Reading guide
A single wish, made on behalf of everyone
The third verse imagines the Buddha granting Lakuṇḍakabhaddiya any wish he chose, and names it: ‘I'd choose for the whole world constant mindfulness of the body’ — not a wish for himself, but for ‘sabbalokassa’, the entire world. This is an unusually generous framing for a hypothetical wish within this collection, where such moments more often concern the speaker's own attainment.
Appearance and voice, both named as equally deficient grounds
The fourth verse pairs two kinds of misjudgment directly: ‘those who've judged me on appearance, and those swayed by my voice... they don't know me’. Neither criterion, taken alone, is treated as more reliable than the other — both are equally beside the point.
A three-verse progression: neither, one, then both
The fifth, sixth, and seventh verses build a graded argument rather than a simple repetition: the fool who knows neither what's inside nor outside is carried away by a voice; one who discerns only what's outside is still carried away by a voice; only one who understands what's inside and discerns what's outside is finally unhindered. This is a distinct structural device from this collection's earlier antithetical-parallelism poems (such as Thag 6.3) — not opposite paired against opposite, but three ascending degrees of the same condition.
A comment linking this poem to two already-translated texts
Sujato's comment on the fourth verse notes Bhaddiya ‘was said to be of unsightly appearance’, citing this site's own SN 21.6, With Bhaddiya the Dwarf, ‘yet charming voice’, citing AN 1.194, part of this site's AN 1.188–197, Foremost Monks (I), where he is declared foremost among those with a delightful voice. His own poem's argument — that appearance and voice are both unreliable grounds for judgment — reads with particular weight given that his own biography, on both counts, invited exactly this kind of surface judgment.
The name itself: 'Bhaddiya the Dwarf'
Lakuṇḍaka (‘dwarf’) distinguishes him directly by physical description, embedded permanently in his name — making the poem's opening line, ‘Bhaddiya has plucked out craving, root and all... he is truly well-favoured (bhaddo)’, a quiet irony: the name marking him by appearance, the poem itself insisting appearance is beside the point.
Key terms
The text
§1Bhaddiya has plucked out craving, root and all, and in a jungle thicket on the far side of the Wild Mango Monastery, he practices absorption; he is truly well-favoured.
§2Some delight in clay drums, in arched harps, and in cymbals. But here, at the foot of a tree, I delight in the Buddha’s teaching.
§3If the Buddha were to grant me one wish, and I were to get what I wished for, I’d choose for the whole world constant mindfulness of the body.
§4Those who’ve judged me on appearance, and those swayed by my voice, are full of desire and greed; they don’t know me.
§5Not knowing what’s inside, nor seeing what’s outside, the fool shut in on every side, gets carried away by a voice.
§6Not knowing what’s inside, but discerning what’s outside, seeing the fruit outside, they’re also carried away by a voice.
§7Understanding what’s inside, and discerning what’s outside, of unhindered vision, they don’t get carried away by a voice.
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