The Questions of Mettagū

Reading guide

The discourse in one sentence

Mettagū, the fourth of Bāvarī's sixteen students, asks where all the world's suffering comes from; the Buddha traces it to attachment (upadhi), describes a teaching “apparent in the present” by which the attentive cross the flood of rebirth and lamenting, and closes with a personal exchange in which Mettagū asks to be instructed directly.

The frame: the fourth of sixteen questions

As told in full in Snp 5.1, Bāvarī, an aged brahmin teacher unable to travel himself, sent sixteen of his finest students — Ajita, Tissametteyya, Puṇṇaka, Mettagū, Dhotaka, Upasīva, Nanda, Hemaka, Todeyya, Kappa, Jatukaṇṇī, Bhadrāvudha, Udaya, Posāla, Mogharāja, and Piṅgiya — to question the newly awakened Buddha directly. Three students have already spoken, in Snp 5.2 through 5.4; Mettagū, fourth in Bāvarī's list, now asks what may be the single broadest question of the whole sequence.

The single root of suffering: attachment

Mettagū's opening question could hardly be larger in scope: where do all these sufferings come from, in all their countless forms in the world? The Buddha's answer resists multiplying causes — instead of listing many sources, he names one: upadhi, attachment or “what is grasped,” is “the source of suffering in all its countless forms.” An ignorant person who keeps building up attachments “ returns to suffering again and again”; the one who understands this simply stops building them up, “contemplating the inception of suffering and rebirth.” The diagnosis is deliberately singular even as the symptoms it accounts for are described as countless.

Crossing the flood, verified in the present

Mettagū's follow-up asks something more practical: how do the attentive actually cross “the flood of rebirth, old age, sorrow, and lamenting”? The Buddha's answer is notable for a phrase that recurs throughout this chapter: he will extol a teaching “that is apparent in the present, not relying on tradition.” This is a strong claim about the kind of knowledge on offer — not inherited belief to be taken on trust, but something a person can verify for themselves, here and now, by living mindfully with understanding.

Consciousness, and the mendicant who lets it go

The Buddha's fuller instruction asks Mettagū to give up “relishing and dogmatism” regarding everything one is aware of — “above, below, all round, between” — and, having “cast aside consciousness,” not to continue in existence. A mendicant who wanders meditating this way, diligent and mindful, calling nothing their own, gives up the suffering of rebirth, old age, sorrow, and lamenting “right here” — not in some future life, but in this one.

A personal request, and the knowledge master who has crossed

What distinguishes this discourse from the more purely doctrinal exchanges around it is its warmth. Mettagū responds with visible emotion — “I rejoice in the words of the great seer!” — and then asks something unusually direct and personal: surely those the Buddha regularly instructs would also give up suffering; having met him, Mettagū bows especially, hoping the Buddha “may regularly instruct me.” The Buddha's closing answer broadens back out to a general description rather than a private promise: any brahmin recognized as a “knowledge master,” who has nothing and is unattached to sensual life, has “crossed this flood, crossed to the far shore, kind, wishless” — having untied the bond to life after life, free of craving, with no need for hope.

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