Reading guide
An offer from someone who knows exactly what's being refused
Unlike other discourses where a deity tries to correct a monk's error, Jālinī has personal, intimate knowledge of what she's offering; having genuinely shared a past life with Anuruddha, her invitation carries a weight and specificity that a stranger's temptation couldn't.
A refusal that indicts the pleasure itself, not just the offer
Anuruddha's first response doesn't simply say ‘no, thank you’; it reframes the entire premise, calling divine maidens themselves ‘in a sorry state, stuck in substantial reality’, and extending that same judgment to anyone attached to them.
Persistence met with escalating directness
Jālinī doesn't accept the first refusal; she tries again, praising the Garden of Delight directly, prompting Anuruddha's response to shift register entirely, from reframing the offer to naming her outright as failing to understand ‘the saying of the perfected ones’.
A core teaching delivered as rebuttal, not abstract doctrine
The impermanence formula Anuruddha recites — all conditions rise and fall, their settling is bliss — isn't offered as general instruction; it's aimed directly at dismantling the specific temptation just placed before him.
A closing line naming her specifically, not generically
Anuruddha's final declaration doesn't end in the abstract; it addresses Jālinī directly by name — ‘weaver of the web’, playing on the meaning of her name — making his declaration of finished rebirth a direct, personal answer rather than a general teaching statement.
Key terms
The text
§1At one time Venerable Anuruddha was staying in the land of the Kosalans in a certain forest grove. Then a certain deity of the company of the thirty-three named Penelope had been Anuruddha’s partner in a former life. She went up to Anuruddha, and recited these verses:
§2“Set your heart there, where you used to live: among the gods of the thirty-three, whose every desire is granted! At the fore of a retinue of divine maidens, you’ll shine!”
§3“Divine maidens are in a sorry state, stuck in substantial reality. And those beings too are in a sorry state, who are attached to divine maidens.”
§4“They don’t know pleasure who don’t see the Garden of Delight! It’s the abode of lordly gods, the glorious host of Thirty!”
§5“Fool, don’t you understand the saying of the perfected ones: all conditions are impermanent, their nature is to rise and fall; having arisen, they cease; their settling is such bliss.
§6O Penelope, weaver of the web—there are no more abodes for me in the host of gods. Transmigration through births is finished, now there’ll be no more future lives.”
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