Toh 328The Sūtra of Nanda’s Going Forth
Pāli / Sanskrit:Nandapravrajyāsūtra
Summary In this sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamuni, accompanied by Ānanda, visits the house of Nanda during his stay in Banyan Grove near Kapilavastu. A discourse ensues in which the Buddha explains to Nanda the importance and benefits of going forth as a monk. Nanda expresses hesitation about going forth, so the Buddha explains by means of analogies how fortunate Nanda is to have obtained an auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to have the opportunity to become a monk. Nanda is deeply impressed by the Buddha’s teaching and decides to renounce worldly life and go forth.
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Summary
In this sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamuni, accompanied by Ānanda, visits
the house of Nanda during his stay in Banyan Grove near Kapilavastu. A discourse
ensues in which the Buddha explains to Nanda the importance and benefits of
going forth as a monk. Nanda expresses hesitation about going forth, so the
Buddha explains by means of analogies how fortunate Nanda is to have obtained an
auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to have the opportunity to
become a monk. Nanda is deeply impressed by the Buddha’s teaching and decides to
renounce worldly life and go forth.
Acknowledgements
This sūtra was translated from the Tibetan, introduced, and edited by
the Alexander Csoma de Kőrös Translation Group: the translators Zsuzsa Majer and
Krisztina Teleki in collaboration with Karma Dorje (Rabjampa), a native Tibetan
speaker and Tibetan language expert. The Sanskrit consultant was Beáta
Kakas.
The translation was completed under the patronage and supervision of
84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
Introduction
In this sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamuni, accompanied by Ānanda,
visits the house of Nanda during his stay in Banyan Grove near Kapilavastu.
The Buddha explains to Nanda the importance and benefits of going forth as a
monk. Nanda expresses hesitation about going forth, so the Buddha uses two
memorable analogies to explain to Nanda how fortunate he is to have obtained
an auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to have the
opportunity to become a monk. Nanda is deeply impressed by the Buddha’s
teaching and decides to renounce worldly life and go forth.
The setting of the teaching is Kapilavastu, the ancient city and
capital of the Śākya state, where Siddhārtha Gautama lived until the age of
twenty-nine before he renounced worldly life. Seven years after his
awakening, he returned to Kapilavastu for the first time since his
departure, upon his father’s request. His cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, his
half-brother Nanda, his barber Upāli, and even his son Rāhula joined the
saṅgha in Kapilavastu, and the propagation of several rules of the Vinaya
later took place in Banyan Grove.
Having specified the setting, the text follows a typical sūtra structure as
the narrative unfolds, beginning
with the Buddha visiting the home of his younger half-brother Nanda, accompanied by his
disciple Ānanda. In the dialogue that ensues, the Buddha begins by asking Nanda
why he does not go forth. Nanda replies with the request, “Blessed One,
please explain what is meant by the words going forth.”
At this request, the Buddha proceeds to give a teaching, in verse,
explaining the meaning of going forth and describing how fortunate Nanda is
to have obtained an auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to
have the opportunity to become a monk. The Buddha also mentions royal and
lay devotees who decided to go forth. He then encourages Nanda to do the
same.
The Buddha begins by defining going forth (Skt. pravrajyā,
Tib. rab tu byung ba), listing its
advantages. The expression to go forth means to
renounce the worldly life of a householder, or lay person, and become a monk
or nun. In the translated text several other
variations of this expression appear, such as “abandon one’s land and go
forth” (Tib. sa bor nas rab tu
byung), “abandon one’s home and go forth” (Tib. khyim rnams bor nas rab tu
byung), “go forth and renounce the world” (Tib. rab tu byung bar nges par ’byung
ba), and “go forth from home into homelessness” (Tib. khyim nas khyim med par rab tu
byung).
After hearing about the manifold advantages of going forth,
Nanda hesitates and says that he will remain a lay person, but he will make
various offerings and donations to the Buddha and the saṅgha. The Buddha
explains that no offering can remotely compare to the intention to go forth.
The Buddha then uses two memorable analogies to illustrate how fortunate
Nanda is to have obtained favorable circumstances and met the Buddha, and he
again encourages him to go forth, comparing the rarity of meeting a buddha
to the rarity of the uḍumbara flower.
The two analogies that the Buddha gives to illustrate the
difficulty of obtaining a human birth are the improbability of a blind
turtle putting its head through a yoke tossed about on the waves of a vast
ocean, and the improbability of a mustard seed passing through the eye of an
upright-standing needle when a handful of seeds are tossed at it. Both
analogies are widely known as illustrations of the rarity of obtaining a
human birth. This sūtra seems to be the only mention in full in the Kangyur of the
analogy of the blind turtle,
and it is therefore presumably to this canonical source that Śāntideva refers in his
Bodhicaryāvatāra.
