we admire. Totally skillful. It's not egotistical at all.

Mahākassapa

With that, let's get started. We'll start with Mahākassapa, the so-called father of the Sangha. We'll see why that's true as we learn about him.

I want to share some pictures. We of course don't have any actual pictures of these people, but we have renditions of them. So let's go to Mahākassapa, the father of the Sangha. One is a drawing of him supposedly, and the other is an image from a Thai temple done in gold. You can see that they depict him generally as a strong-looking person, a strong-looking man. He has a robust body in some way. We don't know that about him, but these are some images of him.

Mostly I want to talk about him. A little bit by way of background is that Mahākassapa came from a wealthy brahmin family, and he knew even when he was very young that he did not want to marry. He wanted to ordain. His parents were not happy about this. They wanted their son to get married, have children, do all that. They basically said, "Forget it. You're not going to ordain. You're going to marry."

Kassapa tried to avoid this. Actually, his name was Pippali at that point. Pippali was his lay name. And he tried to avoid that by declaring that he would only marry a woman who was absolutely perfect. He gave these particular qualities of perfection: "She's got to be like this, like this, like this." And he thought, "They'll never find a woman like this." And so he went happily about his life. But of course, his parents searched far and wide, especially in some part of the world that was known to have many beautiful women. And they actually found a woman who met all of these qualities. They contacted her parents and said, "Our son's going to marry your daughter. We're wealthy brahmins," and her parents said, "Great, that sounds fine."

But the problem was that this woman, whose name was Bhaddā Kāpilānī, also didn't want to marry. She had told her parents that she wanted to ordain [Laughter] and they said, "No way, you're going to get married." So you see the parallel here; they were meant for each other, right? And of course, this is because they had a long karmic connection through the past. They had been together many times in many past lifetimes, but here they were both coming to this vision that they really wanted to be monks and nuns. That was what they really wanted their life to be about. Each one, being very honest, sent a letter to the other saying, "I'm sure you're a very nice person, but I'm planning to ordain, so I'm sorry I can't marry you."

They sent their letters, and their parents knew that they were going to do this, so they had the letters intercepted. Both sets of parents intercepted the letter and had it replaced with one that said, "I'd love to marry you." Treachery already on the parents' part. As you can imagine, all these forces combined and they ended up having to get married.

So they got married, but they both knew each other's wishes. It was said that they had a garland of flowers between them on the bed [Laughter], and the declaration was, if either of them had a lustful thought, the flowers would wilt. And of course, the flowers never wilted, and they slept on their own sides of the bed and so forth. They did their best managing a farm that Pippali inherited. They did their duty as good Indians, but at some point, both of them reached a breaking point and they just could not continue. There are various stories about what that entailed, mostly seeing the suffering of beings that happens through farming, like when you plow the field and worms die. They were very affected by this, and at some point, they just couldn't do it anymore.

They both came to each other again on the same day and said, "This is not working for me." And so they set their servants free, and they were very sad because they had been nice masters to work for, and they set off to find a monastic life somehow.

One reflection question is, have you had experiences like this? Not of this scale necessarily. Everyone here looks like they're still a lay person, but maybe you've had experiences where there came a point where your spiritual calling just wouldn't let you do something anymore. It's like, "I have to stop doing this. I have to quit my job. I have to move. I have to stop a certain activity, or I have to join a community." A fair number of lay people I've met have experienced that at some point in some way, and we see that reflected in this idealized version of Kassapa and Bhaddā Kāpilānī. Feel that resonance.

They self-ordained, which was interesting. They shaved each other's head. They bought cloth at the market and put it on, even though they hadn't been ordained by anybody, because they wanted to look like monastics. They set off in search of their teacher. And then they had to separate because they realized it looked kind of weird to have a man and a woman together like that, and people might make assumptions. So they separated and went in their different directions, but each found a place to ordain, following Kassapa in this case.

It was intuited by the Buddha once he had made this move and left the household life. The Buddha got this intuition: "Oh, one of my great disciples is coming." And so he set off by himself. He said goodbye to the monks for the day and went out, and he sat by the side of the road. He put himself in full splendor, shining like a Buddha can do. Kassapa came along the road and he said, "That must be my teacher, I guess, this guy who's glowing by the road." And so he bowed down and said, "Would you please ordain me? I would like to be your disciple."

And then something very interesting happened which didn't happen with any other disciple: the Buddha exchanged robes with Kassapa. He said, "Can you wear this rough hemp robe that I'm wearing?" And Kassapa says, "Yes, I can." So they swapped clothing. It is said to have had several meanings. One was that Kassapa was very closely connected with the Buddha at that point, and the second is that the Buddha was kind of asking him, because the Buddha's robe at that point was one that he had picked up in a charnel ground, and it was in pretty bad shape. He was also saying to Kassapa, "Can you do the ascetic practices? Can you uphold that aspect of the dharma?" And Kassapa was saying, "Yes, I can do that." Because the Buddha saw that Kassapa really had a strong tendency toward the ascetic life, living in a very simple, very austere way—not as self-mortification, that's too extreme, but just on the skillful side of self-mortification. The Buddha was like, "We need someone to represent that. That's going to be his role." So from the very beginning, he attuned him toward that.

Interestingly, he gave him three instructions as his first instructions. First, "You will keep a keen sense of hirī and ottappa^[1] toward all other monastics. You should always try to keep your sīla very, very well." Second, "When you're hearing a dharma talk conducive to something wholesome, listen to it with an attentive ear. Reflect upon it and take it to heart. Really immerse yourself in the dharma." And the third one is the interesting one: "Your practice will be mindfulness of the body linked with joy."

So here he's got a guy who's going to be an extreme ascetic. He knows that. And then he says, "Make sure always you keep joy close to your practice." And Kassapa said, "Yes, I will do those things." He attained arahantship a week later.

Sure enough, Kassapa entered the Sangha and became known among his fellow monks as a model of renunciation—not as severe self-punishment, but the joy of simplicity, of contentment, of clarity that comes from living that way. Because he had been told to always keep joy close to his practice, he didn't come across as harsh. He instead embodied the beauty of that kind of practice, the beauty of renunciation, and he encouraged the young monks to dwell in the forest. He was declared foremost in upholding what are called the dhutanga^[2] practices, which are thirteen very simple practices like only taking one meal per day, only living on alms food, not going to formal lunches prepared by lay people, and living outside as much as possible. In the Mahāgosinga Sutta (MN 32), he praises this kind of monk as being ideal. You can see that he was happy to take up the role of protecting and preserving this way of being a Buddhist practitioner.

The Buddha also praised Kassapa's jhānic^[3] ability. He was very good at meditation, and because of his simplicity and his clear ethics, he was very adept in meditation. He didn't have too many hindrances. It's said that being very good at jhāna and being able to attain any of the jhānās at will was what made him so adaptable. That was what made him able to live out in the forest with bugs and tigers and stuff that wasn't that comfortable, and cold and rain. If you can do jhāna, you have an alternative. You don't need the sense pleasures. He was fine with having things that weren't that pleasant necessarily in the sense realm.

One of his biographers said that he had gone from abundance to abundance. I like that phrase. He went from the abundance of being a wealthy brahmin and having access to a nice comfortable life, to the abundance of the inner life, of jhānic ability, of meditation. Even though he then lived in caves and forests and austere circumstances, he had an abundance inside, and that was his abundance of beauty. It's a better kind of abundance.

He was also said to be excellent at giving dharma talks, and the Buddha considered him an equal in this regard. But he has very few recorded dharma talks in the suttas. One of them is AN 10.86, which is on the overestimation of attainments, interestingly. He talked about some people who overestimate their attainments for various reasons, mostly conceit or something else that they think they've accomplished. But overall, I think the fact that we don't have a lot of his dharma talks is probably consistent. I'm guessing that he wasn't that keen on teaching. He wanted to meditate and practice in the woods. He didn't want to be a teacher and have 500 people listen to him. He probably didn't have that many students either. He really preferred to be an example; he lived by example. People saw him, they saw how he lived, and that was inspiring enough. He was the representative of solitude, not a social guy.

One area where he did put himself forth in the Sangha was to protect the integrity of the monastic life. He did not like the fact that some monastics were a little lax and some joined because you got a regular meal every day. Your life is taken care of in certain ways if you're a monk. This is not the reason to ordain. But some people bring in attitudes like that, and he was very particular in criticizing that. He wanted to keep the purity of the monastic life.

