At Devadaha

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

The Jain belief that all feeling is the fruit of past deeds, to be worn away by mortification, is baseless — they can know none of what it requires, their pain comes from their own present effort, and exertion cannot change how a deed ripens; truly fruitful striving is not the blind endurance of pain but the discerning use of effort and equanimity that wears suffering away and opens the path to freedom.

The doctrine on trial

The Jain position is stated fairly and fully: “Everything a person experiences — pleasure, pain, or neutral — is because of past deeds. So by wearing away past deeds through mortification, and doing no new deeds, there is no future consequence; deeds end, suffering ends.” This is a pure karmic determinism: the present is wholly the cashing-out of the past, and the only freedom is to pay the debt off faster by suffering on purpose. The Buddha’s reply is not “karma is false” — he affirms karma — but that this account claims to know far more than anyone can.

First movement: “Do you know?”

The Buddha puts five questions to the Jains. Do you know for certain (1) that you existed in the past; (2) that you did bad deeds then; (3) which deeds; (4) how much suffering has been worn away, how much remains, and when it will all be gone; (5) what abandoning the unskillful and developing the skillful is, here and now? To every one: “No, reverend.” The conclusion follows: if you know none of this, it is not appropriate to claim your suffering is precisely measured karmic repayment.

Second movement: the pain is your own doing

The Jains fall back on their all-knowing teacher, who declares their austerities the way to burn off past evil. The Buddha invokes the five unreliable grounds from MN 95 — faith, endorsement, oral transmission, reasoning, accepted opinion — none of which can establish a claim about the unseeable past. Then a simpler, empirical point: when do you feel these sharp pains? Only when you exert and strain intensely — never otherwise. So the pain is manifestly produced by present effort, here and now; to read it as the surfacing of ancient deeds is “out of ignorance, unknowing, and confusion.” They are hurting themselves and calling it destiny.

Third movement: exertion cannot reschedule karma

Even granting their own premises, the Buddha shows the practice incoherent. Can exertion make a deed due to ripen in this life ripen in another? Or the reverse? Can it turn a deed due to be felt as pleasure into one felt as pain? A deed due to ripen when fully matured into one felt before? A strong result into a weak one? A result that must be felt into one not felt? To every pairing the Jains must answer: “No.” But then their fervent striving cannot accelerate or alter the karmic process at all — so it is, on their own terms, fruitless.

The ten grounds of criticism

The Buddha then turns the Jains’ visible suffering against every possible theory of its cause — a striking piece of reasoning. If beings feel pleasure and pain because of past deeds, the Jains’ intense present pain shows they did terrible past deeds. If because of a creator God, they were made by a cruel one. If because of circumstance, their circumstances are wretched; if because of the class they were born into, a low one; if because of present effort, they strive disastrously. On any theory of causation whatever, the Jains’ self-inflicted agony reflects badly on them — ten grounds for criticism. The same reasoning, applied to the Realized One’s “undefiled pleasure,” yields ten grounds of praise. The point is not to settle the metaphysics but to expose how self-defeating the doctrine of redemptive pain is.

What fruitful striving actually is

Having cleared away the false striving, the Buddha describes the true. The mendicant “does not bring suffering upon themselves, and does not forsake legitimate pleasure, yet is not besotted with it.” They learn a discernment:

The jilted lover illustrates it: a man tormented by seeing his beloved laughing with another lets go of his desire for her — and the same sight no longer wounds him. Suffering is worn away not by attacking the feeling but by removing the craving beneath it. And where effort is called for, it is purposeful, not endless: like an arrowsmith who heats and straightens a shaft only until it is true and then stops, the mendicant strives painfully against unskillful qualities only until the goal is reached — then strives no more. Effort is a tool, not a penance.

The path that pain could never buy

Finally the Buddha lays out the whole gradual training that this discerning striving makes possible — going forth, ethical conduct, sense-restraint, mindfulness, abandoning the five hindrances, the four absorptions, and the three knowledges culminating in liberation: “rebirth is ended.” This is striving that bears fruit — not because it hurts, but because it transforms. The contrast with the Jains is complete: they sought to exhaust suffering by enduring more of it; the Buddha’s path extinguishes its cause. Where the Jain doctrine drew ten grounds of criticism, this one draws ten grounds of praise — the Realized One’s “undefiled pleasure” commending the path on any theory of cause whatever.

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