Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The word for the highest qualification is kept and its content is replaced: three knowledges, but knowledge of what you have lived, what happens to beings, and how defilements end.
What Tikaṇṇa says a three-knowledge man is
His definition has two halves and both are worth reading slowly.
The first is descent: well born on both his mother’s and father’s side, of pure descent, with irrefutable and impeccable genealogy back to the seventh paternal generation. Seven generations, and the claim must be unimpeachable on both sides.
The second is curriculum: the hymns recited and remembered; the three Vedas mastered together with their vocabularies and ritual performance, phonology and word classification, and the testaments as fifth; known word by word with their grammar; and competence in cosmology and the marks of a great man.
This is an accurate description of a real education, and it was a formidable one. Nothing in the discourse mocks it. The Buddha does not say the curriculum is worthless or the scholarship shallow; he says the term is being used for something else in his own training, and asks nothing about whether Tikaṇṇa’s definition is a good definition of a brahmin.
Notice also that the first half of the definition is inherited and the second is earned. The counter-definition that follows has no inherited half at all.
The four absorptions
The reply begins where this collection’s descriptions of practice always begin: with the four jhānas, given in the standard formula.
First: secluded from sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities, with rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. Second: those two stilled, with internal clarity and mind at one. Third: rapture fading, equanimous, mindful, aware. Fourth: pleasure and pain given up, with pure equanimity and mindfulness.
It is worth pointing out to a class that the Buddha answers a question about knowledge with a description of meditation. Tikaṇṇa asked what makes someone a master of three knowledges; the answer starts with what the mind has to be like before any of the three is available.
The state that results is described with eight adjectives — purified, bright, flawless, rid of corruptions, pliable, workable, steady, and imperturbable — and the same eight recur before each of the three knowledges. Kammanīya, workable, is the key one: the mind is being described as an instrument that has been made fit for use.
The three knowledges
First, recollection of past lives, in the formula that runs from one life to a hundred thousand and out into eons of the world contracting and expanding, with features and details — name, clan, appearance, food, pleasure and pain, and how each life ended.
Second, the divine eye: seeing beings pass away and be reborn according to their deeds, inferior and superior, in a good place or bad, with the mechanism stated — bad conduct and wrong view leading one way, good conduct and right view the other.
Third, the ending of defilements: understanding suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the practice; then the same four applied to the defilements themselves; then the mind freed from sensuality, desire to be reborn, and ignorance, with the knowledge that it is freed.
The three are not parallel. The first two are extraordinary capacities and the third is the point; the canon says so elsewhere plainly, and the structure says it here. Each of the first two ends with the same refrain about ignorance banished and light arisen, and the third ends with rebirth is ended, what had to be done has been done.
A modern reader will be more comfortable with the third than the first two, and it is worth saying that the discourse does not offer that option. The three are presented as one sequence available to one mind in one condition. A reader who accepts only the third is departing from the text, which is permissible, but should be done knowingly rather than by quietly not mentioning the other two.
The substitution, and what it costs
The verses make the claim explicit: it’s because of these three knowledges that a brahmin is a master of the three knowledges. That’s who I call a three-knowledge master, and not the other who repeats what they are told.
Anumānena — the last phrase dismisses the transmitted knowledge of the Vedic scholar as repetition. That is the sharpest sentence in the discourse and the only one that could be called an attack.
Note what has been substituted. All three replacement knowledges are first-hand: something you remember, something you see, something you verify in yourself. The brahmin definition was ancestry plus texts; the replacement is memory plus vision plus verification. The word vijjā, knowledge, is being pulled from what one has learned toward what one has undergone.
This is the same move as AN 3.31, where brahmin titles were reassigned to parents, and as AN 3.53, where the value of a teaching was located in what a person can check. The Brāhmaṇavagga is doing one thing over and over, and this is its clearest instance.
Tikaṇṇa’s answer
He concedes twice. First: a master of three knowledges according to the brahmins is quite different from a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One — which is only agreement that the terms differ. Then: and is not worth a sixteenth part of it.
The sixteenth is a standard idiom of the canon for a large but finite ratio, and using it is Tikaṇṇa’s own act; nobody asked him to rank the two. He came praising the brahmin qualification out loud and leaves having valued it at a sixteenth of the alternative and gone for refuge as a lay follower.
The next discourse, AN 3.59, is the same exchange with Jānussoṇi, in abbreviated form and with a different opening. Reading them together shows the pattern: the term is asked for, defined, replaced, and conceded.