So how did he get the name "father of the Sangha," being someone so into solitude and probably not hanging out with a lot of monks all the time? The reason is that he became, through all the qualities I talked about, a respected senior monk. In fact, he was the senior monk at the time of the Buddha's parinibbāna. His two main disciples, Sāriputta and Moggallāna, died before the Buddha. So they were gone when the Buddha died. Mahākassapa was kind of the third great disciple after Sāriputta and Moggallāna, and he was the one that was left as the senior.

When the Buddha died, his concern for the integrity of the Sangha really came forth, right? The head guy is not there anymore. He is the one who called the first council after the Buddha's death. He said, "We have got to get together and preserve these teachings. That is the most important thing. And preserve the integrity of the Vinaya and the monastic life so that the Sangha continues to be a holder of these teachings and stays respected as a carrier of the dharma." And so he was called the father of the Sangha. The Sangha became the carrier of the Buddha's teachings after the Buddha was gone. He was the head of that. He invited only arahants to come to recite the Buddha's teachings at the first council, and Upāli came and recited the Vinaya, and Ānanda, who had to become an arahant first, came and recited the suttas. It's possible that the teachings wouldn't have lasted quite as long as they have, and we don't know that we have the original teachings exactly, but I think this guy was pretty instrumental in preserving the integrity of what we now have received 2,600 years later. It's not trivial to keep something for 2,600 years of human history—the rise and fall of empires, pandemics, and wars. How do you preserve something for that long? But we've done quite well, and it's partly due to Mahākassapa stepping up and leading after the Buddha died.

I want to shift a little bit. You're getting an impression of him, but he had another side also, which is that all this joy that he developed left him with a deep love of nature. He loved nature, and that was why he wanted to live out in the woods. He has a long awakening poem, and there's a lot of stuff in it, but some of it is a praise of nature. So here's a little bit from his awakening poem in the Theragāthā (Thag 18.1):

Strung with garlands of flowering vines, this patch of earth delights the mind. The lovely calls of elephants sound. These rocky crags do please me so. The shimmering hue of darkening clouds, cool waters in pure streams flowing, enveloped by Indra's ladybugs. These rocky crags do please me so. Like the lofty peaks of looming clouds, like the most refined of palaces, the lovely calls of tuskers sound, these rocky crags do please me so. The lovely ground is rained upon. The hills are full of holy seers, resounding with the cry of peacocks. These rocky crags do please me so. Being clothed in flax and flowers, as the sky is covered in clouds, strewn with flocks of various birds. These rocky crags do please me so. But there is not so much contentment for me in the five-fold music as in truly seeing dharma with a well-concentrated mind.

The five-fold music is the five sense doors. The ordinary senses. He says, "Yes, I love nature and it's beautiful and I delight in that, but for me there's even more delight in the inner life of concentration." So it paints a picture a little bit more.

There's a whole section on Kassapa called the Kassapa Samyutta in the Samyutta Nikāya (SN 16), which has a lot of stories about him, and there's a very poignant one. He's talking with the Buddha, and Kassapa is old at this point, and the Buddha is saying to him, "You're getting pretty old, Kassapa. You're an old man living out in the woods, and it's dangerous and it's uncomfortable. I'm pretty well known now as the Buddha. If you come close to me, you'll get better offerings and it'll be more comfortable for you in your old age." It's a compassionate offering by the Buddha: "Please come, you've earned it." [Laughter]

And Kassapa says, "I don't want to do that."

The Buddha says, "You are old now, Kassapa, and those worn-out hemp and rag robes must be burdensome for you. Therefore, you should wear robes offered by householders, accept meals given on invitation, and come and dwell close to me."

And Kassapa says, "For a long time, venerable sir, I have been a forest dweller and have spoken in praise of forest dwelling. I have been an alms food eater and have spoken in praise of eating alms food. I have been a rag-robe wearer and have spoken in praise of wearing rag robes, and so forth about contentment, seclusion, aloofness from society. I consider two benefits of this. I see for myself a pleasant dwelling in this very life, and I have compassion for later generations, thinking, 'May those of later generations follow my example, for when they see that I do this, they may too do this.'"

And the Buddha says, "You're right, Kassapa. You should keep doing what you're doing."

The only other time that phrase appears in the suttas—"I see for myself a pleasant abiding here and now, and I have compassion for future generations," as far as I know, is in the Majjhima Nikāya, said by the Buddha himself about going on retreat. Somebody teases the Buddha and says, "Do you need to go on retreat?" He says, "No, I don't. But I find it pleasant, and I'm making an example out of compassion for others that they should go on retreat." So again we see this parallel, Kassapa and the Buddha very similar in certain ways.

So yeah, Kassapa, interesting guy. Consider if you feel some resonance, some sense of this guy.

Reflections on Mahākassapa

Maybe we'll just pause for a moment, see if there are any comments.

Participant: Did he have any supernormal powers?

Kim Allen: Well, that's an interesting question. I don't know that it's stated that he did, but it's said that he can enter any of the jhānās at any time. So that's a pretty powerful mind. It's a good question. He's not really known for supernormal powers if he had them.

Kevin: I was thinking about Bhikkhu Sujato's comment that it's too bad that out of all the parts of the path that we decided to extract as a standalone in the West, we chose mindfulness instead of renunciation, because society, ecologically and personally, that's the thing that the world needs most. And boy, do you get a jolt of that with the story of his life. That sense of the samana tradition and the virtues of simplicity and renunciation comes through so strongly, and it's deeply moving to think of the debt that we owe to Mahākassapa.

Kim Allen: Thank you. Yeah. I love how each of these four that we talk about today will have that sense of representing something important. Certainly Kassapa represents something that is a little bit unusual compared to, as you said, what we as lay people have chosen. I think there's a useful expansion we can make of our mind and heart to admire somebody like Kassapa without having a self form around that, like "Oh, but I'm not good enough to do that" or "I wasn't able" or "I'm a little afraid of that." Just take him as he is and say, "Wow, how beautiful for that." There's other beauty, but yeah, this is representing something important and something perhaps a little bit different.

Mary: I really appreciated and was a bit surprised and grateful for the gāthā you read about the depth of his appreciation for living in nature. Because so often I think this is a misconception that I've held dear for a long time, and you just kind of blew it out of the water. When I go for a walk in the morning through the desert and I feel a real calm and peacefulness and joy in being there, there's also a sense of how there's still some grasping and clinging involved to these beautiful sense pleasures because they are coming in at the sense doors. And I really like that he was able to so deeply immerse himself and appreciate that without the clinging and attachment. That was really helpful for me.

Kim Allen: Oh, very nice. Thank you.

Participant: I just am finishing the autobiography of Ajahn Lee and he talks about Mahākassapa. It was inspiring to me for the same reasons: that he just wanted to be living as an ascetic, and how much he did that in benevolence for all beings. He wanted to be an example and Ajahn Lee took that very much to heart as well. It's just that continuity, all from there to the 20th century in the 1950s when Ajahn Lee was having that experience, how long that lineage pulled forward as you said. We're still looking at his example.

Kim Allen: Nice. Yeah. It's not dead yet.

Ānanda

So, let's move on to our contrast with Kassapa, which is Ānanda.

Again we'll look at a picture. We don't have pictures, but there's Kassapa, and then it's interesting you see this sort of strength, and then these are the pictures that we have of representatives of Ānanda, who looks, I find, a little boyish the way he's often represented, which is kind of cute. And of course, we'll see he had many mature qualities, but nonetheless these are some images of Ānanda, said to be the guardian of the dharma, and we'll see what is meant by that as we learn more about him.

Ānanda was a member of the Sakyan clan. He was not a brahmin. He was from the warrior class, the same class as the Buddha. In fact, he was the Buddha's cousin. His father was the brother of the Buddha's father. It's said that they were born on the same day and that they both came down from Tusita heaven like the Buddha did. So, there's some deep connection between the Buddha and Ānanda already from the beginning.

Ānanda ordained along with a large group of Sakyan men who were getting inspired by the Buddha right when he returned from his awakening. The Buddha was awakened at age 35, and he came back and slowly started gathering a Sangha and creating the monastic world. A whole bunch of Sakyan men were ordained in those first few years, including Ānanda, to the point where some of the women complained, "Hey, everybody's ordaining." Ānanda was 37, so that would be when the Buddha was 37.

