Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The teaching of impermanence lands hardest on those whose position is best, because they are the ones who had most reason to believe they were exempt.
The lion
The simile is unusually detailed and every detail is doing something. The lion emerges toward evening; he yawns; he surveys the four quarters; he roars three times; and only then does he set out to hunt.
The roar precedes the hunting. It is not a byproduct of the kill but an announcement made in advance, and everything that happens to the animals happens on hearing it, before anything has been done to any of them. That is the structural point the application depends on: what frightens is the sound, not the injury.
The elephants are the sharpest part. Royal elephants, bound with strong harnesses in villages, towns, and capital cities — the most valuable and best-secured animals in the human world — break their bonds and lose control of themselves. The image is deliberately undignified, and it is aimed at exactly the class of beings the application will name.
Substantial reality
The teaching that produces the effect is stated in the four-truth form, with sakkāya where suffering usually stands: such is substantial reality, its origin, its cessation, and the practice leading to its cessation.
Sakkāya is a hard word. Literally something like ‘the existing body’ or ‘the own-body’, it names the five aggregates considered as what a person takes themselves to be. Sujato’s ‘substantial reality’ is an attempt at the sense of a solid, self-standing existence; other translators have used ‘identity’ or ‘personal existence’. None of the English options is comfortable and it is better to teach the Pāli alongside whichever is used.
The relevant point for this discourse is that sakkāya is what the gods discover they are included within. Not that they will die soon — they are long-lived — but that they are the kind of thing that ends at all.
What the gods say
Their reaction is given in their own words and it is worth reading slowly, because the grammar of each line is the same: It turns out we’re impermanent, though we thought we were permanent. Three times, with three pairs of terms, and then a summary.
The formula is one of discovery rather than of threat. Nothing has been done to the gods; they have been informed. What produces the fear is a correction to a belief, and the belief was about themselves.
This is why the lion simile fits so precisely. In both halves the damage is done by information arriving, and in both halves the ones most disturbed are the ones with the most secure position. An animal in a hole has somewhere to go. A royal elephant has been given every reason to believe it is safe.
Who this discourse is for
Read as consolation it is a strange text; read as a description of who finds the teaching difficult, it is precise. The people to whom impermanence is genuinely bad news are those whose lives are going well and are expected to keep going well.
That is a useful thing to say plainly in a teaching setting. A person in difficulty often finds the first noble truth a relief — it names what they already know. A person who is comfortable, admired, and secure hears the same sentence as an attack on something they were relying on, and the discourse says so without apologizing for it.
The lion’s roar as a formula
Sīhanāda, the lion’s roar, has already appeared in AN 4.8, where the Buddha roars it in the assemblies on the strength of his four assurances. Here the content of the roar is supplied: it is the teaching of sakkāya and its cessation.
The two discourses together give the formula its full sense. The roar is a public, unhedged declaration made by someone with nothing outstanding against them, and what it declares is that nothing anyone is holding on to will last. The image of dominance and the content of the teaching are not as far apart as they first appear.
Key terms
The text
The lion
§1“Mendicants, towards evening the lion, king of beasts, emerges from his den, yawns, surveys the four quarters, and roars his lion’s roar three times. Then he sets out on the hunt. And the animals who hear the roar of the lion, king of beasts, are typically filled with fear, awe, and terror. They return to their lairs, be they in a hole, the water, or a wood; and the birds take to the air. Even the royal elephants, bound with strong harnesses in the villages, towns, and capital cities, break apart their bonds, and urinate and defecate in terror as they flee here and there. That’s how powerful is the lion, king of beasts, over animals, how illustrious and mighty.
The Realized One
§2In the same way, when a Realized One arises in the world—perfected, a fully awakened Buddha, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, holy, knower of the world, supreme guide for those fit for training, teacher of gods and humans, awakened, blessed—he teaches the Dhamma: ‘Such is substantial reality, such is the origin of substantial reality, such is the cessation of substantial reality, such is the practice that leads to the cessation of substantial reality.’ Now, there are gods who are long-lived, beautiful, and very happy, lasting long in their divine palaces. When they hear this teaching by the Realized One, they’re typically filled with fear, awe, and terror. ‘Oh no! It turns out we’re impermanent, though we thought we were permanent! It turns out we don’t last, though we thought we were everlasting! It turns out we’re transient, though we thought we were eternal! It turns out that we’re impermanent, not lasting, transient, and included within substantial reality.’ That’s how powerful is the Realized One in the world with its gods, how illustrious and mighty.
The verses
§3The Buddha, the unrivaled teacher in all the world with its gods, rolls forth the Wheel of Dhamma from his own insight: substantial reality, its cessation, the origin of substantial reality, and the noble eightfold path that leads to the stilling of suffering.
§4And then the long-lived gods, so beautiful and famous, are afraid and full of terror, like the other beasts when they hear a lion. ‘We haven’t passed beyond substantial reality! It turns out we’re impermanent!’ So they say when they hear the word of the perfected one, free and unaffected.”
Self-check quiz
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