Converting Anāthapiṇḍada (I)

Buddhacarita, Chapter Eighteen: Converting Anāthapiṇḍada

At that time there was a great elder named Anāthapiṇḍada, immensely wealthy beyond measure, who gave generously and widely to relieve the poor and destitute.

Traveling from a distant place in the north, from the country of Kosala, he came to lodge in the house of an acquaintance, whose master was named Śūra.

Hearing that a buddha had arisen in the world, and that he was staying nearby at the Bamboo Grove, and being moved by the renown of his very name and the weight of his virtue, he set out for that grove that very night.

The Tathāgata, already knowing that his faculties were ripe and that a pure faith had arisen in him, spoke to him in truthful terms suited to the moment, and taught him the Dharma.

"You already delight in the true Dharma, your heart parched with a pure faith and thirsting for it — you have been able to forgo your own sleep, and have come here to pay me reverence.

Today, then, I shall extend to you the full courtesy due a first guest.

You have planted, in ages past, the roots of virtue, firm and pure in what you hope for; hearing the Buddha's very name has filled you with joy, and you are a fit vessel for the true Dharma.

With an open heart you have given generously and widely, providing for the poor and destitute everywhere; your renown and virtue have spread far and wide, and this fruit has ripened through causes planted long ago.

Now you ought to practice the giving of the Dharma itself — giving with a wholly sincere and earnest heart, giving at the proper time, giving in a spirit of quiet stillness, and, together with this, upholding the pure precepts as well.

Moral discipline is itself an adornment, capable of turning one away from the evil destinies, and of raising a person up to rebirth in heaven, rewarded there with the five heavenly pleasures.

Every form of seeking is itself a great suffering, and craving and desire gather every kind of fault to themselves — one ought to cultivate instead a distancing from evil, and the peaceful bliss found in freedom from desire.

Knowing that old age, sickness, and death are themselves the great affliction of this world, one should rightly observe the world in this light, and depart from birth, old age, sickness, and death entirely.

Having seen that the human realm holds the suffering of old age, sickness, and death, one sees that it is exactly the same even in the heavens — there is nowhere at all where anything remains eternally.

What is impermanent is itself suffering, and what is suffering can have no true self within it — since the impermanent and the suffering are without self, how could there be any self, or anything belonging to a self, at all?

To know suffering is simply to know suffering as it is; to know its origin is simply to know that origin as it is; the cessation of suffering is itself quiescent stillness; and the path is itself the place of true peace and security.

The restless, ever-flowing nature of sentient beings ought to be recognized as the very root of suffering — one who grows weary of its downstream effects while leaving its very source unblocked can never truly wish to be rid of what has already come to exist.

The blazing fire of birth, old age, and death burns throughout the whole world without exception; seeing the restless turmoil of birth and death, one ought to cultivate the state beyond all conceptual perception, bringing samādhi to its very completion — the quiescent place of true immortality, empty of self and of anything belonging to a self, in which the whole world is seen to be like an illusion. One ought to contemplate this very body in just this way: nothing more than an aggregation formed by the great elements in their ceaseless activity."

Hearing this teaching, the elder attained at once the first fruit of the path; the great ocean of birth and death was dissolved for him, with only a single drop of it now remaining.

Yet cultivating freedom from desire in quiet solitude, and even attaining the highest, formless mode of existence, still falls short of what an ordinary layman attains today, the moment he sees the truth directly: true liberation itself.

Those who fail to abandon their attachment to various ascetic practices, caught instead in the net of one heterodox view or another, may attain even that highest formless state and still fail to see the ultimate truth of the matter — their false thinking still clings to the pleasures of heaven, and their bondage to conditioned existence and craving only deepens further still.

The elder, hearing this teaching, felt the shroud of his own obscuration break open in radiant clarity; he attained right view, and every one of his false views was permanently removed — like a fierce autumn wind scattering apart even the heaviest banks of cloud.

The world does not arise through the causation of some sovereign lord, nor does it arise from some other mistaken cause, nor yet does it arise without any cause at all.

Were the world truly created by Īśvara, the Sovereign God, there could be no distinction at all between old and young, no proper order of before and after, and no wheel of the five destinies either — for whatever is born by such a cause ought never to perish at all.

Nor, in such a case, ought there to be any calamity or suffering, nor could doing evil be any fault at all — for both pure and impure karma alike would then be entirely the doing of Īśvara himself.