There were already arahants in the Sangha around the Buddha at that time, so Ānanda was actually ordained and had a preceptor who was not the Buddha. He went on some retreats and other things, and it is said that he attained stream entry during his first rains retreat, and that's described in Samyutta Nikāya 22.83. The teacher on that retreat was a monk named Puṇṇa Mantānīputta, who was also an arahant monk, and he was teaching about the selfless nature of the five aggregates. That teaching spoke very deeply to Ānanda and it ripened into stream entry on that retreat.

You may think of Ānanda as the Buddha's attendant, but that didn't happen for a while. He was kind of an anonymous monk for about 20 years in the Sangha. I mean, not literally anonymous, the Buddha knew who he was, but he was just a monk. He spent that first 20 years really working on purification of his mind. He was very diligent at following the rules, doing the meditations, living the life, being the best monk that he could essentially.

And then around age 55—so the Buddha would be 55, he was 55—the Buddha had had a series of attendants before that. And he was starting to get very popular and busy as the Buddha. He said, "I really need a high-quality attendant who can do a lot of things for me and start to manage all these people and teaching engagements and everything that I'm doing." And a whole bunch of monks said, "Ooh, me. I'd like to do that job." But Ānanda didn't say that. He just stood to the side. It didn't even occur to him to raise his hand, he said later. And the Buddha looked around and he said, "I choose Ānanda." [Laughter]

Partly because he wasn't volunteering like that, but he saw that Ānanda had all the right qualities. He was totally devoted, he had spent all this time purifying his mind, he was partially awakened so he wasn't going to have major problems with the precepts or anything. He wasn't an arahant, but arahants have a way of just wanting to do their own thing. So probably a stream enterer is better to be an attendant for a Buddha.

And it turned out that he was absolutely great at the job of being the Buddha's attendant. This is not an easy job, by the way. And he loved it. Ānanda loved people. I don't know if he was an extrovert or not because he was devoted to the monk's life, he liked being a monk also, but he was very social. He was good with people, understood people well. He was even called foremost at being the Buddha's attendant. It says in his awakening poem that he had no thoughts of sensual desire or hatred arise in his mind during the 25 years that he was the Buddha's attendant. It is possible for stream enterers to have desire and hatred arise. They're not free of those things yet. But being so close to the Buddha, there was no opportunity. So it just never came up for him. It was as if he was fully awakened almost, living with the Buddha, even though he was "only a stream enterer." [Laughter]

What about some of the qualities that Ānanda had? He was clearly very intelligent in multiple senses of the word, and he was actually known for his mental intelligence. He was said to be foremost in no fewer than five categories. No other disciple was named as foremost in five ways. Most of them just got one, like Kassapa foremost in the dhutanga practices. Ānanda got five. One of them was that he was foremost in learning. He knew all of the teachings. He memorized all the Buddhist discourses, it is said, and he was also excellent at giving dharma talks. The Buddha asked him to teach many times. Like when his back was sore, he would ask Ānanda to teach. Majjhima Nikāya 53, the Sekha Sutta, was taught by Ānanda when the Buddha's back was sore. He could speak just as well on the dharma as the Buddha because he knew the teachings so well, and he was praised in so many ways for this.

For example, the Buddha said, "Ānanda, monks, is wise, one of great understanding." And in one of the Jātaka tales, the Buddha told a householder, "If you wish to honor the Dharma, go and honor Ānanda. He is the guardian of the dharma." So that's where he gets the name. He got it directly from the Buddha. He was so pure in his understanding and conveying of the dharma that he was the guardian of it. He kept its purity. In Anguttara Nikāya 3.78, the Buddha says, "Ānanda is still one on the path of higher training," meaning he's not fully awakened yet. "It is not easy to find one who equals him fully in wisdom." That's high praise.

And then in the final teaching of the Buddha, the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, he says, "Ānanda's presence alone gives people joy. When he speaks on the dharma to them, there will be joy for them because of his words." And it said about him, "If one wishes to understand the dharma, one should resort to such a one who is a disciple of great learning, a bearer of the dharma, a wise disciple of the Buddha... Ānanda is the eye of the entire world, deserving worship, of great learning." So very smart and intellectual and well-spoken, eloquent with the teachings.

And yet he had—also, so often we think of people like that as kind of heady or intellectual—but he had very good emotional intelligence also. His job as the attendant was to be the interface between the Buddha and everybody else. You can imagine how many people wanted to see the Buddha and talk with him, especially once he got popular. There were these throngs of people who all wanted to come and see the Buddha, and Ānanda's job was to kind of manage all that. Yet it was said that he had no enemies, so somehow he did that well. People did not get upset. He probably had to say no to a lot of people: "I'm sorry, the Buddha has meal offerings for the next three weeks. You're going to have to get in line." But he never made people feel put aside, like they weren't seen, like they weren't being honored or respected. Somehow he kept everybody happy without feeling like they were being manipulated or slighted. He was a smooth operator in a good sense of that word. He had no rivals, no conflicts, no tensions with people. It's almost impossible that that could be true, but that was his gift, his amazing emotional intelligence.

It's also said that he took admonishment very well. Because he wasn't an arahant, he was prone to making mistakes and he occasionally got admonished for not doing the Vinaya quite right. He's also the source of some Vinaya rules for things that he did, and he took it all very well. Actually, there's a story in the Vinaya that one time when the Buddha was sick, he cooked rice gruel for the Buddha. Because another time the Buddha had been sick, somebody had given him rice gruel and the Buddha recovered. So he's like, "Rice gruel works well for the Buddha." So the Buddha got sick, he cooked it, gave it to him. The Buddha said, "No, no, no, no. You can't cook as a monk." This was actually the source of the rule against cooking for monks. I guess nobody had thought of it before because they were always getting alms food. But Ānanda, out of care and love for the Buddha, cooked him this nice meal, and the Buddha was like, "No, no, no. This is distracting for you. So, monks don't cook anymore."

He did things like forget his outer robe sometimes. There was a more serious incident once in the Jātaka tales, though it's a former life of Ānanda. As you can imagine, Ānanda and the Buddha ended up being together a lot in the Jātaka tales, which are stories of the Buddha's lives before he became the Buddha. There was one where Ānanda was a king and he gave up his kingdom to become an ascetic. But even though he was supposed to be an ascetic, he had saved a little store of salt to flavor his food, which is not really in line with the vows he had taken. And so another ascetic admonishes him for this, which turned out to be the Bodhisatta. He's admonished by this other ascetic: "You shouldn't be having salt like that." And Ānanda gets touchy about that, and he says, "You should speak more gently and compassionately." He sort of thought that he was a little bit harsh in the way he was admonished, and his feelings were hurt basically.

And the Bodhisatta comments that true spiritual friends can be tough with each other. That is real compassion. "I don't have to be kind to you when I'm admonishing you. You shouldn't be so touchy." And Ānanda thought about that and said, "You're right. Please always guide and correct me." So he created a bond between himself and the Buddha to always guide and correct him, and that probably had an influence on the Buddha becoming his teacher later.

I said that he had five foremosts. He was foremost in learning, foremost in memory, foremost in mastering the sequential structure of the teachings. That was why he could give good dharma talks; he could always explain the progression of the path and how the different teachings were connected to each other in a structured way. Majjhima Nikāya 53 is about the path of higher training, and Ānanda gives a crystal clear explanation of how a person would progress along the path, and the Buddha approves it at the end and says, "I would have taught the same way." That's number three. Number four is that he was foremost in being steadfast in study. So these first four are really all about learning. And the fifth is that he was foremost in being an attendant to the Buddha. He got the highest praise of anybody.

You can ask, why was he so good at learning and knowledge and memory? Was he just a smart guy? Well, probably I guess, but this is also part of his qualities because he had no pride and he had no hindrances around absorbing information with a focused mind. He didn't have the scatteredness and forgetfulness that we have, which is often actually the operation of hindrances, the mental static that we suffer through as lay people. He just didn't have that because of his devotion, his faith, his uncluttered mind. He knew what he was doing. He was a monk serving the Buddha, living the life as best he could. Not awake yet, but it doesn't matter, that's what he's practicing. And so his mind was just totally clear. He could just remember everything that was told to him, repeat it back easily. I think his uncluttered, unhindered mind increased his intelligence, his organizational ability, his administrative ability, his emotional intelligence, his attunement to people. He just didn't have clutter in his mind. So he had his own form of simplicity like Kassapa, but it came out very differently. He had a busy life. I don't think he did a lot of long retreats. He mostly was serving as his practice.