The Buddha adds that the “favorable conditions” of a rebirth in
which there is the opportunity to go forth are even more fortunate. Thus, he
persuades Nanda to make the most of this opportunity and become a monk. The
sūtra concludes with Nanda going forth and, together with Ānanda, praising
the speech of the Buddha.
Nanda was to became an important monastic disciple of the Buddha,
but several accounts of his early experience of going forth suggest that it was not an
easy commitment for him to make. The Buddha (as Siddhārtha Gautama) and Nanda were the two sons
of King Śuddhodana, but were half-brothers since the Buddha’s mother, Māyādevī, had died seven
days after his birth. Nanda’s mother was the king’s second queen, Mahāprajāpatī Gotamī, the
Buddha’s maternal aunt and the woman who raised him after his mother’s death.
Of the Śākya kingdom’s nobility, Nanda and the Buddha’s son Rāhula in particular,
as well as their cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, were thus important as potential royal successors, and one could imagine that
all of them eventually choosing to follow the Buddha in renouncing such positions for the spiritual life
was seen as consequential from a temporal perspective. No such considerations are
directly mentioned in any of the texts that relate Nanda’s going
forth, but in the present
text they can perhaps be discerned in the explanations and comparisons the Buddha uses
as he describes the benefits of going forth.
There is another well-known version of the story leading to
Nanda’s going forth that also illustrates the careful skillful means through which the Buddha
introduced the idea to him. It relates that the Buddha, on the third day of his
arrival at Kapilavastu, after taking part in a meal in Nanda’s house, handed
his bowl to Nanda and departed, thereby propagating the Dharma to his
half-brother without words. However, Nanda, not understanding this, followed
him to Banyan Grove to return the bowl. There, the Buddha asked Nanda if he
would become a monk. Although Nanda had just married, he went forth.
Details of the difficulties Nanda subsequently experienced at
the start of his life as a monk are related in several other canonical
texts. They are found, for example, in a sutta in the Pali Canon entitled
The Nanda Sutta (Udāna 3.2) as well as in The Finer
Points of the Monastic Discipline (Vinayakṣudrakavastu, Toh 6) and The Teaching to Nanda on Entry
into the Womb (Nandagarbhāvakrāntinirdeśa, Toh 57).
According to the version of the story found in the latter, although Nanda
became a monk, he could not focus on the spiritual path because he missed
his wife. Recognizing this, the Buddha took Nanda to the Heaven of the
Thirty-Three (Skt. Trāyastriṃśa, Tib. sum
cu rtsa gsum). On their way, Nanda saw a blind female monkey
clinging to a tree. The Buddha asked him how the physical appearance of his
wife compared to that of the monkey, to which Nanda replied that the
physical appearance of the monkey could not compare in any way to the beauty
of his wife. Finally, when they reached the Heaven of the Thirty-Three,
Nanda saw beautiful celestial nymphs there. When the Buddha asked whether he
considered his wife or the nymphs more beautiful, Nanda confessed that the
physical appearance of his wife could not compare in any way to the beauty
of the nymphs. The Buddha promised Nanda that he would meet the nymphs if he
did not disrobe. Thereupon, Nanda endeavored with great intent, but
nevertheless the monks scorned him for his attachment to sensual desire.
Recognizing his attachment to sensual desire, the Buddha took Nanda to the
hells, where Nanda saw for himself what awaited him after his sojourn in the
Heaven of the Thirty-Three to sport with the nymphs. In the end, Nanda would
recognize the true nature of desire and become an arhat.
The story of Nanda was so well-known that the early Indian poet
Aśvaghoṣa wrote a poem about his conversion entitled Handsome Nanda (Skt. Saundarananda).
Despite the multiplicity of accounts of Nanda’s going forth, however, the Buddha’s advice
to him on the importance and benefits of doing so, as set out in the present short sūtra,
does not seem to be included in any of the longer texts transmitted in the Mūlasarvāstivāda and Lokottaravāda
vinaya traditions and its provenance remains unknown.
There is to our knowledge no extant Sanskrit version of this
sūtra. It seems to have been translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan no later
than the early ninth century, as its title is recorded in the Denkarma and Phangthangma Tibetan
imperial translation catalogs. Versions of the Tibetan translation are found
in all the known Kangyurs. A Mongolian translation of the text is available
in the Mongolian Kanjur, entitled Nandi toyin boluγsan-u sudur (The Sūtra of Nandi’s Ordination). A Chinese translation of a similarly
titled sūtra is available in the Taishō Canon (難提釋經
Nandi shi jing, Taishō 113), but it bears
little resemblance to the Tibetan translation. The colophon names its
translator as Fa Ju (Skt. Dharmalokā), who was active in Luoyang between 290
and 306 ce, toward the end of the Western Jin
dynasty. There is to our knowledge no
English translation of the text to date, nor any translation into another
European language.
