The Corner of the Cloak

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

A mendicant who literally clings to the hem of the Buddha’s robe while still gripped by craving and ill will is, in every way that matters, far from him; one who lives a hundred leagues away but has let go of craving is close — because to see the teaching is to see the Buddha, and to miss the teaching is to miss him, regardless of physical proximity.

Two mendicants, two distances

The discourse sets up its point with a clean pair of images. First: “suppose a mendicant were to hold the corner of my cloak and follow behind me step by step” — yet this mendicant “covets sensual pleasures,” is “infatuated, full of ill will and malicious intent,” unmindful, with “straying minds and undisciplined faculties.” Despite the physical closeness, “they are far from me, and I from them.” Second, the reverse: “suppose a mendicant were to live a hundred leagues away” but does not covet sensual pleasures, is not infatuated or full of ill will, and has “established mindfulness, situational awareness and immersion, with unified mind and restrained faculties.” Despite the distance, “they are close to me, and I to them.”

Seeing the teaching, seeing the Buddha

The reason given for both cases is identical: “that mendicant does not see the teaching. Not seeing the teaching, they do not see me” — or, in the second case, the reverse: “that mendicant sees the teaching. Seeing the teaching, they see me.” It is worth noting, honestly, that a very similar equation between seeing the Dhamma and seeing the Buddha appears elsewhere in the canon, in the story of the monk Vakkali, who was so devoted to gazing at the Buddha’s physical form that the Buddha had to redirect him toward the teaching itself. Here the same equation is simply stated as a flat, unconditional principle, without any individual’s story attached to it — a difference worth noticing between this collection’s spare style and the fuller narrative treatments found elsewhere.

The lake free of wind

The closing verses restate the point in image after image: the one “full of desire and distress” may follow closely behind, “yet see how distant they are” — “the stirred from the still, the burning from the quenched, the greedy from the greedless.” By contrast, “an astute person who has understood and directly known the teaching, grows calm, as unperturbed as a lake free of wind.” The final lines draw the whole discourse together with a simple principle of likeness: “the still to the still, the quenched to the quenched, the greedless to the greedless” — closeness, in other words, is a matter of what one has in common with the Buddha, not where one stands relative to him.

Key terms