Probing the Sutras

A Guide to Studying and Understanding Buddhism's Most Essential Texts

Guy Gibbon

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666718836
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Buddhism

A compact summary like Probing the Sutras has been sorely needed for some time, as more and more Westerners have dipped into meditation without any understanding of its predominantly Buddhist scriptural underpinning. This concise, well-informed introduction to the history and contents of eleven seminal Buddhist sutras also provides suggestions for reflection, meditation, and practical applications related to the key teachings of each scripture. Readers of Probing the Sutras will be able to develop a framework for understanding Buddhist doctrines--and see the unique pearls of wisdom contained within each sutra.

1

The Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta

Introduction

According to tradition, the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta (Discourse of Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma) conveys what the Buddha said in his first sermon following his enlightenment. It is a foundational Buddhist discourse, for it introduces basic concepts of the Buddha Dharma like the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths.1 This chapter describes the storyline of the sutra, its structure and main teachings, and practices that follow from these teachings. A copy of the sutra is appended to this chapter.

The Storyline of the DhammacakkapAvattana Sutta

According to oft-repeated Buddhist tradition, the Buddha, known then as Siddhartha Gautama (Pali: Siddhattha Gotama), left his wife and child, and a life of luxury, at the age of twenty-nine to seek enlightenment.2 For the first six years of his seeking, he chose a life of hardship and asceticism along with five companions, the ascetics Kondañña, Bhaddiya, Vappa, Mahanama, and Assaji. Finally realizing that neither the way of ease and indulgence nor the way of hardship and asceticism was the path to liberation, he sat under the Bodhi tree (literally the tree of awakening) by the Neranjana River in Bodh Gaya in northeast India, resolving not to arise until he attained what he was seeking. After attaining enlightenment, he, now Shakyamuni Buddha, stayed near the Bodhi tree for forty-nine more days deciding how he could present to the world what he had learned, for he realized that few people were prepared at the time to believe or understand him.3

The Buddha finally decided to rejoin his old companions, who were now in a deer park at Isipatana (now Sarnath), a small town in north-central India. After rejoining them, he gave the teaching now known as the Dhammacakkapvattana Sutta. After the sermon, the Buddha continued teaching the Dharma until his death at the age of eighty, forty-five years later.

The Structure of the Dhammacakkapvattana Sutta

The Dhammacakkapaavattana Sutta is a short sutra of only 894 words in the version used here (see the copy at the end of the chapter).4 For review purposes, it has been divided into seven sections.

Section 1: Section 1 introduces the sutra, starting with the customary “I have heard” (which is often translated “Thus have I heard”), followed by the place where the sermon took place (the deer park at Isipatana), and ending with a mention of the audience for the discourse (the five ascetics, who are called bhikkhus, or monks, in the sutra).

Section 2: The second section names two extremes of living, the extreme of devotion to sense-pleasures and the extreme of devotion to self-mortification. The Buddha states that those who go forth from worldly life to seek nirvana must avoid these two extremes. This is the Buddha’s Middle Way, later expressed in the Noble Eightfold Path.

Section 3: Section 3 names the Noble Eightfold Path—right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation—that the Tathagata (the Buddha) followed once he understood the value of the Middle Way for practice. After avoiding the two extremes, and following the Eightfold Path, “Vision arose, insight arose, discernment arose, knowledge arose, illumination arose within me with regard to things never heard before: ‘This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering’ . . . ‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering is to be realized’ . . . ‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering has been realized.’”

Section 4: This section names and describes each of the Four Noble Truths: the Noble Truth of Suffering (in the appended example of the sutra, “of ill”), the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering, the Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering, and the Noble Truth of the Path leading to the Cessation of Suffering, which is the Noble Eightfold Path mentioned above.

Section 5: Section 5 describes three ways of regarding each of the Noble Truths in contemplation and meditation: (1) recognition (for example, This is suffering) (2) encouragement (Suffering should be understood), and (3) realization (Suffering is understood). When these three ways of regarding each Truth have been applied to each of the Four Noble Truths, twelve ways of contemplating and meditating on the truths are obtained.

Section 6: In the sixth section, the Buddha says “And, monks, as long as this—my three-round, twelve-permutation knowledge and vision concerning these four noble truths as they have come to be—was not pure, I did not claim to have directly awakened to the right self-awakening unexcelled in the cosmos with its devas, Māras, and Brahmās, in this generation with its contemplatives and brahmans, its royalty and common folk.” The Buddha ends the section by saying that “as soon as this—my three-round, twelve-permutation knowledge and vision concerning these four noble truths as they have come to be—was truly pure, then I did claim to have directly awakened to the right self-awakening unexcelled in the cosmos with its devas, Māras, and Brahmās, in this generation with its contemplatives and brahmans, its royalty and common folk. Knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘Unprovoked is my release. This is the last birth. There is now no further becoming.’”

Section 7: The last section of the sutra affirms that these are the words of the Buddha and that his audience rejoiced in hearing these words.

The Heart of the Teachings of the Sutra

According to Thich Nhat Hanh, “three points characterize this sutra.”5 The first is the teaching of the Middle Way or path (Sanskrit: madhyama-pratipad). As mentioned above, the Middle Way in Buddhism refers to a spiritual path of moderation. The goal for home-leavers (monks and nuns) is to purposely avoid any extreme that might disrupt their practice, such as indulgence in substances that dull their mind. Two extremes are mentioned in the sutra: devotion to sense pleasures and devotion to austerities.

The second point, according to Nhat Hanh, is the teaching of the Four Noble or Wonderful Truths. These truths were the Buddha’s way of conveying his insight in a manner that people at the time could understand. The first Truth states that life for most people is difficult and at times painful, which is denoted in Pali by the word dukkha. The word is most often translated as “suffering” in English, though it is generally agreed that it refers to something less severe, such as difficulty or unsatisfactoriness. The second Truth maintains that dukkha is most often the result of craving for pleasurable sensations and experiences. And the third Truth stresses that “suffering” can have an end, which is nirvana.

The fourth Truth is the Eightfold Path, which, when all of its eight practices are undertaken wholeheartedly together, aids us in refraining from doing the things that cause ...