Reading guide
A private dissatisfaction, kept secret for decades
For more than fifty years the seer lived, in his own words, ‘dissatisfied’ — and told no one. The text is explicit that this was a private, ongoing state, not a passing mood: ‘it only went on in my mind.’
A crisis that has nothing to do with his own struggle
The emergency that draws out his confession is external: a boy, son of visiting friends, is bitten by a viper after touching it by accident, and collapses — the seer's own decades of quiet dissatisfaction have no obvious connection to this at all.
An unflattering truth, declared as the cure
Rather than declaring a truth about virtue or non-harm, as in Cp 29 and Cp 30, the seer declares the opposite kind of fact: ‘for just seven days with a mind of faith I led the spiritual life seeking merit. My life since then, for fifty years or more, I have lived unwillingly.’ This is a confession, not a claim to virtue.
The truth's power independent of what it reveals
The declaration works exactly as the other truth-acts in this chapter do — the boy recovers immediately. The story implies that the power of a saccakiriyā rests on the accuracy of what is declared, not on whether the content reflects well on the one declaring it.
Key terms
The text
Fifty years of private dissatisfaction
§1“Then again when I was the seer Dark Light, for more than fifty years I lived dissatisfied.
§2No-one knew of this dissatisfaction of mine, for I mentioned it to no-one, it only went on in my mind.
A friend nursed, then a crisis with strangers
§3Maṇḍabya, a spiritual companion and friend of mine was a great seer. Bound to a deed in a past life, he got impaled on a stake.
§4I nursed him and brought him back to health. Asking leave, I returned to my own hermitage.
§5A brahmin friend of mine, bringing wife and child, came to me, all three of them, as my guests.
§6As I exchanged greetings with them, seated in my own hermitage, the boy threw a ball and angered a viper.
§7Then the boy, looking which way the ball had gone, touched the viper’s head with his hand.
§8Angered at his touch, the snake, relying on its potent poison, completely enraged, bit the boy right away.
§9When bitten by the viper, the boy fainted on the ground. It made me distraught, the pain became as if mine.
A confession as the cure
§10Comforting the parents, in their suffering and sorrow, I made the first act, the original, supreme declaration of truth:
§11‘For just seven days with a mind of faith I led the spiritual life seeking merit. My life since then, for fifty years or more,
§12I have lived unwillingly. By this truth, may he be well! May the poison die! May Yaññadatta live!’
§13As I declared this truth, the boy trembling with poison, awoke and got up, the brahmin youth was well. There is no-one to equal my truthfulness: this is my perfection of truth.”
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