Sāmaññaphala Sutta

Sāmaññaphala Sutta (S. Śrāmaṇyaphala-sūtra; C. Shamenguo jing 沙門果經). "The Fruits of Contemplative Life," is the second discourse of the Digha Nikaya of the Pali Canon. There are also two versions in the Chinese canon.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu states:

This discourse is one of the masterpieces of the Pali Canon. At heart, it is a comprehensive portrait of the Buddhist path of training, illustrating each stage of the training with vivid similes. This portrait is placed in juxtaposition to the Buddhist view of the teachings of rival philosophical teachers of the time, showing how the Buddha—in contradistinction to ... his contemporaries—presented his teaching in a way that was pertinent and sensitive to the needs of his listeners. This larger portrait of the intellectual landscape of early Buddhist India is then presented in a moving narrative frame: the sad story of King Ajātasattu.

Ajātasattu was the son of King Bimbisāra of Magadha, one of the Buddha’s earliest followers. Urged on by Devadatta—the Buddha’s cousin, who wished to use Ajātasattu’s support in his bid to take over the Buddha’s position as head of the Saṅgha—Ajātasattu arranged for his father’s death so that he could secure his own position on the throne. As a result of this evil deed, he was destined not only to be killed by his own son—Udāyibhadda (mentioned in the discourse)—but also to take immediate rebirth in one of the lowest regions of hell.

In this discourse, Ajātasattu visits the Buddha and asks the Buddha to explain the benefits of the sramana way of life, as compared to an ordinary, worldly lifestyle. At this time in India, the term sramana referred to a variety of types of spiritual seekers, who detached themselves from worldly affairs and lived more or less as wandering ascetics. Ajātasattu had previously posed the same question to a group of six other teachers from different sramana traditions. After Ajātasattu recounted the answers from these other teachers, the Buddha explained the benefits of the sramana way of life from the Buddhist point of view.

Content

The setting of the discourse

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The Sāmaññaphala Sutta was addressed by the Buddha to King Ajātasattu, ruler of the powerful middle Indian state of Magadha, which had already embarked on the course of conquest and absorption of neighbouring states that was to make it the nucleus of the first major Indian empire. The historical background to the discourse is only barely suggested by the preamble to the sutta, but is sketched for us by the commentary: the story of how Ajátasattu fell under the evil influence of Devadatta, seized the throne from his father, the righteous King Bimbisāra, had his father imprisoned and murdered, and was subsequently tormented by remorse. A knowledge of that story, though not essential to understanding the discourse, heightens and deepens the atmosphere in which the sutta unfolds. Contemplated in juxtaposition, the Buddha’s discourse and the historical background create between them a particularly poignant dramatic tension: on the one side, the life of renunciation, moral purity, solitude, and contemplation extolled by the Buddha; on the other, the lawless greed for power that led Ajātasattu to parricide and the throne, the pangs of guilt and remorse that shattered his sleep, and the yearning for peace that induced him to visit the Exalted One dwelling in the Mango Grove.

The Sāmaññaphala Sutta must have been spoken by the Buddha during the very last years of his life. When surveying the calm and quiet community of bhikkhus, Ajātasattu utters an exclamation mentioning his son Udāyibhadda, and this gives us a clue for narrowing down the occasion of the discourse. According to the commentaries, it was in the thirty-seventh year after the Enlightenment, when the Buddha was seventy-two years old, that Devadatta commenced his drive to gain leadership of the Sangha. Thus it must have been in the same year that Ajātasattu usurped the throne. Following his accession to power, Ajātasattu launched an extended war against his uncle, King Pasenadi of Kosala, which ended with a truce sealed by the gift in marriage of Pasenadi’s daughter, Princess Vajirā. It was from this union that the boy Udāyibhadda was born. Thus, if we allow at least three years for Ajātasattu to have conducted his war, married Vajirā, and sired his son, this would place the Sámaññaphala Sutta somewhere in the last five years of the Buddha’s life.

The six other teachers

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

Before answering Ajātasattu’s question on the fruits of recluseship, the Buddha asks him whether he has previously ever approached any other recluses or brahmins with this question. The king answers in the affirmative, and his account of his meeting with six other religious teachers provides the opportunity for a short survey of the types of philosophical doctrines which were being promulgated by the wandering ascetic teachers of the Ganges valley during the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. This section of the sutta is almost certainly a literary fabrication devised by the compilers of the Canon for polemical purposes. It may be regarded as an extension, from a different angle, of the project undertaken by the Brahmajāla Sutta—a survey of the variety of wrong views. But whereas the Brahmajāla aims at exhaustiveness and presents its survey under the rubric of speculations about the self and the world, the Sāmaññaphala sets itself a more modest aim: it is concerned only with the views in circulation among the Buddha’s contemporaries, and rather than subjecting them to some categorical scheme, it states them in the terms in which their proponents formulated them.

