Reading guide
A second Kokanadā, at the same setting
This discourse shares its setting exactly with the one before it, and its speaker shares the name and parentage of the deity who spoke there — ‘Kokanadā the Younger’ distinguishing her from her predecessor without explaining their relationship further. The pairing of two same-named deities at one setting closes this vagga the way SN 1.39 and SN 1.40 close it together, as a matched set.
Choosing brevity over exhaustive analysis
Kokanadā the Younger's second verse makes an explicit choice: the teaching could be analyzed ‘in many different ways,’ but she will state its meaning briefly, limited to what she has ‘learned it by heart.’ The modesty of this framing, naming the limits of her own memorized understanding, sits close to her namesake's emphasis on witnessed rather than merely reported knowledge at SN 1.39.
The same verse, given very differently
The verse she recites — never do wrong by speech, mind, or body; having given up sensual pleasures, don't keep doing what's painful and pointless — is word for word identical to the verse that closed SN 1.20. There, an unnamed deity offered it as her own uncertain attempt to paraphrase three compressed verses the Buddha had just given, with nothing in the text confirming whether her reading was correct. Here, a named, devoted deity states the identical verse directly and confidently, with no surrounding uncertainty at all.
An untranslated close, as with the vaggas before it
As with SN 1.10, SN 1.20, and SN 1.30, this discourse is followed in the source text by a closing colophon and a mnemonic verse naming the Satullapakāyikavagga as finished and listing its ten titles — left untranslated in this edition, and described here rather than quoted, following this project's established practice.
A vagga named for a recurring host, closed by two individuals
This vagga opened at SN 1.31 with the Satullapakāyikā host that gives it its name, and moved through several structural variations — a shared refrain, independent arguments, a cumulative list, a hostile confrontation, an entirely different setting and scale, a physical ordeal — before closing on two individually named deities, sisters or otherwise related by the same father, neither belonging to the host the vagga is titled after.
Key terms
The text
Kokanadā the Younger arrives
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Vesālī, at the Great Wood, in the hall with the peaked roof. Then, late at night, the glorious Kokanadā the Younger, Pajjunna’s daughter, lighting up the entire Great Wood, went up to the Buddha, bowed, stood to one side, and recited these verses in the Buddha’s presence:
§2“She came here, beautiful as a flash of lightning, Kokanadā, Pajjunna’s daughter. Revering the Buddha and the teaching, she spoke these verses full of meaning.
Brevity, chosen deliberately
§3The teaching is such that I could analyze it in many different ways. However, I will state the meaning in brief as far as I have learned it by heart.
A verse already met at SN 1.20
§4You should never do anything bad by speech or mind or body in all the world. Having given up sensual pleasures, mindful and aware, you shouldn’t keep doing what’s painful and pointless.”
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