Another thing that's important to mention about Ānanda is his support of the bhikkhuni ordination. The Buddha's aunt, the woman who had raised him, wanted to ordain as a nun, and there weren't nuns. She and a bunch of other palace women got together and said, "We would like to start the nuns' order. We want to be nuns." And the Buddha said, "No." The Buddha denied her three times. You're supposed to be able to ask three times and the Buddha gives in. But three times he said no. And then he packed up and left from Kapilavatthu to Vesālī, which is a distance of a few hundred miles. Mahāpajāpatī was crushed. He had said no three times and then packed up and left. And so she got together with 500 women, and they followed the Buddha. This was a trek, not an easy trek to make, through streams and forests and mountains. They were walking, and they weren't ascetics, so it was hard to get food and carry their stuff. Interestingly, a little aside, this journey from Kapilavatthu to Vesālī was retraced a year ago in the fall of 2025 by 94 Buddhist nuns. So sweet. I just saw a little documentary about it.

But back to Mahāpajāpatī doing it for the first time with all these women. She arrived dusty, injured, and tearful, and she asked again, "Please let us ordain." And she was again denied three times by the Buddha. Crushed, just crushed. And so she was just crying, and Ānanda saw her and said, "Oh, you know, what happened?" He's so kind to people and understands people. She explains what happened, and he says, "Well, I'm going to intercede on your behalf."

He goes to the Buddha and says, "Why can't you... you said no three times? It would be so nice if there could be nuns." And the Buddha said, "Please, please don't be eager for women to ordain." And so Ānanda took an indirect approach. He said, "Well, can women achieve all the same levels of awakening as men?" The Buddha says, "Yes, they can." Ānanda says, "Well, it would be good to ordain women then, wouldn't it? Because getting that far can only be achieved rarely in the household life. They're going to have to have the support of a monastic life." And then, because Ānanda is so good with people, he brings in a personal element and he says, "And anyway, this is your foster mother. She was very helpful to you. She kept you alive when your mother died when you were seven days old, and she suckled you at her breast and brought you up and was very helpful to you." And so the Buddha relents.

Now, the tradition is kind of careful about this, and they say Buddhas can't actually be convinced of things that they hadn't thought of before because they've seen all of this. The tradition says that the Buddha was deliberately being tough because he had concern for the danger to women, which I would grant. Think about life in ancient India 2,600 years ago. There weren't even hardly any single women living by themselves. This was a really dangerous life, and then to want to live on your own and get alms food because they can't cook... this is a whole different life that sort of didn't exist for women, and so he was creating it. So fair enough. And there were nuns who were raped and taken advantage of. What they're saying is that the Buddha was going to relent anyway because all Buddhas establish a nuns' order. Every Buddha in history has done that, and so did Gotama. But he was being tough so that it would have high standards and that people would understand that it was dangerous and be careful about it.

I think Ānanda played a very lovely role in that, and his closeness to the Buddha made that possible. He was integral in this because he loved all people. He didn't carry the chauvinistic male biases of his time, which is a big thing to overcome. A lot of men at that time just unthinkingly had it, as they still do in some cases.

Ānanda was also a support to other monks. There were some other monks who were helped quite directly in their practice by him. For example, Vaṅgīsa, who was a poor monk who struggled so much with sensual lust. Ānanda gave him a teaching—we have a number of Ānanda's teachings, SN 8.4—Vaṅgīsa was taught by Ānanda about not being so attached to the sense world. And then there's Channa, who had been censured because of his arrogance and stubbornness. Ānanda took pity on this monk. This monk was told not to be talked to by the other monks because he was so irritating and bad in his behavior. But he came with a different attitude to Ānanda finally, kind of a humble attitude. Ānanda says, "Oh, it looks like you've changed, Channa. I will give you a teaching." SN 22.90, about dependent arising. And Channa made the breakthrough to stream entry because of Ānanda's teaching. So Ānanda was tremendously compassionate, and always very respectful to the Buddha. He didn't one-up him or anything, but he always found a solicitous way to help everybody and support everybody. That was what he wanted to do. Most of all, he was supporting the Buddha, that was his job. But he saw everybody that was under the Buddha as somebody that he should support also in some way if he could. Really amazing.

There is a connection between Ānanda and Kassapa also. They seem to have some karma together. Kassapa was critical of Ānanda, and Kassapa thought Ānanda was a little soft because he was such a people person and always helping. Ānanda generally believed that if you treat people well, if you hold up the best you hope for them and give them chances, they will rise to the occasion and come forth with those good qualities. But he had so much faith in people that there were times where he hoped people would rise to the challenge and they didn't.

There was a case where Ānanda was taking 30 young, freshly ordained monks on tour. He went out with them, walking and meditating and getting alms food, and Ānanda was their leader. The new monks weren't that good at the Vinaya, and they were kind of worldly and were not behaving that well and they weren't very good representatives of the dharma. They were kind of loud and talking. Ānanda did his best, but he was like, "Come on, guys. We should uphold the Vinaya." And Kassapa was like, "No, this does not look good." And he chastised Ānanda for being too soft on these monks. He's like, "You got to be tough with these guys. The monks who are ordaining these days are not like the ones that came at the beginning like you and me. These young guys, they just want the food, they want the status because the Buddha is popular now. They want the identity of that." And Ānanda doesn't get any of this. He doesn't think in those terms. But Kassapa, he's the guy for integrity of the Sangha. So there was some criticism between Kassapa and Ānanda. Plus, Ānanda was not an arahant. So Kassapa considered it his duty also to teach him a little bit.

There's a poignant sutta between Kassapa and Ānanda also in the Kassapa Samyutta. There's a scene where Kassapa says about the young bhikkhus: "Why, friend Ānanda, are you wandering about with these young bhikkhus who are unguarded in their sense faculties, immoderate in eating, and not devoted to wakefulness? One would think you were wandering about trampling on crops. One would think you were wandering about destroying families. Your retinue is breaking apart, friend. Your young followers are slipping away." And that's true because all 30 of them disrobed by the way. They weren't really monks. And then Kassapa continues, "But still this youngster does not know his measure."

And Ānanda, who seems to get harsh criticism—you remember the story about him being hurt by the Bodhisatta criticizing him in an earlier life—this time he did a little better. He wasn't quite so hurt, but he said to Kassapa, "Gray hairs are growing on my head, venerable Kassapa. Can't we escape being called a youngster by the venerable Mahākassapa?" It's kind of a sweet scene, right? He's old. He has gray hairs. He's at least over 55, we know at this point because he was the Buddha's attendant by then. And so Kassapa criticizes him and he says, "Come on, I've got gray hair. You call me a youngster." Kassapa also didn't like the way Ānanda was close to the women, because Kassapa was a little tough about that too. So you see these differences between them, and yet they each had their skillful qualities.

Ānanda did become an arahant, but not until after the Buddha had passed through parinibbāna. When the Buddha died, he was still just a stream enterer. Can you imagine? Buddha's attendant for 25 years, all these dharma talks, never woke up. But the Buddha did predict that Ānanda would reach full awakening in this lifetime. It happened to be after the Buddha's death, and he was told by Kassapa, "Hey, you got to wake up, because I'm only inviting arahants to the first council." And so Ānanda was like, talk about pressure, right? [Laughter] "You have to wake up by tomorrow." And so Ānanda did his best, he meditated really well, and finally he was like, "I'm so tired, I'm just going to go to bed." And as he was laying his head down to the pillow, he had taken his feet off the ground but his head had not yet hit the pillow, and he woke up. [Laughter] So he did make it to the first council as an arahant, recited all the suttas, it is said.

It has a happy ending, but because he was only a stream enterer when the Buddha died, he was crushed by the Buddha's death. He was really hit hard. The arahants had enough maturity that they could see, yes, really everything is impermanent, but Ānanda was very distressed by the Buddha's death. His cousin, his teacher, the person he was so devoted to. He was crying. But he remembered mindfulness of the body as a practice that he could do in his grief, and that served him well.

So I think Ānanda is really sweet, and maybe he doesn't get as much credit as he deserves. He's depicted as this boyish-looking monk, right? But look at everything he did. He played as much of a role as Kassapa in helping to preserve the dharma, to keep the Sangha together, to keep lay people able to support the Sangha, to ordain women. He did a huge amount.

