Reading guide
A vivid natural-world simile
Unlike this chapter's mostly bare formulaic lists, this discourse opens with an extended, carefully observed description of a lion's evening routine: emerging from its den, yawning, surveying the four directions, roaring three times, then setting out to hunt.
Careful with every kind of prey
The discourse's key detail: the lion strikes an elephant with the same care it gives a hare or a cat, ‘so as not to lose its way’ — a disciplined consistency of method that has nothing to do with danger from the smaller creature, and everything to do with not letting care slip regardless of how insignificant the target might seem.
The mapping onto the Buddha
‘Lion’ (sīha) is named directly as an epithet for the Realized One; teaching the Dhamma to any assembly is called his ‘lion's roar’ (sīhanāda), a term with wide resonance across Buddhist literature for a confident, authoritative proclamation.
The same care extended to every audience
The discourse names five kinds of audience in turn — mendicants, nuns, laymen, laywomen, and ordinary people, down to food-carriers and hunters — and states that the Buddha teaches each with the same undiminished care, matching the lion's consistency across prey of every size.
Why: respect for the teaching itself
Unusually among this chapter's mostly unexplained lists, the discourse gives an explicit reason for this consistency: ‘the Realized One has respect and reverence for the teaching’ (dhammagaru dhammagāravo). The care is not calibrated to the audience's importance; it flows from the teacher's own relationship to what is being taught.
A third extended simile in this nipāta
The lion joins the fortress-siege imagery of AN 5.71–72 and the graded-warrior imagery of AN 5.75–76 as a third extended figurative discourse in this nipāta, each using a vivid concrete image to make an otherwise abstract point memorable.
Key terms
The text
The lion's evening routine
§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.
Careful with every kind of prey
§2If he strikes an elephant, he does it carefully, not carelessly. If he strikes a buffalo … a cow … a leopard … or any smaller creatures—even a hare or a cat—he does it carefully, not carelessly. Why is that? Thinking: ‘May I not lose my way.’
The Realized One as lion
§3‘Lion’ is a term for the Realized One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha. When the Realized One teaches Dhamma to an assembly, this is his lion’s roar.
The same care for every audience
§4When the Realized One teaches the monks … nuns … laymen … laywomen … or ordinary people—even food-carriers and hunters—he teaches them carefully, not carelessly. Why is that? Because the Realized One has respect and reverence for the teaching.”
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