Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana

Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana were young, rich, handsome, and noble. Together they experienced the feeling that the world is vanity. Together they set out to seek the truth of  the matter. They agreed that the first to find it would tell the other. Thus one day, in the narrow streets of Rājagṛha, Śāriputra met a monk who immediately made an impression on him. He had an enchanting way of moving, of going forward and backward with his beggar’s bowl. A way of holding his arms, of always looking at a point some distance away on the ground, and always the same distance. All his gestures were as if supported by threads. Śāriputra followed him for a long time before speaking to him, and when he did so it was with the politeness of someone who has been tempered by a strict education. “How long is it since Your Lordship left his family?” he said. “Not long,” answered the monk. It was Aśvajit, the slowest to understand of the Buddha’s first five companions. With due respect for good manners, which abhor questions that are too direct, but at the same time urged on by an impulse that demanded he find out, Śāriputra continued to converse with the monk. He wanted to know what doctrine could lead to such gracious behavior. For it must be a perfect doctrine.

Aśvajit was cagey. He was well aware of his own inadequacy. He had never been able to reconstruct the Buddha’s doctrine in all its various steps. He remembered his four companions, who had been illuminated before him. He thought how he always got there late, and was always plagued by a sort of blur, which, however, he now accepted without fuss. Looking at the ground he whispered: “I shall never be able to expound the doctrine in all its vastness. All I can do is hint at its spirit.” For a moment Śāriputra dropped his wary, delicate manners. With great excitement in his eyes, he simply said: “That is what I want.” So then Aśvajit said: “The Master has shown how phenomena spring from one cause. He has said what the cause is and what the cessation of the cause.” At that very instant, immaculate, free from any speck of dust, the eye of the Law opened in Śāriputra.

Immediately, the monk and Śāriputra set off on their separate and opposite ways. Śāriputra was desperately eager to find Maudgalyāyana. He was proud to be in a position  to keep their pact. He searched far and wide for a long time, but without success. He stared at all the travelers as if in a daze. But it was Maudgalyāyana who saw him one day from a long way off along a flat road. He immediately sensed a change in his friend’s face. His skin was as if brightened by serenity. As soon as he was within earshot, Maudgalyāyana said: “You’ve found it.” “I’ve found it,” said Śāriputra. “Now I’ll tell you.” Śāriputra then recounted his meeting with Aśvajit in every detail. He stopped a moment before repeating the monk’s words on doctrine.

As had happened with Śāriputra, the eye of the Law opened in Maudgalyāyana. Now they walked along together, in silence. When the Buddha saw them approaching, and while they were still far away, he told the monks around him: “You see those two who are coming toward us? They will be my two best disciples.” And he welcomed them. People who had known Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana in the past said: “They have set out on the path of that monk who steals children. A path full of widows. A path that destroys families.” The Buddha ordered the monks to answer only that it was the dharma that had taken away Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana. Say no more. The murmuring would end after seven days.

Śāriputra and Maudgalyāyana were illuminated by two sentences. “Phenomena spring from one cause” is the first. There are those who might pass over this sentence as obvious. But it is a continent. Śāriputra immediately saw something new in those words. The world is a throw of the dice. And the worlds that follow are successive throws of the dice. They are phases of the līlā, the cosmic game. From infancy on, Śāriputra had been picking up this doctrine here and there, the way one gets to know the secrets of sex. But how can one recognize one cause, one origin, in a sovereign game that unfolds in the totality of things? Now someone was teaching: “Phenomena spring from one cause.” And then immediately afterward opening vistas on a further continent: “He has said what the cause is.” So it was  possible, then, to have a vision of the precise point from which dependence arose, the way one can see, on the ground, the place where a spring of water rises. But perhaps the most momentous words for Śāriputra were those that followed: “He has said what is the cessation of the cause.” Cessation, extinction, nirvāṇa: the most popular, the most abused, and the most mysterious word the Buddha used. Śāriputra was still thinking how wonderful it was to be able to say what the cause is, when he heard that one could also announce the cessation of the cause. But had anything ever really ceased in this world, this perennial, endlessly repeated buzz? Such a doctrine was truly unheard of.

