Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A claim to have seen through something has to be able to say what it saw.
What Sarabha said, and what the monks asked for
The boast is small and precise: I learned the teaching of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan, then I left their teaching and training. It is not an accusation. It implies one — that he found the teaching wanting once he understood it — without stating anything that could be examined.
The monks who hear it on almsround do not answer him. They report it and make a request, and the wording of the request is worth noticing: go and see Sarabha out of sympathy, anukampaṁ upādāya. That is the canon’s standard phrase for why a teacher visits anyone, and it is used here of a visit to someone who has just insulted them.
It is fair to ask whether that framing is generous or self-serving, and a class will want to. The best evidence is what the Buddha actually offers when he arrives, which is correction in either direction: if you’ve not learned it fully, I’ll fill you in. But if you have learned it fully, I’ll agree.
That second clause is doing real work. It is an offer to concede, in public, in front of a crowd of rival wanderers, if the answer is good enough.
Three silences
The offer is made three times. Sarabha says nothing all three times.
Then his own colleagues intervene: the ascetic Gotama has offered to tell you anything you ask for. Speak, reverend Sarabha. And the description of him after that is one of the canon’s stock formulas for total defeat — silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say.
It is worth being honest about what the silence means and what it does not. It does not mean Sarabha had no criticism; a person can have real objections and be unable to state them in front of the person concerned, and anyone who has been in a meeting knows it. What the discourse records is that he could not produce one on demand, in public, having advertised that he had.
The narrower point stands regardless. He had been claiming to a crowd that he understood the teaching and rejected it. Asked what he understood, he did not answer. The claim and the silence are inconsistent whatever the reason for the silence.
The three challenges
Then the Buddha turns to the assembled wanderers and states, three times, the form a real challenge would take. Someone might say: you claim to be a fully awakened Buddha, but you don’t understand these things. Or: you claim to have ended all defilements, but you still have these. Or: your teaching does not lead someone who practices it to the complete ending of suffering.
Each is followed by the same claim about what would happen: he would pursue, press, and grill them on the point, and they would fall into one of three categories — dodging the issue with irrelevancies, displaying annoyance and bitterness, or sitting silent and downcast like Sarabha.
The three challenges are worth extracting because they are a list of the things this teaching stakes itself on: that the awakening is real, that the defilements are gone, and that the method works for other people. Nothing else is offered as a point of attack, and the third is the one that concerns anybody who is not the Buddha.
The naming of Sarabha in each refrain is the part that stings, and it is not necessary to the argument. The text does it three times.
Flying away, and the tension with AN 3.60
“Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar three times in the wanderers’ monastery on the bank of the Serpentine river, rose into the air and flew away.”
Four discourses earlier, in AN 3.60, Saṅgārava ranked the demonstration of psychic power last of three because it is experienced only by the one who performs it and seems like an illusion, and the Buddha let that stand. DN 11 has him say he is troubled and repelled by such displays.
And here he leaves a hostile monastery by air. A reader is entitled to notice the tension and it should not be smoothed over. The available observations are that the canon does not treat the powers as unreal — AN 3.60 has him affirm he possesses them — only as a poor way of convincing anybody; that this exit does not demonstrate anything to Sarabha, who has already stopped speaking; and that a departure is not an argument. Whether that is enough to reconcile the two passages is a fair question to leave with a class rather than answer for them.
The mockery, and who does it
The final scene is a pile-on. The other wanderers surround Sarabha with three similes: the old jackal who thinks I’ll roar a lion’s roar and only manages to squeal; the marsh hen who intends to cry like a cuckoo; the bull who thinks to bellow only when the cowstall is empty.
Two facts about this passage need stating together. The Buddha is not present — the text is explicit that this happens soon after the Buddha left — and the jeering is done by Sarabha’s own colleagues, other wanderers of his own community, not by Buddhists.
And it is still a scene of public humiliation preserved with evident relish, in a canon that elsewhere condemns harsh speech and ridicule. A teacher who presents this discourse should say so rather than let a class notice it privately. The similes are memorable because they are cruel, and the tradition kept them because they are memorable.
What can be said in mitigation is small and should be offered as small: the Buddha’s own words to Sarabha contain no insult, his offer was to be corrected, and he had gone. The rest belongs to the crowd, and the text lets the reader watch it happen.