Reflections on Ānanda

So we'll pause there. Any reflections? This is also this segment, right? So we have a contrast between the value of the seclusion and the strong integrity of the ascetic life, and the value of being a social guy who kept people together. The part of the Sangha that was public-facing was attended to and cared for by Ānanda.

Danielle: It's really incredible to think of how much mettā he must have been filled with, and there was so much selflessness there. I don't hear a lot of him being concerned about himself in any way, which is incredible.

Kim Allen: Yeah. It's incredible.

Danielle: And I also have to ask about the women trying to ordain. I knew that the Buddha had refused them, but I didn't know that it was so completely, and two rounds of three is pretty serious. Is the idea that the Buddha kind of always knew what was going to unfold? Like he knew that this was going to happen and he was just sort of trying to teach them something or show them something? Is that the idea?

Kim Allen: I think that's what the tradition says because every Buddha establishes a four-fold Sangha. I'm not a scholar in this area, but there's a lot of talk about... the sutta about Mahāpajāpatī also includes the eight heavy rules that the Buddha created for nuns that they have to take on in order to ordain. That's in AN 8.51. And it sounds bad. And the Buddha also says, "Oh, now that we have women, the dharma is going to decline faster than if there were only men." You start saying, "Okay, was this really the word of the Buddha? Did something get added later or mixed up in some way?" I'll leave that to the scholars. It's an issue that we have to consider as practitioners, and particularly as women practitioners, how we hold these challenging parts of the dharma. But it is said clearly that every Buddha establishes a four-fold Sangha. We're going to have two women next.

Participant: I have heard from scholar Andrew Olendzki that at that time women were literally the property of men, and probably had no income of their own, and living out in the forest alone was very dangerous. So I'm sure the Buddha took those considerations into mind also.

Kim Allen: Yeah, exactly. I mean there just wasn't a slot for them to fit into. Whereas for the men there was already this parallel life of being a samana, but there weren't really women doing that.

Cara: This is kind of a partially formed reflection, but there's just something that keeps striking me about the description of Ānanda as having such a strong memory with an uncluttered focus, kind of clarity of mind. In my experience, I often find that having a very strong memory can be a source of clutter in my own mind. [Laughter] There's some inspiration there in developing discernment and tracing how hindrances are affecting not only what I remember but when it arises.

Kim Allen: Okay, thanks. Yes, managing the intellectual side of the mind is a whole aspect of practice; it can tend toward restlessness. But I don't think we would wish to diminish it in some way in order to be less restless. There's plenty of restlessness in dull minds also. That's my interpretation of Ānanda—he just had this clarity because he had so much mettā, so much devotion, so much faith. He just had all these qualities that kept himself out of the way, and hindrances are a lot about the self and the story and managing my life.

Dhammadinnā

So, why don't we take a little break for now and come back in 20 minutes...

All right. So, welcome back.

We're going to shift now to another pair of great disciples. I had named these as kind of head and heart, if you will, but I think those realms are really a lot less opposed really than we make them out to be in the West. As Westerners, we all say, "Yeah, right," but that's because we spent a long time in our history trying to separate those out. I don't know that they were ever made as separate in Eastern understanding. But nonetheless, what we'll see is that both of the great disciples we're about to look at were known to be clear and organized and fair, but one of them led with wisdom and the other led from a place of caring for everyone. So they have kind of a different entry point and so they feel different. That's the head and heart part. So maybe it's analytical versus mettā. But we've already seen that Ānanda had a lot of mettā. You'll see some similarities actually between the mettā person and Ānanda.

But we're going to start with a disciple named Dhammadinnā. It's kind of funny, we have a teacher here at the Sati Center named Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā. I wonder if she was named for this person. You'll have to ask her what the inspiration was for her name to be given. But this is the earlier Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā.

As you might imagine, we have less information about the women overall than the men. Just not as much material. But there are stories and qualities to be found that we'll go through. And I think these two present kind of an interesting pair.

Dhammadinnā was praised by the Buddha as being the foremost dharma teacher among the bhikkhunis. She in particular was highly analytical; she really knew the teachings very well in a crisp, list-like kind of way. She has an interesting background story that's found in the commentary to the Dhammapada.

As with the male disciples, she was a lay woman long ago and she saw the Buddha giving a dharma talk, and there were nuns present. The Buddha always found a four-fold Sangha. The Buddha was there with his bhikkhunis, and he praised one of the bhikkhunis as being the foremost in preaching or in giving dharma talks in front of everybody. This woman, who was an earlier birth of Dhammadinnā, was so inspired by this. She thought, "I'm going to become the nun who's foremost in giving dharma talks. I want to be that. That sounds great." So this is a skillful use of identity, of wanting an identity. If you want to become a great disciple, that's a good use for that.

She decided that the way to do this was to perform many acts of merit for the Buddha and his disciples. She devoted herself, she was giving meals, doing everything she could through many, many lifetimes, and she eventually got the conditions to become this great disciple during Gotama Buddha's era. In this lifetime she was born as a beautiful princess. She wasn't always, by the way; she was said to be born as a poor housemaid in quite a number of earlier lifetimes. So it's not always that people are born into these great conditions. But she was born as a beautiful princess in this one, and she became the wife of Visākha, who was the treasurer of Rājagaha, one of the major cities.

Visākha was a friend of King Bimbisāra, who was the king of that area. Bimbisāra was a follower of the Buddha. That gave Visākha the chance to go and see the Buddha in the company of the king. Visākha listened to this teaching by the Buddha, and he became a stream enterer, which he wasn't planning to do, but that just happened listening to the sermon. He was a good ethical person anyway, but when he became a stream enterer that kind of multiplied. He kept reflecting and he actually progressed to the third stage of awakening, a non-returner, just through his own practice as a lay person.

He became a non-returner, and that was really a different thing for him. He became transformed because he was nearly fully awakened, and his wife, Dhammadinnā, asked what had happened to him. She said, "You seem really different, Visākha." And he said that his mind had been transformed into something rich and strange. I love that description of the awakened mind. He wasn't a full arahant, but he said, "My mind has become something rich and strange."

He realized he didn't really want to live as an ordinary lay person anymore. He gave all his wealth to his wife. But he didn't ordain. Interestingly, he stayed a lay person, which you can do as a non-returner. But he wanted to live a very simple, secluded life. He didn't want anything to do with being the treasurer or being a husband. He gave all his worldly wealth to her and retired to seclusion.

And she said, "Well, I don't want all this wealth. That's not what I was aiming for." She didn't really know about her former life where she had vowed to be this follower of the Buddha, but she's like, "What do I do with this?" Before he left she said, "Can women listen to the Buddha also and attain the state that you've attained?" He said, "Yes, you can achieve it too." She's like, "Well, that's what I'm going to do."

She didn't keep the wealth. Someone mentioned earlier women are the property of men, so the first thing she had to do was ask Visākha's permission to be a bhikkhuni, and he granted it. So she became a bhikkhuni. She gave up all the wealth to somebody else. She went into solitude and attained arahantship quite quickly, along with all the supernormal powers. We had a question about that earlier. Dhammadinnā had all the supernormal powers and she was an arahant. She had surpassed her husband! He stayed a lay person and was "only" at the third stage of awakening.

After she became an arahant, she didn't need to be in seclusion anymore. She thought about what she should do and thought, "I want to share what I've learned," right in line with her vow to be a dharma teacher. So she came back to Rājagaha, the big city, and she lived at the nuns' monastery and was preaching.

Visākha heard about her return. He didn't know that she was an arahant, but he thought maybe she had failed on her retreat and was just back living in the crowd now. So he went to her, and remember he's at the third stage of awakening, so he's a pretty sharp guy. He went and asked her a bunch of tough dharma questions to test her, to see if it was fruitful that she became a nun. She answered every question perfectly. This is in Majjhima Nikāya 44. You can read them if you want.

Then he asked her questions about Nibbāna. She looked him hard in the eye. Remember, she's the analytical type, and she said, "Friend Visākha, you have pushed the line of questioning too far. You were not able to grasp the limit of your questions. You have gone beyond what you know by asking about Nibbāna," because he was only at the third stage and she was an arahant. She said, "If you want, you can go ask the Buddha about Nibbāna."

Visākha is kind of surprised by this, but he goes to the Buddha. Actually, it says he delighted and rejoiced in Dhammadinnā's words and paid homage to her and went to the Blessed One. He bowed to her because she was a monastic. He didn't know she was an arahant—he couldn't tell that because he wasn't fully awakened himself—but he bows to her because she is ordained and he is not, which is very sweet. I like this scene.