Roberto Calasso
Ka

Pali version:

The occasion was this. The wanderer Sanjaya was living at Rajagaha with a large following of wanderers, with two hun-dred and fifty wanderers. And Sariputta and Moggallana were living the holy life under the wanderer Sanjaya. They had made a pact that whichever of them first reached the Deathless should inform the other.

Now, it being morning, the venerable Assaji dressed, and taking his bowl and outer robe, he went into Rajagaha for alms.

His manner as he went inspired confidence, whether in moving for-wards or backwards, looking ahead or aside, bending or stretching, his eyes were downcast and he moved with grace. The wanderer Sariputta saw him thus as he was begging for alms in Rajagaha, and he thought: "There are Arahants in the world, those who possess the Arahant path, and this bhikkhu is one of them. Suppose I approach him and ask under whom he has gone forth, or who is his teacher, or whose Dhamma he confesses." But then he thought: "It is not the time to ask this bhikkhu while he is wandering for alms among houses. Suppose I follow behind him to trace what the seekers have discovered?"

 When the venerable Assaji had finished his round he left Rajagaha with his alms food. Then the wanderer Sariputta went up to him and greeted him. When this courteous formal talk was finished, he stood at one side, and he said to him: "Friend, your faculties are serene, the colour of your skin is clear and bright. Under whom have you gone forth? Or who is your teacher? Or whose Dhamma do you confess?"

"There is the Great Monk, friend, the son of the Sakyans, who went forth from a Sakyan clan. I have gone forth under that Blessed One. He is my teacher. It is that Blessed One's Dhamma that I con-fess." "But what does the venerable one's teacher say, what does he tell?"

"I have only recently gone forth, friend, I have only just come to this Dhamma and Discipline. I cannot teach you the Dhamma in detail. Still I will tell you its meaning in brief." Then Sariputta said: "So be it, friend.

"Say much or little as it suits you;
Tell me but the meaning now.

For I need no more than the meaning With no thought of details yet." The venerable Assaji told the wanderer Sariputta this sketch of the Dhamma:

The Perfect One has told the cause
Of causally arisen things;
And what brings their cessation, too:
Such is the doctrine preached by the Great Monk.

Now when the wanderer Sariputta heard this statement of the Dhamma, the spotless, immaculate vision of the Dhamma arose in him: All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation.

This is the truth: even if that were all,
You have attained the state where is no sorrow
That we for many times ten thousand ages
Have let pass by unseen.

Sariputta the wanderer went to Moggallana the wanderer.

Moggallana the wanderer saw him coming. He said: "Your faculties are serene, friend, the colour of your skin is clear and bright. Is it pos-sible that you have found the Deathless?" "Yes, friend, I have found the Deathless." "But how did you find it, friend?" Sariputta the wanderer told what had happened. When Moggallana the wanderer heard that statement of the Dhamma—

The Perfect One has told the cause
Of causally arisen things;
And what brings their cessation too:
Such is the doctrine preached by the Great Monk—

then the spotless, immaculate vision of the Dhamma arose in him: All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation.*

This is the truth: even if that were all,
You have attained the state where is no sorrow
That we for many times ten thousand ages
Have let pass by unseen.

Then Moggallana said: "Friend, let us go to the Blessed One. The Blessed One is our teacher." "But, friend, these two hundred and fifty wanderers are living here depending on us, looking to us. They ought to be consulted first.

They will do as they think fit." They went together to the wanderers and told them: "Friends, we are going to the Blessed One. The Blessed One is our teacher." "We live depending on the venerable ones, looking to them. If they go to lead the holy life under the Great Monk, then we too will do the same." So Sariputta and Moggallana went to Sanjaya the wanderer and told him what they were going to do.

"Enough, friends, do not go. Let us three guide this community together." For the second and for the third time they told him the same thing and received the same answer.

Then Sariputta and Moggallana went with the two hundred and fifty wanderers to the Bamboo Grove. But hot blood gushed from Sanjaya the wanderer's mouth.

The Blessed One saw Sariputta and Moggallana coming in the dis-tance. When he saw them, he told the bhikkhus: "Here come these two friends, Kolita and Upatissa. These two will be my chief disciples, an auspicious pair."

Then it was that the Master announced them—
They who were already liberated
In the domain of profound knowledge,
In the supreme destruction of the stuff of existence,
Before they had yet reached the Bamboo Grove—
Saying: "Here come these two friends,
Kolita and Upatissa.
These two will be my chief disciples,
An auspicious pair."