The six teachers whose views are recounted by King Ajātasattu are frequently referred to as a group in the Pali Canon, though there is no evidence that the Buddha ever met with any of them face to face. They all seem to have been senior to the Buddha, and from the stock description of them as leaders of orders and groups, etc., (§2–7) they must have been influential and highly venerated in their day. Western scholars have come to designate them as “the six heretics,” though as they make no profession to adhere either to Buddhism or Brahmanism they cannot be considered as heretics within the Buddhist or Brahmanic fold. Thus it would be more accurate to speak of them as the six outside teachers. Their views all fall outside the wide perimeters of orthodox Brahmanism and are indicative of the intellectual ferment that had come to the fore as part of the reaction against Brahmanic orthodoxy during the Buddha’s age.

Though the statements ascribed to the six teachers by the Sāmaññaphala Sutta must doubtlessly contain formulations that were part of their established creeds, it is also likely that the formulas became garbled and confused in the course of oral transmission. Apart from the Buddhist scriptures, there is no other information at all on the views of four of the teachers. The Jaina scriptures provide information of the views of Makkhali Gosāla and Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta, the historical founder of Jainism, and this source confirms the Sāmaññaphala as being substantially correct in its representation of Makkhali’s views, though not those of Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta. The information in the commentaries especially must be treated with a great deal of caution. The short biographical sketches of the outside teachers are almost certainly contrived for the sake of denigration. While it is plausible that the commentaries have preserved some ancient material elucidating their old rivals’ creeds, it often appears that the commentators are engaging in guesswork or straining their interpretations to exhibit the Buddha’s opponents in an excessively unfavourable light.

Although the details of the six teachers’ doctrines may be obscure, on the basis of the Sāmaññaphala Sutta it is possible to discern the general characteristics of each view.

Pūraṇa Kassapa, whose name regularly heads the list of the six, was a proponent of the doctrine of the inefficacy of action (akiriya-váda). As expounded in the sutta, this view denies that volitional actions are capable of bearing fruit, and as a consequence leads to the rejection of the validity of moral judgements and distinctions. On first consideration this view seems to be a variant on the materialistic annihilationism of Ajita Kesakambala. However, there are indications elsewhere in the Canon that Pāruṇa’s teachings had close connections with the creed of Makkhali Gosāla, and thus his moral antinomianism would follow not from materialistic premises, but from a doctrine of hardline determinism.

Makkhali Gosāla, who was an early associate of the Jain teacher Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta before the two went their separate ways, was the leader of the religious sect called the Ājīvikās, which survived in India until medieval times before vanishing completely from the Indian scene. The main tenet of Makkhali’s philosophy was the belief that the entire cosmic process is rigidly controlled by a principle called niyati, destiny or fate. Destiny holds everything within its grip. Under its control every soul has to pass through a fixed course in samsara before attaining release. Human effort and volition are utterly powerless to alter this course, and thus the wise by diligent effort cannot shorten their bondage to the round of rebirths, nor do the foolish by their negligence lengthen it. Makkhali’s system also involved a fantastically elaborate cosmology, the key concepts of which are enumerated in his statement. It seems that this was not a simple list of the contents of the universe, but a map of the states through which the soul must pass in its course of transmigration before it could gain emancipation.

Ajita Kesakambala’s doctrine was a straightforward materialism which maintained that the person is essentially identical with his body. The breaking up of the body at death thus entails the utter annihilation of the person, without any principle of conscious continuity beyond the grave or moral retribution for deeds.

Pakudha Kaccáyana advocates, in contrast, an atomism which recognized, in addition to the material components of the person, an indestructible individual soul. Pakudha deduced, from the imperishable nature of the soul, conclusions that spurned the very basis of morality: since the soul cannot be injured or destroyed, even the notion of killing becomes untenable.

Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta is identical with Vardhamāna Mahāvīra, the historical founder of Jainism, though regarded within his own tradition as the most recent of a long line of tārthaṅkaras or “ford-makers.” The obscure statement by which he is represented in Sámaññaphala Sutta has not been traced to the Jaina scriptures, but a conjecture can be offered why more typical views of his stated in other Pali suttas (e.g. MN 14, MN 101) have not been brought in here. Since the Jaina leader affirmed the fruitfulness of the recluse life and claimed that his discipline brings an end to suffering—though through doctrines and practices rejected by the Buddha—to have introduced these views here would have required divergence from the forward movement of the sutta.

The last of the six teachers, Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, was a skeptic. In the Brahmajāla Sutta his position is included among the “endless equivocators” or “eel-wrigglers” who are incapable of taking a definite stance on the vital philosophical questions of the day.

The fruit of the sramana way of life

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

When he has finished telling the Buddha about his meetings with the six outside teachers, King Ajātasattu repeats his original question, and this time the Buddha accepts it and undertakes to explain the visible fruits of recluseship. In the technical terminology of the Dhamma the expression “fruits of recluseship” is used to signify the four stages of sanctity that follow upon the attainment of the corresponding supramundane paths. These are the fruits of stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arahatship (see SN 45:35 /v. 25). In the Sāmaññaphala Sutta, however, the Buddha does not employ the term in this more technical sense, which at this point would hardly have been intelligible to the king, but uses it instead to indicate the concrete experiential benefits that may be attained by those who adopt the homeless life.