He goes to the Buddha and tells the Buddha the whole conversation. And the Buddha praises her. He says, "The bhikkhuni Dhammadinnā is wise. She has great wisdom. If you had asked me the meaning of this, I would have explained it to you in exactly the same way." He raises her dharma talk up to his level. He says, "She's as good as me in explaining the dharma."

According to the Dhammapada commentary, he speaks verse 421 of the Dhammapada: "He who has nothing before, behind, or in between, who has nothing and clings to nothing—him I call a brahmin." It's talking about the awakened mind being completely free of all attachments, of any kind of entangled understandings. He's basically saying this is what Dhammadinnā has done and this is what you should do, Visākha. He praises her and explains that she's very eloquent in doctrinal knowledge.

To say a little bit more about what Visākha was asking her about in MN 44: he asked her about very profound topics. He asked her about identity and identity view, which he knew all about because he was a non-returner. He asked her about the Noble Eightfold Path. He asked her about concentration. He asked her about the attainment of cessation, which only non-returners and arahants can do. He asked her about the underlying tendencies, which are what get uprooted with arahantship. He asked her about knowledge and ignorance, the relationship between feeling tone and knowledge and ignorance. And eventually, he asked about Nibbāna, which she said, "You don't know about that."

I like Dhammadinnā. She comes across very well as highly analytical, and her Theragāthā verse is a single verse, fitting for one who's just very concise and profound. She says: "One who is eager and determined would be filled with awareness, their mind not bound to pleasures of the sense world. They're said to be heading upstream." One who gives up sensuality can go against the stream of ordinary society. It might also be a subtle reference to her psychic powers—that you can disobey physical laws when you have psychic powers, so things can flow upstream. She's not cold, but she is very plain-spoken and very analytical. You get the bare answer and that's it.

It's interesting to see a husband and a wife come together in this exchange as a non-returner and an arahant. They don't have old emotional attachment. They're not playing out their old baggage between them. All of that is gone at their stage of development, and you just have this wonderful exchange between two really highly developed beings. It's quite beautiful.

Who knows, maybe the modern Dhammadinnā that we have is quite beautiful and analytical. Maybe she was well-named by her preceptor. The name means "one who has given her life to the dharma."

Reflections on Dhammadinnā

I'll pause there. Any comments or questions?

Mary: Is that the same Dhammadinnā who is always paired with Venerable Anālayo in terms of the teachings, or is this a different Dhammadinnā?

Kim Allen: Yeah, that's the modern one I'm talking about. I don't know if she's actually literally named after this arahant bhikkhuni, but that is her name. She's Italian by birth and ordained in Sri Lanka.

Kevin: I was just going to pile on a bit. Aaron and I were talking about how during the depths of the pandemic when we were doing a lot of online retreats with Anālayo, we will never forget the first time he kept talking about someone or something called Dhammadinnā. We had no idea what he was doing. But what I noticed is in the chat when he would speak and there was a need for a reference instantly, these characters in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan would scream across the chat along with links, and we thought Anālayo is using a bot. Only much later did we find out that this was this soft-spoken, incredibly tender Italian-born nun that seemed to be his doppelgänger. The same kind of grasp of languages, the same kind of intellect, but in female form. It was quite amazing to realize that she really did totally live up to the name of her precursor.

Kim Allen: Yeah. That kind of grasp of the dharma. Beautiful.

I forgot to show you her picture. Let's look at her picture. "Dhammadinnā, foremost nun in teaching the Dharma." There is actually a statue of her, I believe that's somewhere in Thailand. And then there's also this artistic rendition of her. She looks quite brilliant, I think. I think these representations are nice. Of course, we don't know what she looked like, but they help us connect in some way.

Sāmāvatī

So then we're on to Queen Sāmāvatī, foremost lay woman in mettā. We have her making an offering to the Buddha or to a monk, and also later having command of the dharma. It was a little harder to find things for her, but I did my best. And she has a nice story that we'll talk about next.

Queen Sāmāvatī. Like others, she had seen the Buddha earlier, had a lot of merit built up in her past lives, but in this life she was born as just kind of an ordinary girl who lived happily with her parents. She was very beautiful. This often seems to happen. But she was not conceited about it. Like she almost didn't realize that she was beautiful when she was growing up. Just one of those nice, beautiful but non-conceited women.

When she reached her late teens, she was still living with her parents. A plague came to the area where they were living, and her parents were very worried about it and they fled. They went to Kosambī, which was the capital of the kingdom of Vamsa. You can see this on the map; it's all in northern India. Kosambī is named in the suttas in a number of places. Her father was a friend of a friend of the finance minister of Kosambī. So he's like, "Well, that's the most important person we know. Maybe he'll give us some shelter or some money." This minister, Ghosaka, was a friend of her father. So they trooped off to Kosambī.

When they got there, people in the city were organizing around fighting the pestilence, and her parents unfortunately got sick. Sāmāvatī went to the alms distribution area. It's said that on the first day she took three portions for her family. She came back the second day and took only two. And she came back the third day and took only one. The alms distributor made a snide comment and said, "Oh, have you finally realized the capacity of your stomach, dear girl?"

She said, "Well, I came here with my parents, and on the first day we all took food, but my father died that day, so the next day I only took two, and then my mother died that day, and so today I only need one." She just said this to him, and he felt really ashamed for his comment, and so he asked her forgiveness. He offered to adopt her, just this alms distribution guy in the city. She thought, "Well, I don't have any money and I don't have any parents," so she accepted.

Her job was to help him with the alms distribution, so she threw herself into that. She was a mettā type, she loved people. She was put in charge of organizing the distribution of alms for a whole city. That's a big deal. If there's pestilence and people are coming and they're wanting food, it can be quite chaotic. But because of her management ability—echoes of Ānanda, right?—she managed the whole thing really well. She set it up, she made it so that people were getting what they needed, not more than they needed and not less than they needed. She created a whole system by which it all flowed very nicely.

I'm going to say that, like Ānanda, this is because she had a clear and caring mind. She wasn't thinking about herself. She wasn't even distressed about her parents, although I'm sure she was, but she put herself into this work instead. She's like, "What I can do is help these other people."

It was going so well with the alms distribution. Whose attention got caught? Ghosaka, the finance minister, who they never connected with because her parents died. He came into the alms distribution and he said, "This is amazing." He praised her adopted father for running it so well. But he very humbly and rightfully said, "You know what? It's her actually. It's Sāmāvatī. This woman has really taken charge, and I wouldn't be as good if it weren't for her."

Ghosaka said, "Well, we need a woman like that. I'm going to adopt her as my daughter instead." You know, this is this world, right, where women get shuttled around. The lowly alms distributor says, "You know, it's probably better for this woman if she's with the finance minister than with me." So he was sad but he let her go.

She moved in and had a good life. She was given a good place to stay, food, protection from Ghosaka as his adopted daughter. She settled into palace life. This means that she was seen by the king. She was seen by King Udena, who already had two wives by the way, but he saw Sāmāvatī and he said, "Oh, I could have three." He said, "I'm going to marry her." He goes to Ghosaka and says, "She's going to be my wife." Another shuttling around.

But Ghosaka was a passionate guy, and he didn't want to give his daughter up even to the king. He said, "No, I just adopted her as my daughter. You don't get to have her right away. I'm not going to let her go." Now, you don't say that to the king. Ghosaka probably knew that something bad would happen to him for saying that, but he didn't care. He loved her so much. The king was enraged and banished him, exiled him, and locked up Sāmāvatī and wouldn't let her leave.

She felt bad that all of this had happened. She didn't feel bad for herself, but she felt bad for Ghosaka, who had been so kind and now he had been banished. So she volunteered to be the king's wife. She said, "I'll do it voluntarily." And so then the king said, "Great." And Ghosaka was restored.

She became the king's third wife. Some of us might be like, "Oh, come on." But this is the story and this is how it goes for women in this time. You can now see maybe the issue with the Buddha saying, "Yeah, alright, a nuns' order." This is how women were treated at the time. Women who didn't have standing just got moved around like this. She ended up being the wife of the king. That's not too bad, to become a queen.