Sariputta and Moggallana went up to the Blessed One and pros-trated themselves at his feet. They said to him: "Lord, we wish tohave the going forth under the Blessed One, and the admission."

"Come bhikkhus," the Blessed One said, "the Dhamma is well pro-claimed; lead the holy life for the complete ending of suffering." And that was those venerable ones' admission.

Now at that time a number of well-known Magadhan clansmen were leading the holy life under the Blessed One. People disapproved, they murmured and protested: "The monk Gotama is creating child-lessness and widowhood, he is obliterating the clans. Already a thou-sand matted-hair ascetics have gone forth under him, and these two hundred and fifty wanderers and now these well-known clansmen have gone to lead the holy life under the monk Gotama!" When they saw bhikkhus, they mocked them with these stanzas:

Gotama the monk did come
To the Fort of Magadha;
He led away all Sanjaya's band;
Whom will he lead away today?

Bhikkhus heard this, and they went to the Blessed One and told him. He said: "This affair will not last long. It will only last seven days. At the end of seven days it will subside. So when people mock you with that stanza, you can reprove them in return with this stanza:

'They lead by Dhamma who are
Great Heroes too, and Perfect Ones;
And when they thus lead by Dhamma,
Where is the ground for jealousy?' "

So when the people mocked them, they reproved the people in return. Then people began to think: "Monks who are sons of the Sakyans lead by Dhamma, it seems, not against Dhamma." And the affair lasted seven days, and at the end of seven days it subsided.

Vin. Mv. 1:23-24

**
*That the puthujjana does not see aniccatā is evident from the fact that the formula, 'Whatever has the nature of arising, all that has the nature of ceasing', which is clearly enough the definition of aniccatā, is used only in connection with the sotāpanna's attainment: Tassa...vītamalam dhammacakkhum udapādi. Yam kiñci samudayadhammam, sabbam tam nirodhadhamman ti. Aniccatā is seen with the sotāpanna's dhammacakkhu, or eye of the dhamma. I am glad, nevertheless, that you are managing to turn your mind towards aniccatā at times, though of course you will not really see it until you know yourself to be a sotāpanna. Nanavira Thera:

Sankhārapaccayā viññānam, as we now see, can be taken to mean that any specific series of sankhāra-sankhatadhamma pairs (one or more) of which the first contains viññāna is dependent upon the very fact that there are sankhārā at all. Avijjāpaccayā sankhārā will then mean that the very fact that there are sankhārā at all is dependent upon avijjā; and with cessation of avijjā—avijjānirodhā—all sankhārā whatsoever will cease—sankhāranirodho. This is perhaps most simply stated in the lines from the Vinaya Mahāvagga: Ye dhammā hetuppabhavā / Tesam hetum Tathāgato āha / Tesañ ca yo nirodho / Evamvādī mahāsamano. ('Of things originating with conditions, The Tathāgata has told the condition, And what their cessation is. The Great Recluse speaks thus.') Here, Ye dhammā hetuppabhavā are all things whatsoever that depend upon hetū('conditions'—synonymous with paccayā). Since each of these things depends upon its respective hetu (as in any paticcasamuppāda formulation), it shares the same fate as its hetu—it is present when the hetu< is present, and absent when the hetu is absent. Thus the hetu of them taken as a whole (all things that are hetuppabhavā) is no different from the hetu of their individual hetū taken as a whole. When there are hetū at all there are hetuppabhavā dhammā, when there are no hetū there are no hetuppabhavā dhammā; and hetū, being nothing else than sankhārā, have avijjā as condition. Tesam hetum ('their condition'), therefore, is avijjā. To see the Dhamma is to see paticcasamuppāda (as noted in §7), and avijjā is therefore non-seeing of paticcasamuppāda. Avijjāpaccayā sankhārā will thus mean 'paticcasamuppāda depends upon non-seeing of paticcasamuppāda'. Conversely, seeing of paticcasamuppāda is cessation of avijjā, and when paticcasamuppāda is seen it loses its condition ('non-seeing of paticcasamuppāda') and ceases. And this is cessation of all hetuppabhavā dhammā. Thus tesam yo nirodho is cessation of avijjā.