Reading guide
A domestic accident opening a saṃyutta about brahmins
Unlike SN 3's confrontations with King Pasenadi or SN 4's direct challenges from Māra, this discourse begins inside an ordinary household, with a wife's involuntary exclamation rather than any deliberate act — the provocation for everything that follows is essentially an accident.
Contempt named specifically before the confrontation begins
The husband's insult — calling his wife a ‘lowlife woman’ and the Buddha a ‘bald ascetic’ — establishes his hostility in his own words before he ever meets the Buddha, making his later conversion a genuine reversal rather than a foregone conclusion.
A wife's confidence stated plainly, without deference
Dhanañjānī's response to her husband's threat isn't placating; she states directly that no one in the entire world of gods and humans could refute the Buddha's teaching, and simply tells him to go find out for himself — a confidence the discourse doesn't temper or soften.
A question about killing, answered by a teaching against violence
The brahmin's opening verse asks what one thing, when slain, brings ease and freedom from sorrow — framing the question in the language of violence he presumably expects the Buddha to reject outright; instead the Buddha answers within that same frame, naming anger itself as the one thing worth killing.
A single image doing the verse's entire work
Anger's description as having ‘a poisonous root and a sweet tip’ needs no further explanation within the verse itself — the image alone accounts for why anger feels satisfying in the moment yet damages afterward, and the brahmin's immediate, effusive praise confirms the image landed exactly as intended.
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 wife of a certain brahmin of the Bhāradvāja clan, a brahmin lady named Dhanañjānī, was devoted to the Buddha, the teaching, and the Saṅgha. Once, while she was bringing her husband his meal, she tripped and expressed this heartfelt sentiment three times:
§2“Homage to him, the blessed one, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha! Homage to him, the blessed one, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha! Homage to him, the blessed one, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha!”
§3When she said this, the brahmin said to Dhanañjānī: “That’d be right. For the slightest thing this lowlife woman spouts out praise for that bald ascetic. Right now, lowlife woman, I’m going to refute your teacher’s doctrine!” “Brahmin, I don’t see anyone in this world—with its gods, Māras, and Divinities, this population with its ascetics and brahmins, its gods and humans—who can refute the doctrine of the Blessed One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha. But anyway, you should go. When you’ve gone you’ll understand.”
§4Then the brahmin of the Bhāradvāja clan, angry and upset, went to the Buddha and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, he sat down to one side, and addressed the Buddha in verse:
§5“When what is slain do you sleep at ease? When what is slain is there no sorrow? What is the one thing whose killing you approve?”
§6“When anger’s slain you sleep at ease. When anger’s slain there is no sorrow. O brahmin, anger has a poisonous root and a sweet tip. The noble ones praise its killing, for when it’s slain there is no sorrow.”
§7When he said this, the brahmin said to the Buddha, “Excellent, worthy Gotama! Excellent! As if he were righting the overturned, or revealing the hidden, or pointing out the path to the lost, or lighting a lamp in the dark so people with clear eyes can see what’s there, worthy Gotama has made the teaching clear in many ways. I go for refuge to the worthy Gotama, to the teaching, and to the mendicant Saṅgha. May I receive the going forth, the ordination in the worthy Gotama’s presence?”
§8And the brahmin received the going forth, the ordination in the Buddha’s presence. Not long after his ordination, Venerable Bhāradvāja, living alone, withdrawn, diligent, keen, and resolute, soon realized the supreme end of the spiritual path in this very life. He lived having achieved with his own insight the goal for which gentlemen rightly go forth from the lay life to homelessness. He understood: “Rebirth is ended; the spiritual journey has been completed; what had to be done has been done; there is nothing further for this place.” And Venerable Bhāradvāja became one of the perfected.
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