With Vassakāra

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Two definitions of greatness are placed side by side, one of capacity and one of attainment, and the second is confirmed only under protest.

Who Vassakāra is

A chief minister of Magadha under King Ajātasattu, and one of the more consequential lay figures in the canon. He appears at the opening of the Mahāparinibbāna material, sent to ask whether the king can defeat the Vajjis, and is associated with the fortification of Pāṭaliputta.

He is not a disciple and is not portrayed as one. He is an able administrator making conversation with a famous teacher, and the definition he proposes is exactly what a man in his position would admire.

His four

Very learned in diverse fields; able to explain what statements mean; mindful, in the sense of remembering what was said and done long ago; and deft and tireless in household duties, understanding how to organize and complete work.

This is a description of administrative excellence and it is a good one. Note that the third item uses sati in its plain sense of memory rather than in the technical sense the tradition gives it, which is a useful reminder that the word had ordinary usage.

“If the worthy Gotama agrees with me, please say so. If he disagrees, please say so.” The framing is a politician’s: a direct request for endorsement, with both options offered.

“I neither agree nor disagree”

The refusal of the frame is the discourse’s first real move. Vassakāra has offered a binary and the Buddha steps out of it, then supplies his own account without criticizing the one he was given.

That is worth noticing as a conversational technique. Nothing in Vassakāra’s list is denied; it is simply not the subject. The four qualities the Buddha names are about something else, and the disagreement, such as it is, is about what the phrase ‘great man of great wisdom’ should be reserved for.

The Buddha’s four

Practising for the welfare and happiness of the people; having established many in the principles of goodness and skillfulness; mastery of the paths of thought — thinking what one wants to think and not what one does not; the four absorptions at will; and the ending of defilements.

Counted strictly that is five items in four slots, with mental mastery and the absorptions grouped together; the Pāli treats them as one. The set moves outward to inward, opposite to Vassakāra’s, which stayed entirely in the domain of capability.

The first two are the striking ones. Greatness begins, on this account, with acting for others and establishing others — not with attainment. The private qualities come third and fourth. A reader expecting the tradition to define greatness by meditative achievement should notice which items were put first.

“Invasive and intrusive”

Vassakāra immediately applies all four to the Buddha himself, in the form of a compliment. The reply is abhinipātī kho tyāyaṁ brāhmaṇa vācā abhinippīḷā — your words are clearly invasive and intrusive. Nevertheless, I will answer you. And then he confirms every item in the first person.

The rebuke is real and should not be softened. Vassakāra has done something socially clumsy: he has put a claim of attainment into another person’s mouth by attributing it, which leaves that person either accepting praise or publicly denying it. It is a form of pressure and the discourse names it.

That the Buddha then confirms the four anyway is the more interesting half. He does not avoid the question to preserve modesty. He objects to the manner and answers the substance, which is a distinction worth teaching: the objection was to being maneuvered, not to the truth being stated.

It is also a useful corrective to a reading of the canon in which the Buddha is unfailingly serene. He is depicted here as finding a conversational move objectionable and saying so.

Key terms