Were the world truly created by Īśvara, there ought to be no doubt about it anywhere in the world at all — just as a child, born of his own father, could hardly fail to recognize that father's own honored place.

When a person meets with poverty and hardship, he ought never, on this view, to turn around and resent heaven for it — everyone ought instead simply to revere Īśvara alone, and worship no other deity at all.

If Īśvara is himself the one who acts, then he ought not to be called "sovereign" or "free" at all — for since he is, by this account, always acting, he would have to be acting constantly and without pause.

But to act constantly without pause is itself to labor endlessly — how, then, could such a being possibly be called "sovereign" or "free"?

If he acts without any intention at all, this would be no different from the actions of a mere infant; and if he acts with intention, then having intention at all is itself incompatible with true sovereignty and freedom — and since suffering and pleasure clearly arise from the deeds of sentient beings themselves, they cannot, in that case, be the doing of Īśvara at all.

Should Īśvara himself be the one who produces both suffering and pleasure, then he himself must hold likes and dislikes of his own — and having such likes and dislikes, he could hardly still be called "sovereign" or entirely "free."

And if it is Īśvara alone who truly acts in every case, then sentient beings themselves ought simply to remain passive and silent, entrusting everything entirely to his sovereign power — for what use, then, would there be in cultivating goodness at all?

Indeed, if this were so, then whether one cultivated good or evil, no karmic retribution ought to follow from it at all; and if Īśvara himself is the source of all karmic action, then every action, in every case, would have to be his action alone, shared in common by all.

And if all karma were thus held in common in this way, then everyone alike would have to be called "Īśvara" as well; while if Īśvara himself has no cause behind his own existence, then, by the same reasoning, nothing at all ought to have any cause either.

And should Īśvara himself depend on some other, prior sovereign cause, then this chain of sovereign causes would extend without end — and so, in either case, it follows that no sentient being anywhere truly has any single, ultimate maker or doer behind it at all.

One ought to understand, then, that this very notion of a sovereign creator collapses entirely once examined in this way — for every possible meaning one could give it runs into contradiction, and to assert it without addressing these faults is itself already a serious error.

And should one instead hold that the world arises from some impersonal, inherent nature (svabhāva) as its cause, this view falls into exactly the same faults as the one before it — indeed, none of the great teachers of causal doctrine has ever actually taught such a thing.

For a thing to act at all requires some prior support and some prior cause; every particular thing depends, in every case, on its own particular cause, just as a sprout depends upon its own seed.

And so one ought to know that nothing at all arises from some single, universal, inherent nature in this way — for every action and every effect throughout the world arises from a great multiplicity of specific causes, never from one single, undifferentiated nature alone; and to claim a single universal nature as the cause of everything is, for this very reason, no true cause at all.

Should one claim that this inherent nature pervades every place without exception, then, being everywhere at once and undifferentiated, it could have no capacity to act upon anything nor be acted upon by anything at all — and having no such capacity to act or be acted upon, it could not, in that case, serve as any true cause at all.

And were it truly pervading everywhere without exception, with everything, in every place, already possessing its own capacity to act, then it would follow that action ought to be occurring absolutely everywhere, at every single moment, without exception.

Yet if one says instead that it is constantly acting in this way, without needing to wait for any specific occasion to produce a specific thing, then one ought to know from this very fact that such an inherent nature cannot, after all, be the true cause of anything.

Furthermore, it is said that this inherent nature stands apart from every one of the specific qualities (guṇa) it gives rise to — yet if this is so, then everything it produces ought likewise to stand entirely apart from those same qualities as well.

Yet throughout the whole world, we plainly observe that everything does, in fact, possess these very qualities — and so one must conclude from this that such an inherent nature, too, cannot be the true cause of anything at all.

And should one instead claim that this inherent nature is itself different from the qualities it produces, then, since it is held to be the constant and unchanging cause behind them, its own essential nature ought never to differ or vary at all — yet since the qualities found among sentient beings plainly do differ from one another, it follows that this inherent nature, too, cannot be their true cause.

And if this inherent nature were truly permanent and unchanging, then the things it produces ought never to break apart or perish either — for if a cause is truly permanent, its effect, by the very logic of cause and effect, ought to share that same permanence. Yet since we plainly observe things in this world coming apart and perishing all the time, one ought to know from this that there must be some other, different cause behind them instead.