It's said that she didn't really feel wronged by all of this. She had a lot of love for people. It didn't mean she didn't have inner strength or was a wet noodle or a doormat. She had so much mettā in her heart, like genuine mettā, that her circumstances were not that important to her. She could find well-being in herself even when her parents had just died, even when she didn't know what was going to happen. She was working as an alms distributor and then getting shuttled around to different men. She had her own wellspring of happiness in herself. She was okay with all of that at some level. And so great, now she's the queen. [Laughter]

She settled into palace life, and there she had some servants. One of her servants was a woman named Khujjuttarā. Some of you may recognize that name, because she's related to the Itivuttaka. Khujjuttarā was a servant of Queen Sāmāvatī, and every day the queen gave her eight coins to go buy flowers. Khujjuttarā was a little dishonest, and she would buy four coins' worth of flowers and spend four coins for herself. She would come back with the flowers and nobody was the wiser.

She did this for a long time. One day she was buying flowers and the flower person said, "Hey, do you know there's an ascetic in town going to give a dharma talk? It was the Buddha." And so Khujjuttarā was like, "Oh, that sounds kind of cool. I'll go hear the Buddha." So she bought the four coins' worth of flowers, saved the four coins for herself, and went to hear the Buddha. She was amazed that she was transformed by his dharma talk, and she attained stream entry. That was not her plan, but this happens to people in the presence of the Buddha. We've already seen it earlier with Visākha. Khujjuttarā becomes a stream enterer and is transformed by the teachings of the Buddha. She becomes calm and collected, and she also becomes honest. She's like, "Oh my gosh, what have I been doing all this time with the coins and the flowers?"

She comes back with eight coins' worth of flowers [Laughter]. Sāmāvatī says, "What's with all the flowers?" And she says, "Well, I used to only buy four coins' worth of flowers and spend four for myself, but today I got all eight coins' worth. Sorry." And she asked for forgiveness. Sāmāvatī has a lot of mettā, right? She forgives her and says, "Oh, well, that sounds... I'm pretty amazed by what happened." What she sees is the good. This is the quality of mettā: you see the good in other people. You don't dwell on their stuff. What she sees is Khujjuttarā has become honest. She's praising this guy who gives dharma talks and she had some transformative experience. She's like, "I want some of that."

She says, "Don't worry about the flowers. I forgive you for that. I'm just impressed with what's happened to you. I think you should go hear this Buddha guy every day and come back and tell me what he says. You report on his dharma talk to me."

So Khujjuttarā goes every day and listens to the dharma talk, and she comes back and repeats it to the queen and the queen's retinue, all the other servant women of the queen. Over time, they learn the teachings of the Buddha and they all become followers. For those of you who know the Pali canon, the book called the Itivuttaka is the teachings that were spoken by Khujjuttarā, by a lay woman repeating the Buddha's teachings to the queen.

Khujjuttarā did a lot of good there, and eventually Sāmāvatī becomes a stream enterer. She starts to feel like she really wants to practice the teachings. She's a mettā type, and she realizes that she can deeply feel the suffering of others and she has so much compassion for other people. She realizes, "I could develop that faculty, and then I could become really more helpful to people," because she already loves people and wants to help them. She devotes herself to practicing loving-kindness and compassion, and that's eventually what she was named as being the disciple foremost in. She was only a stream enterer. She wasn't an arahant and she stayed a lay woman, but she developed her heart so fully through hearing these teachings from the Buddha. She became more and more beautiful and kind and loving, and everybody loved her.

But she didn't have the quality that Ānanda did where she had no enemies. She had a lot of enemies because she was so beautiful. One of the other wives of King Udena, whose name was Māgandiyā, became very jealous and resentful of her. Māgandiyā didn't like the Buddha's teachings. She was not a good, happy person, and she had a lot of aversion. She was a hate type. The fact that Sāmāvatī and her whole retinue were devoted to the Buddha and becoming so kind and beautiful made her even more irritated. Think about the evil fairy godmother in Western stories.

She had all these plots to kill Sāmāvatī. She tried various things and none of them succeeded. She was always stymied in some way, which made her even more irritated. But she somehow tricked King Udena, who was also kind of a passionate guy, into thinking that Sāmāvatī was his enemy, to the degree that he actually tried to shoot her with an arrow. The arrow bounced off of her and fell away harmlessly.

The king was really impressed by this. Because she was protected by her loving-kindness, right? The arrow couldn't harm her. The king was like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't realize my wife had that quality." He got interested. He asks, "How did that happen?" [Laughter] Sāmāvatī says, "I'm a follower of the Buddha. He's an amazing guy and these are his teachings." King Udena gets interested. He's not a particularly ethical guy, he's kind of passionate, but he starts to listen a little bit to the teachings, which of course makes Māgandiyā even more enraged. "Oh my gosh, now the king has been converted by this irritatingly nice person." [Laughter]

I'm hamming it up a little bit, but the story is pretty dramatic actually, because Māgandiyā then goes off the deep end and burns down the entire women's quarters, killing all 500 of her retinue. This is a really bad act. So this is her end. It is said that Sāmāvatī's last words while the flames are coming up in the women's quarters were, "It would not be an easy matter, even with the knowledge of the Buddha, to determine exactly the number of times our bodies have thus been burnt with fire as we have passed from birth to birth in the beginningless round of existence. Therefore, be heedful."

I know it sounds kind of crazy, but she's basically saying, "Our bodies are burning, but keep your mind together women. This is not the only time something like this has happened." And it's said that all the women who were with her gained at least the first stage of awakening from that. She became a non-returner by that time. She passed into a high heaven where she would become awakened. All of her retinue had at least a noble path or fruit gained.

The monks found out about this terrible tragedy of the women's quarters burning down and all these women dying, and they said to the Buddha, "Gosh, this is a big deal. The whole town is mourning because of this disaster at the palace. What happened to all those women?" The Buddha said, "Every one of those women was at least a stream enterer. None of their deaths were in vain." He praised Sāmāvatī as foremost in mettā. He also explained, as these stories often do, that this was a karmic retribution for some bad act that that group of women had done in a previous lifetime. They had plotted to kill somebody, and so here they were caught up in their own karmic retribution.

The story doesn't quite end because King Udena, passionate guy, very emotional, not that ethical, was overwhelmed with grief at her death. His beautiful wife who had introduced him to the teachings of the Buddha. He slowly puts the pieces together and he says, "I think Māgandiyā was responsible for this." So he has her punished in a terrible way. He harms her and does a bunch of bad acts. And then he feels ashamed of that and he's like, "Oh, I shouldn't have been such a bad guy." He's a guy who's just constantly love, hate, overwhelm. He really needs the Buddhist teachings. The last act for him was this terrible act where he harmed Māgandiyā, and he has a memory come to mind of Sāmāvatī. He's like, "I don't think she would have been as angry as I was. She had people not treating her very well and weird stuff happening her whole life, and she was always kind. She was always loving and caring. Maybe I could do that too." That's his little turn inward.

She wasn't really a teacher, she didn't give dharma talks, but her way of being transformed King Udena. It's said after that he became a follower. He took the refuges and precepts and became ethical after that. Meanwhile, Sāmāvatī was born in the heavenly realms and reached full enlightenment. And of course, Māgandiyā went to the hell realms for killing all those women. So you see the difference between the path of love and the path of hate. The two queens exemplified in a very archetypal way these two different results of different ways of being.

The Buddha is said to have spoken some of the Dhammapada verses in response to thinking about this story. Dhammapada 21-23 were spoken by the Buddha, which are about heedfulness. Her last teaching to the nuns was "be heedful." Heedfulness is the path to the deathless, heedlessness the path to death. The heedful do not die; the heedless are as if already dead. The wise then, recognizing this as the distinction of heedfulness, rejoice in heedfulness, delighting in the realm of the noble ones. The steadfast meditate persistently, constantly, they firmly strive, aspiring to reach Nibbāna, the unexcelled security from bonds.

She taught mostly by example, by her way of being. By being consistently straightforward and kind, she brought out the best in people. Like when she calmly told the alms distributor, "My parents are dead, that's why I'm taking fewer and fewer alms," and he felt ashamed and adopted her. Her example changed his mind. And similarly with King Udena. She was consistently patient and generous, and because of this she saved herself a lot of trouble. She lived the life of a palace woman, which is a life of intrigue and politics and scheming. She just sailed through on kindness and straightforwardness. She didn't get wrapped up in all that stuff. She had inner strength that let her not do that. That was the strength of her mettā.

