Reading guide
A fight over a courtesan
The scene is set in a single, spare sentence: “two gangs were both hopelessly in love with a certain courtesan” in Rājagaha. “Fighting, quarreling, and disputing, they attacked each other with fists, stones, rods, and swords, resulting in death and deadly pain.” The courtesan herself is never named, never quoted, and plays no active role in the text beyond being the object of the gangs’ rivalry. Mendicants returning from their alms round report the incident to the Buddha, exactly as in Ud 6.4–6.6 — but this time the dispute isn’t between philosophers arguing over cosmology. It is a street fight with fatalities.
From a street fight to a dense verse
What the Buddha says in response doesn’t address the courtesan, the gangs, or the violence directly at all. Instead, the verse pivots immediately to something much more general: two extremes in spiritual practice. The first extreme is treating “the training” — precepts, observances, chastity, and service — as the whole essence of the path. The second is the opposite claim: “there’s nothing wrong with sensual pleasures.” The verse says plainly that “these two extremes swell the charnel grounds, while the charnel grounds swell wrong view” — that is, both extremes, in their own way, lead to death and to views that keep death’s cycle turning.
Two ways to miss it
“Not realizing these two extremes,” the verse continues, “some get stuck and some overreach.” This reading guide takes “get stuck” to describe those caught in the first extreme — rigid attachment to rule and observance — and “overreach” to describe those who go the other way, using the claim that pleasure is harmless to justify going further than the path allows; but the verse itself doesn’t spell out the pairing this precisely, and this should be read as an interpretation rather than a settled fact the text states outright.
What lies past both extremes
The verse’s final line offers its resolution: “Those who realize these things, who were not found there, who did not conceive by that, there is no cycle of rebirths to be found.” The connection back to the opening violence is never made explicit — the verse doesn’t say “and this is why the gangs fought” — and this guide won’t supply a connection the text doesn’t make. What can be said is that a scene of specific, fatal, worldly violence here produces one of the most compressed general statements in the entire chapter about the two extremes and what lies beyond them both.
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 two gangs were both hopelessly in love with a certain courtesan. Fighting, quarreling, and disputing, they attacked each other with fists, stones, rods, and swords, resulting in death and deadly pain.
§2Then several mendicants robed up in the morning and, taking their bowls and robes, entered Rājagaha for alms. Then, after the meal, when they returned from almsround, they went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and told him what was happening.
§4Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha expressed this heartfelt sentiment:
§5“What has been attained and what is to be attained are both strewn over with dust for that one training while still sick. Those for whom the training is the essence, or precepts and observances, chastity, and service as the essence: this is one extreme. Those who say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with sensual pleasures’: this is the second extreme. Thus these two extremes swell the charnel grounds, while the charnel grounds swell wrong view. Not realizing these two extremes, some get stuck and some overreach. Those who realize these things, who were not found there, who did not conceive by that, there is no cycle of rebirths to be found.”
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