Reading guide
A hypothetical proposed, then its own premise denied
This project's own reading of the discourse's own two-part structure: first, an extreme thought experiment establishes that comprehending the truths would be worth any price, however severe; second, the discourse explicitly rejects the implication that reaching comprehension actually requires such suffering — the rhetorical extremity of the first half makes the reversal in the second half land with particular force.
Beginningless transmigration as the standard of comparison
This project's own reading: the argument for accepting even the hundred-spears bargain rests on comparing it to transmigration's own beginningless past — a century of daily spear-wounds is finite and bounded, while the suffering already endured through countless unremembered lives has no discoverable starting point at all.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, suppose there was a man with a lifespan of a hundred years. And someone might say to him: ‘Come now, my friend, they’ll strike you with a hundred spears in the morning, at midday, and in the late afternoon. And you’ll live for a hundred years being struck with three hundred spears every day. But when a hundred years have passed, you will comprehend the four noble truths for the first time.’
§2For an earnest gentleman this is sufficient reason to submit. Why is that? This transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of blows by spears, swords, arrows, and axes. Now this may be so. But the comprehension of the four noble truths doesn’t come with pain or sadness, I say. Rather, the comprehension of the four noble truths comes only with pleasure and happiness, I say. What four? The noble truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path.
§3That’s why you should practice meditation …”
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