Her mettā was not soft and cuddly kind of mettā. It resembles actually the opening lines of the Karuṇīya Mettā Sutta, which start out: "Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech, humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied, unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways, peaceful and calm and wise and skillful, not proud and demanding in nature." It describes a person who has cultivated their heart with mettā and with wisdom. I think this pretty much describes Queen Sāmāvatī. She just sailed through: straightforward, gentle, kind, humble, unburdened with duties, peaceful and calm, not proud and demanding, although she could have been as a queen.

This served her very well in her life. She had so many chances in her lay life to become conceited, to exert her power, to scheme, to hate people. And she just didn't go to any of that. She was above all of that in a way that wasn't conceited. A very different life than Dhammadinnā, but also a possible way of becoming an awakened woman at the time of the Buddha.

Now think back to Mahākassapa, the fully ordained monk living secluded, the ideal ascetic life, to a queen. This whole range of people exemplifies the teachings. If we can't find ourselves somewhere in there, we can find ourselves among these. Some summary points: not-self is not about being nothing. It's not about not having a personality or not having traits where people would say that person really exemplifies such and such. None of them were selfish people, and two of them were arahants. Dhammadinnā and Kassapa were both arahants, they really understood not-self completely, and that didn't stop them from being the people that they were.

If you want an interesting sutta about differences, the Mahāgosinga Sutta (MN 32) talks about a group of monks sitting around in the forest at the full moon night reminiscing about what kind of monk is the best. They say, "What kind of monk could light up this forest?" And each one answers about a monk that's kind of like them. [Laughter] Ānanda says, "I think a monk who's very learned in the suttas could light up this forest." Kassapa says, "I think a very ascetic monk could light up this forest." Each one answers in line with how they are. And then the Buddha shows up and says, "What were you guys talking about?" They each give their answers. The Buddha praises all of them and he says, "You have all answered in line with your strengths. All of those monks could light up this forest. And in addition, I will add that the monk who is steadfastly striving for awakening could light up this forest." He goes back to someone who is not even awakened in any way and says that person too is the most beautiful.

We're not supposed to try to be one of these people, unless you make a vow like they did to be one far in the future with another Buddha. But we can celebrate these qualities in whatever form we have them in ourselves. We're inspired by one or another of these various qualities.

Final Reflections

So, I'm curious. How was that? Does anybody want to comment on how the meditation was for you? Share about which one you chose, or also just a time for any additional questions.

Tess: I really appreciate how you said at the end that the Buddha said that one who's even not very advanced can light up the forest. That made me feel so welcomed. Ānanda was the being that I chose. I'm very inspired by his loyalty and simplicity. Thank you for this opportunity to sit with him.

Kim Allen: Very nice. Thank you.

Karen: I found that really moving. I sat with Sāmāvatī. Mettā has been churning a lot in the background for me. At the retreat this summer you were chanting the Karuṇīya Mettā Sutta at night, and I was almost a little salty about it at first. But every time we did it, I was increasingly fond of it and moved by it. Since that retreat, I've been chanting it every night before bed. I just find that throughout the day these elements, these qualities mentioned in it, are flowing through my awareness and really having an effect on my perceptions and on how I'm interacting with people and with the world around me in a really lovely way. I found her particularly moving and just really sweet to reflect on those qualities and the growth that they're having in me.

Kim Allen: Beautiful. Thank you.

Danielle: I also found that very moving. My sits can be very visual if I decide to bring something in, and I immediately saw Dhammadinnā take my hands. She was my immediate choice. This is introducing for me a wonderful way of thinking about my own good qualities rather than the way that I already know, which is just to recollect them and appreciate them. I can think about what are my dharmic strengths, what can I develop. That's really inspiring for me.

Kim Allen: Great. Thank you.

Mary: I've always tried to recollect the Buddha, and I find that I would just sort of go through a simple list of kind and wise. This gave me a real handle on a much more profound way to do it. To bring it to life in terms of maybe a particular sutta or a particular story, and really embed it in a context that opens my heart, instead of just trying to do a more rote task. Do you have a comment on how to recollect the qualities of the Buddha?

Kim Allen: I have taught recollection of the Buddha. There is a formal way to do it that has a list of nine qualities, but one doesn't just go through them in a rote way. When it's taught as a practice, at least the way I learned it from Bhikkhu Bodhi, is that you visualize the Buddha first. You imagine some image of the Buddha that you know and love, and kind of immerse in that. Then you can bring to mind certain qualities. It is nice to know what the formal list of nine is, it's in the chant of the praise of the Buddha. But for us lay people, it's okay to be a little creative. If you just want to bring in kind and wise, or things from a specific sutta like you remember a time when the Buddha was interacting with somebody, and make it kind of a scene that you put yourself in. I think that kind of imaginative meditation, as long as it doesn't get too flowery and abstract, can be very beneficial. If it starts getting too much, your mind will feel busy and you'll know.

Mary: The second question I have is I often try to incorporate mettā and I also chose Sāmāvatī. I was so struck by how she emulated all four brahma-vihāras^[4], how she really had equanimity as a basis because nothing really rattled her. During the day I'm very aware of when I'm having aversion towards a particular person or situation, and I often try to mettā-ize it or bring mettā as a substitute. Do you have any recommendations for how in the moment to apply it? It's always been intriguing to me that I sit down and do this practice and my heart is really open, and then during the day when the situations arise it doesn't seem as easy to call up mettā.

Kim Allen: It's different when we have control over it because we're doing it deliberately versus when it's in the face of ill will. We might usefully bring to mind that the Buddha said there were multiple approaches to working with hindering mind states. One of them is to apply an antidote like mettā for feelings of ill will. But there's also things like investigation. Maybe there's something else going on there that can be discovered if you open to that feeling of ill will. You've noticed the ill will, so that's a good thing. But then you've decided that this should not be in your mind and therefore here's my remedy. But maybe it's coming because it's wanting to show you something about your mind. Try to look underneath that. Maybe it's not ill will, maybe it's fear or greed coming in. You can learn a lot about your mind to understand why certain things come up. When you have a good background in mettā and other qualities, you don't need to worry that the ill will is going to somehow take over your heart and your life. I would say open to that and feel the pain of it and investigate what that's about.

Kim (participant): Dhammadinnā came to me not immediately because I felt like I had to rifle through those qualities a little bit. I found myself wanting to be more like Sāmāvatī because it seems like that's where I want to be. But the truth is that I don't know that I've ever really acknowledged my own strengths around being analytical, about wanting to read the teachings, about wanting to really understand. That's what comes more naturally to me. But in the presence of someone who's hurting or requires me to be compassionate, it arises naturally, but I see those as more preferred qualities. It was really helpful for me to look at those other qualities in myself, but in her as well because it served her so well. And I'm sure in any situation where those other qualities were necessary and required, they emerged naturally. Certainly she was an arahant!

Kim Allen: Very nice. I love that you were open enough to just realize that she was the one who was actually saying, "Hey, I'm the one who should be sitting in front of you." Sometimes our heart knows more than we think, and this gives it a way to speak to us. You've put your finger on something that's common in the spiritual world, which is the sense that the heart qualities are better than the mind qualities and that we should be aspiring to those things. I did hope that today would show an array of strengths, including the strengths of the mind and the strengths of the heart, which are not as different as we think, and provide some justification or validation for folks who identify more with the analytical side. There is a place for that in the spiritual world. I just want to affirm that and I love that you named it.

Kim (participant): For me, the first time that I heard the word citta, I was like, "Oh, it's head and heart together."

Kim Allen: Right. Very nice.

Judy: I noticed with all four of them, they had less sticky selves. It's really inspiring to have a less sticky self.

Kim Allen: Yeah, they did. Of course, that's the quality of awakened beings that we are really attracted to—is that they have found a way to relieve themselves of this burden that we carry. We feel like we're confused by not-self or we're afraid to let go of ourself, but what we really want is to let go of ourself. It's so hard to be this poor struggling being with this and that. I love that that comment came up right at the end because we have the clear qualities and personality and humanness of these people right alongside, but they weren't stuck in themselves. They had relieved themselves of that part which is the dukkha^[5] for us, about me and my problems and what am I going to do and how do I relate. Imagine that part just not there. That's what these practices can do. And we don't stop being the wonderful, vibrant, interesting beings that we are.

That's a great segue into our dedication. May each of you find these inspiring qualities and live into them. Strengthen the ones that are strong and bolster the ones that need to be stronger in order to raise the whole up, and eventually live into a beautiful, unique, wonderful, eclectic dharma version of ourselves. May all beings be happy and peaceful, starting here. Thanks everyone for coming. What fun.