The Buddha then points out fruits of recluseship in a generally progressive manner.

The ordinary fruits

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The first two [fruits] he describes have a tangible, temporal, extrinsic character. They are thus well-suited for the understanding of a man like Ajātasattu, already disposed to evaluate things from the standpoint of expediency and personal advantage.

The first is the case of a palace slave (§34) who by becoming a monk is no longer obliged to obey the king, but on the contrary is entitled to receive from his former master, the ruler of the land, homage, cordial treatment, and material offerings.

The second case (§37) is that of a householder who by becoming a monk is no longer obliged to pay taxes and serve the state, but again merits the king’s veneration.

The higher fruits

After hearing the descriptions of the first two fruits, Ajātasattu asks the Buddha to point out other visible fruits of recluseship “more excellent and sublime” than the previous two. In reply the Buddha sets out to expound the gradual training (anupubbasikkhā), which leads by stages to the superior fruits of the sramana way of life.

Bhikkhu Bodhi states:

The twelve higher fruits of recluseship are the four jhānas and the eight cognitive achievements collected under the umbrella term vijjā, clear knowledge. Before he can reveal these fruits of homelessness, however, in order to make sure that their value and significance are properly appreciated, the Buddha must explain the causal basis for their attainment. Thus he starts his exposition by describing the course of training that culminates in the fruits of recluseship—the seeds, roots, trunks, and branches that must be properly nurtured for the homeless life to yield a successful harvest.

The entire sequence of steps starts with the arising of a Tathāgata, a perfectly enlightened Buddha, as the indispensable condition for the complete gamut of the fruits of recluseship being made accessible to the world. [...] the arising of a Buddha [is] the precondition for the twelve “more excellent and sublime” fruits of recluseship.

The response to the Buddha’s exposition of the Dhamma, and the first step along the path, is the gaining of faith in the Tathágata. The gaining of faith leads to the going forth into homelessness (§42-43).

Following the entrance into homelessness, one begins in the gradual training of:

• moral discipline (sīla)
• restraint of the sense faculties (indriyasaṃvara)
• mindfulness and clear comprehension (sati-sampajañña)

When the above factors have been sufficiently well developed to provide a secure basis for living in solitude, the bhikkhu resorts to a secluded dwelling where he can apply himself in full earnestness to his meditation practice.

Through meditation, the recluse gains the fruits associated with the four jhānas and the various types of supraknowledges (abhiññā). While most texts speak of six types of supraknowledges, this text mentioned eight types.

The ultimate fruit of the sramana way is knowledge of "destruction of the cankers" (āsravakṣaya).

This is the path of arahatship issuing in the fruit of arahatship, the liberation of mind and liberation by wisdom attained when the cankers have been fully destroyed. With this we reach the final goal of the Buddha’s teaching, and the fruit of recluseship for which all the others have prepared the way and find the reason for their inclusion in the training. Thus the Buddha concludes his discourse by stating that “there is no other fruit of recluseship higher or more sublime than this one.”

The king's patricide and its karmic consequences

Following the discussion of the path and its fruits, the discourse returns to the problems of the king.

The king then confesses to the Buddha his crime of killing his father, the Buddha’s devoted patron, a confession the Buddha acknowledges for the sake of the king’s future restraint. When Ajātasattu has left, the Buddha explains to the bhikkhus that if the king had not slain his father, while sitting there listening to the discourse, he would have opened the eye of Dhamma and attained the stage of a stream-enterer. But Ajātasattu had a different destiny to follow. The records indicate that despite his conversion he continued his expansionist policy until he was eventually slain by his own beloved son Udāyibhadda. As a consequence of committing parricide, the commentary tells us, he was reborn in hell, but in a distant future life he will achieve the enlightenment of a paccekabuddha and attain final nibbāna.

Commentaries

• Bodhi, Bhikkhu (1997). Discourse on the Fruits of Recluseship. Buddhist Publication Society. ISBN 978-955-24-0045-2. 
• Khema, Ayya (2001). Visible Here and Now: The Buddha's Teachings on the Rewards of Spiritual Practice. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 9781570624926. 

See also

• Brahmajāla Sutta
• Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
• Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta

Sources

• Bhikkhu Bodhi, ed. (2008), The Discourse on the Fruits of Recluseship: The Sámaññaphala Sutta and its Commentaries, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Buddhist Publication Society 
• Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University 

External links

• Sāmaññaphala Sutta, Wikipedia
• Samaññaphala Sutta: The Fruits of the Contemplative Life at Access to Insight, Thanissaro Bhikkhu (trans.)
• Sāmaññaphala Sutta: The Fruits of Recluseship at SuttaCentral