Key terms
The text
A boast in Rājagaha
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha, on the Vulture’s Peak Mountain. Now at that time a wanderer named Sarabha had recently left this teaching and training. He was telling a crowd in Rājagaha, “I learned the teaching of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan, then I left their teaching and training.” Then several mendicants robed up in the morning and, taking their bowls and robes, entered Rājagaha for alms. They heard what Sarabha was saying.
§2Then, after the meal, when they returned from almsround, they went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and said to him, “The wanderer named Sarabha has recently left this teaching and training. He was telling a crowd in Rājagaha: ‘I learned the teaching of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan, then I left their teaching and training.’ Worthy sir, please go to the wanderers’ monastery on the banks of the Serpentine river to see Sarabha the wanderer out of sympathy.” The Buddha consented with silence.
Asked three times
§3Then in the late afternoon, the Buddha came out of retreat and went to the wanderers’ monastery on the banks of the Serpentine river to visit Sarabha the wanderer. He sat on the seat spread out, and said to the wanderer Sarabha, “Is it really true, Sarabha, that you’ve been saying: ‘I learned the teaching of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan, then I left their teaching and training.’” When he said this, Sarabha kept silent.
§4For a second time, the Buddha said to Sarabha, “Tell me, Sarabha, what exactly have you learned of the teachings of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan? If you’ve not learned it fully, I’ll fill you in. But if you have learned it fully, I’ll agree.” For a second time, Sarabha kept silent.
§5For a third time, the Buddha said to Sarabha, “Sarabha, the teachings of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan are clear to me. What exactly have you learned of the teachings of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan? If you’ve not learned it fully, I’ll fill you in. But if you have learned it fully, I’ll agree.” For a third time, Sarabha kept silent.
§6Then those wanderers said to Sarabha, “The ascetic Gotama has offered to tell you anything you ask for. Speak, reverend Sarabha, what exactly have you learned of the teachings of the ascetics who follow the Sakyan? If you’ve not learned it fully, he’ll fill you in. But if you have learned it fully, he’ll agree.” When this was said, Sarabha sat silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say.
Three challenges
§7–8Knowing this, the Buddha said to the wanderers: “Wanderers, someone might say to me: ‘You claim to be a fully awakened Buddha, but you don’t understand these things.’ Then I’d carefully pursue, press, and grill them on that point. When grilled by me, they would, without a doubt, fall into one of these three categories. They’d dodge the issue, distracting the discussion with irrelevant points. They’d display annoyance, hate, and bitterness. Or they’d sit silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, like Sarabha.
§9Wanderers, someone might say to me: ‘You claim to have ended all defilements, but you still have these defilements.’ Then I’d carefully pursue, press, and grill them on that point. When grilled by me, they would, without a doubt, fall into one of these three categories. They’d dodge the issue, distracting the discussion with irrelevant points. They’d display annoyance, hate, and bitterness. Or they’d sit silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, like Sarabha.
§10Wanderers, someone might say to me: ‘Your teaching does not lead someone who practices it to the complete ending of suffering, the goal for which it is taught.’ Then I’d carefully pursue, press, and grill them on that point. When grilled by me, they would, without a doubt, fall into one of these three categories. They’d dodge the issue, distracting the discussion with irrelevant points. They’d display annoyance, hate, and bitterness. Or they’d sit silent, dismayed, shoulders drooping, downcast, depressed, with nothing to say, like Sarabha.” Then the Buddha, having roared his lion’s roar three times in the wanderers’ monastery on the bank of the Serpentine river, rose into the air and flew away.
After he had gone
§11Soon after the Buddha left, those wanderers beset Sarabha on all sides with sneering and jeering. “Reverend Sarabha, you’re just like an old jackal in the formidable wilderness who thinks, ‘I’ll roar a lion’s roar!’ but they still only manage to squeal and yelp like a jackal. In the same way, when the ascetic Gotama wasn’t here you said ‘I’ll roar a lion’s roar!’ but you only managed to squeal and yelp like a jackal. You’re just like a marsh hen who thinks, ‘I’ll cry like a cuckoo!’ but they still only manage to cry like a marsh hen. In the same way, when the ascetic Gotama wasn’t here you said ‘I’ll cry like a cuckoo!’ but you still only managed to cry like a marsh hen. You’re just like a bull that thinks to bellow only when the cowstall is empty. In the same way, you only thought to bellow when the ascetic Gotama wasn’t here.” That’s how those wanderers beset Sarabha on all sides with sneering and jeering.
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