Key terms
The text
A brahmin praises the three-knowledge men
§1Then Tikaṇṇa the brahmin went up to the Buddha, and exchanged greetings with him. Seated to one side, in front of the Buddha, Tikaṇṇa praised the brahmins who were proficient in the three Vedas, “Such are the brahmins, masters of the three Vedic knowledges! Thus are the brahmins, masters of the three Vedic knowledges!”
§2“But brahmin, how do the brahmins describe a brahmin who is master of the three Vedic knowledges?” “Worthy Gotama, it’s when a brahmin is well born on both his mother’s and father’s side, of pure descent, with irrefutable and impeccable genealogy back to the seventh paternal generation. He recites and remembers the hymns, and has mastered the three Vedas, together with their vocabularies and ritual performance, their phonology and word classification, and the testaments as fifth. He knows them word-by-word, and their grammar. He is well versed in cosmology and the marks of a great man. That’s how the brahmins describe a brahmin who is master of the three Vedic knowledges.”
§3“Brahmin, a master of three knowledges according to the brahmins is quite different from a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One.” “But worthy Gotama, how is one a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One? Worthy Gotama, please teach me this.” “Well then, brahmin, listen and apply your mind well, I will speak.” “Yes, worthy sir,” Tikaṇṇa replied. The Buddha said this:
The four absorptions
§4“Brahmin, it’s when a mendicant, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. As the placing of the mind and keeping it connected are stilled, they enter and remain in the second absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of immersion, with internal clarity and mind at one, without placing the mind and keeping it connected. And with the fading away of rapture, they enter and remain in the third absorption, where they meditate with equanimity, mindful and aware, personally experiencing the bliss of which the noble ones declare, ‘Equanimous and mindful, one meditates in bliss.’ With the giving up of pleasure and pain, and the ending of former happiness and sadness, they enter and remain in the fourth absorption, without pleasure or pain, with pure equanimity and mindfulness.
Three knowledges
§5When their mind has become immersed in samādhi like this—purified, bright, flawless, rid of corruptions, pliable, workable, steady, and imperturbable—they extend it toward recollection of past lives. They recollect many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details. This is the first knowledge that they attain. Ignorance is banished and knowledge has arisen; darkness is banished and light has arisen, as happens for a meditator who is diligent, keen, and resolute.
§6When their mind has become immersed in samādhi like this—purified, bright, flawless, rid of corruptions, pliable, workable, steady, and imperturbable—they extend it toward knowledge of the death and rebirth of sentient beings. With clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds: ‘These dear beings did bad things by way of body, speech, and mind. They denounced the noble ones; they had wrong view; and they chose to act out of that wrong view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell. These dear beings, however, did good things by way of body, speech, and mind. They never denounced the noble ones; they had right view; and they chose to act out of that right view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.’ And so, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds. This is the second knowledge that they attain. Ignorance is banished and knowledge has arisen; darkness is banished and light has arisen, as happens for a meditator who is diligent, keen, and resolute.
§7When their mind has become immersed in samādhi like this—purified, bright, flawless, rid of corruptions, pliable, workable, steady, and imperturbable—they extend it toward knowledge of the ending of defilements. They truly understand: ‘This is suffering’ … ‘This is the origin of suffering’ … ‘This is the cessation of suffering’ … ‘This is the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering’. They truly understand: ‘These are defilements’ … ‘This is the origin of defilements’ … ‘This is the cessation of defilements’ … ‘This is the practice that leads to the cessation of defilements’. Knowing and seeing like this, their mind is freed from the defilements of sensuality, desire to be reborn, and ignorance. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’ This is the third knowledge that they attain. Ignorance is banished and knowledge has arisen; darkness is banished, and light has arisen, as happens for a meditator who is diligent, keen, and resolute.
In verse
§8–10For someone whose ethical conduct doesn’t waver, who is alert, practicing absorption; whose mind is mastered, unified, serene. That attentive one dispels the darkness, master of the three knowledges, conqueror of death. For the welfare of gods and humans, he has given up everything, they say. Accomplished in the three knowledges, living without confusion, bearing the final body, they revere the awakened Gotama.
§11–12One who knows their past lives, sees heaven and places of loss, and has attained the ending of rebirth, a sage of perfect insight— it’s because of these three knowledges that a brahmin is a master of the three knowledges. That’s who I call a three-knowledge master, and not the other who repeats what they are told.
Not worth a sixteenth part
§13–14This, brahmin, is a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One.” “Worthy Gotama, a master of three knowledges according to the brahmins is quite different from a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One. And, worthy Gotama, a master of three knowledges according to the brahmins is not worth a sixteenth part of a master of the three knowledges in the training of the Noble One. Excellent, worthy Gotama! Excellent! … From this day forth, may the worthy Gotama remember me as a lay follower who has gone for refuge for life.”
Self-check quiz
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