Reading guide
A former ascetic's harsh verdict on herself
‘My hair mown off, covered in mud, I used to wander wearing just one robe’ describes a life of austere practice outside the Buddha's path, judged afterward without sympathy: ‘I saw fault where there was none, and was blind to the actual fault’.
An ordination echoing the earliest days of the order
‘“Come Bhaddā,” he said; that was my ordination’ uses the same simple formula as the Buddha's very first ordinations, ‘come, monk’ — Bhikkhu Sujato's own note on this line observes that ‘ehi’, ‘come’, was itself a recognized sign of respect.
Fifty years, named across five regions
‘I've wandered among the Aṅgans and Magadhans, the Vajjis, Kāsis, and Kosalans... free of debt for fifty years’ gives her subsequent life a scale and geographic specificity unusual in this collection, five named regions across five decades.
A stranger's voice, closing the poem
The final verse shifts away from Bhaddā's own voice entirely: ‘that lay follower is so very wise... he gave a robe to Bhaddā, who is released from all ties’ — an outside voice, like Thig 3.6's praise of Sukkā, but here praising not the nun herself, only the donor who supported her.
Key terms
The text
§1My hair mown off, covered in mud, I used to wander wearing just one robe. I saw fault where there was none, and was blind to the actual fault.
§2Leaving my day’s meditation on Vulture’s Peak Mountain, I saw the stainless Buddha at the fore of the mendicant Saṅgha.
§3I bent my knee and bowed, and in his presence raised my cupped palms. “Come Bhaddā,” he said; that was my ordination.
§4“I’ve wandered among the Aṅgans and Magadhans, the Vajjis, Kāsis, and Kosalans. I have eaten the almsfood of the nations free of debt for fifty years.”
§5“O! He has made so much merit! That lay follower is so very wise. He gave a robe to Bhaddā, who is released from all ties.”
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