Reading guide
Five images, not three
Where SN 4.2's elephant was built from three comparisons, this serpent accumulates five — body, hood, eyes, tongue, and breath each separately described — the most sensorily elaborate manifestation this vagga has offered so far.
A location change, and its own explanation
This discourse moves the setting from Uruvelā to Rājagaha's Bamboo Grove, the same rainy-night meditation circumstance recurring in a new location, suggesting this particular kind of confrontation — solitary night meditation, physical intimidation — was not confined to the immediate post-awakening period.
Empty huts and small creatures, not yet the climax
The Buddha's first two stanzas address something more modest than the cosmic imagery to come: a sage's ordinary willingness to dwell in empty buildings, undisturbed even by creepy crawlies, flies, and snakes — a domestic, almost practical register before the verse escalates.
The sky splitting, the earth quaking
The final stanza abandons the modest register entirely for cosmic catastrophe: firmament splitting, earth quaking, all creatures stricken with fear, even an arrow aimed at one's own breast — the most extreme hypothetical test of equanimity offered anywhere in this vagga so far.
Taking no shelter in attachments: the verse's real subject
The stanza's actual claim is not that catastrophe won't happen or won't be felt, but that the Buddhas ‘take no shelter in attachments’ even then — locating equanimity not in immunity from disaster but in having nothing left to lose to it.
Key terms
The text
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha, in the Bamboo Grove, the squirrels’ feeding ground. Now at that time the Buddha was meditating in the open during the dark of night, while a gentle rain drizzled down.
§2Then Māra the Wicked, wanting to make the Buddha feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, manifested in the form of a huge serpent king and approached him. Its body was like a huge canoe carved from a single tree. Its hood was like a large brewer’s sieve. Its eyes were like big bronze cups from Kosala. Its tongue flickered from its mouth like lightning flashes in a thunderstorm. The sound of its breathing was like the puffing of a blacksmith’s bellows.
§3Then the Buddha, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, replied to him in verse: “A self-controlled sage frequents empty buildings for lodging. It’s appropriate for that sort to live there after relinquishing.
§4Though there are lots of creepy crawlies, and lots of flies and snakes, they wouldn’t stir a hair of a great sage in that empty hut.
§5Though the firmament may split and the earth may quake, and all creatures be stricken with fear; and even if an arrow’s aimed at their breast, the Buddhas take no shelter in attachments.”
§6Then Māra the Wicked, thinking, “The Buddha knows me! The Holy One knows me!” miserable and sad, vanished right there.
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