Foremost Laymen

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Ten laymen are named unsurpassed — in giving, in teaching, in confidence, in community-building, and in one case in the quality of a marriage — in the same words used of the monastics.

What the categories are, and what they are not

Four of the ten concern giving in one form or another: the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika for being the first to go for refuge, Anāthapiṇḍika as a donor, Mahānāma Sakka for donating fine things, Ugga of Vesālī for donating nice things, and Uggata for attending on the Saṅgha. That weighting is real and it is worth naming: the primary lay function in this economy is material support, and the list does not disguise it.

But it is not the whole list, and the rest is where the chapter gets interesting. Citta Macchikāsaṇḍika is foremost among laymen who speak on the teaching — the same category, dhammakathika, that Puṇṇa holds among the monks and Dhammadinnā among the nuns. A householder is named unsurpassed at teaching the Dhamma. Elsewhere in the canon Citta is shown out-arguing senior monastics on doctrinal points and correcting a naked ascetic he had known since childhood.

Hatthaka of Āḷavī is foremost at attracting a congregation by the four ways of being inclusive — giving, kind speech, beneficial conduct, and equality — which is a leadership category, not a devotional one. Jīvaka Komārabhacca, the physician who treated the Buddha and served the king, is foremost in confidence placed in an individual. And Sūrambaṭṭha is foremost among those with experiential confidence, aveccappasāda: confidence arrived at by having verified something rather than by being told it.

Nakula’s father (AN 1.257)

The last entry names the householder Nakula’s father foremost among those who are intimate — vissāsaka, at ease, trusting, on close terms. Of everything in the ninety-three entries so far, this is the one that most resists being turned into a spiritual accomplishment, and it is probably the most quietly radical.

Two discourses fill it in. In one, Nakula’s father comes to the Buddha old and chronically ill and is told that even if the body is sick the mind need not be. In another, he and his wife tell the Buddha they have lived together since they were very young without a thought of infidelity, and wish to see one another in a future life as well; the Buddha does not correct them, and tells them what such a couple would have to match in faith, ethics, generosity, and wisdom for that to be possible.

What is being called foremost, then, is a long marriage conducted well. It sits at the end of a list that began with the first man to go for refuge, and it is on the same list as psychic power and great wisdom. Any presentation of early Buddhism as fundamentally world-renouncing has to find room for this line.

Whether the lay life is a holding pattern

This is the question the chapter actually settles, and it is worth being direct. Much popular Buddhism, in Asia and the West both, operates on an assumption that laypeople support, and monastics practice; the layperson’s realistic aspiration is a better rebirth, from which real practice might become possible.

The canon is not consistent on this, and it would be dishonest to claim it is. There are passages that describe household life as cramped and dusty and going forth as open air. But this chapter, and the discourses attached to the names in it, hold the other line: laypeople here are named foremost at teaching the Dhamma, at experiential confidence — which is a term for stream-entry — and at the four ways of being inclusive. They are not being praised for enabling someone else’s practice. They are being named for their own.

The most useful thing to do with this in a class is not to resolve the tension but to lay both sets of passages out and let students see that the tradition contains an argument, not a settled position.

A note on the names

Anāthapiṇḍika — the name means something like “feeder of the destitute” — bought and gave the Jeta Grove monastery at Sāvatthī, which is the setting stated at AN 1.1 and therefore the implied location of every entry in this nipāta including his own. Tapussa and Bhallika, first to go for refuge, are traditionally said to have met the Buddha in the weeks after the awakening, before there was a Saṅgha to take refuge in, which is why their formula is often given as a twofold rather than threefold refuge.

Key terms