As for the Tibetan versions of this text, those included in the
Kangyurs of the Thempangma line, such as the Stok Palace Kangyur (Tib.
stog pho brang bka’ ’gyur), provide no
information about who translated the text in their colophons, which say only
that the text “is included in the first teachings of the Buddha” (Tib.
’di bka’ dang por gtogs
so), that is, the teachings included in the first turning of
the wheel of the Dharma. However, in the short colophon of the versions
found in Kangyurs belonging to the Tshalpa line, such as Degé, Lithang, and
Choné, as well as in independent or “mixed” Kangyurs such as Lhasa and
Narthang, only the editor of the translation is named, Tsang Devendrarakṣita
(Tib. rtsangs de ben dra ra k+Shi ta).
This figure is named as the text’s translator in Butön’s History of Buddhism (Tib. bu ston chos ’byung). Furthermore, the
colophon of the version found in the Gondhla collection states that the
sūtra was edited and finalized by the Indian scholar Dharmākara (Tib.
dar ma ka ra ba) together with the
monk-translator Tsang Devendrarakṣita. Dharmākara is the only attested Sanskrit
name of a scholar who worked on Tibetan translations during the imperial
period that vaguely corresponds to the odd dar ma
ka ra ba.
This English translation is based on the Tibetan version in the
Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur version, the
variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur, and the Phukdrak
(Tib. phug brag) manuscript
Kangyur.
The Translation
The Sūtra
Nanda’s Going Forth
Homage to the Omniscient One.
Thus did I hear at one time. The Blessed One was staying in
Banyan Grove near Kapilavastu. One morning he put on his upper and lower
robes, took his alms bowl, and went to Kapilavastu for alms, attended by the
śramaṇa Venerable Ānanda. The Blessed One approached the house of the noble
son, Nanda. Nanda saw from afar that the Blessed One was coming. Having seen
this, he quickly arranged a seat for him and said, “Do come inside, Blessed
One! Welcome, Blessed One! Please take a seat, Blessed One!”
The Blessed One took a seat. Then Nanda, the noble son,
prostrated at the Blessed One’s feet and sat down in front of him.
The Blessed One asked Nanda, the noble son, “Nanda, why do you not go
forth?”
Nanda responded, “Blessed One, please explain what is meant by
the words going forth.”
The Blessed One replied as follows:
“It is the complete avoidance of all sinful deeds.
It is the perfect elimination of desire, anger, and ignorance.
It is the cleansing of all defilements that gather in the darkness of
fighting, battle, blaming, quarreling, disputation, deception, and
dishonesty.
It is the basis of all virtues, just as fertile soil is the basis of all
grains.
It is the source of all precious things.
It is the wish-fulfilling gem of all happiness.
It is the exalted abode of all virtues.
It is what gives relief to all sentient beings.
It is the confidence of all beings.
It is what grants fearlessness to all living creatures.
It is the excellent vase for all beings who are poor.
It is the defense for those who are defenseless.
It is the resting place for those exhausted by aimless longing and
tormented by suffering.
It is the distinctive feature of all buddhas.
It is the object of worship of all sentient beings.
It is what the wise ones praise.
It is the path for those proceeding toward liberation.
It is what pure sentient beings revere.
It is what is adhered to by those sentient beings who are suitable
vessels.
It is what closes the gate to rebirth in lower states of existence.
It is what opens the gate to higher states of existence and liberation.
It is what fills up the realm of divine beings.
It is the dispeller of all sufferings.
It is the liberator of those bound by the fetters of craving.
Nanda, this is what we call going forth.
“It is the house of those with right view.
It is the true commitment to liberation.
It is what leads to nirvāṇa.
It is the complete termination of the continuum.
It is what burns away the afflictions.
It is what uproots the latent propensities.
It is what destroys the web of perverted views.
It is what topples the victory banner of Māra.
It is what raises the victory banner of the teacher of forbearance.
It is what reverses the wheel of saṃsāra.
It is what turns the wheel of Dharma.
It is what dries up the ocean of
milk.
It is what destroys the mountain of
bones.
It is the end of birth, aging, illness, and death.
It is what unloads the burden of aggregates.
It is what extricates those mired in the swamp of afflictions.
It is what liberates those in the cage of the household.
It is what dispels harmful feelings.
It is what destroys doubts and the entrenched defilements of the
afflictions.
It is what gives relief from the fears of aging and death.
It is what terminates suffering due to separation from what we love.
It is the riverbank of happiness and fearlessness for those tormented by
the suffering of saṃsāra.
It is what helps us transcend the desire realm.
It is what helps us completely transcend the form realm.
It is what helps us entirely transcend the formless realm.
Ultimately, it makes us attain the supreme nirvāṇa.
Nanda, this is what we call going forth.
“It is like the eye of all worlds.
It is the lamp in the darkness of ignorance.
It is the purifier of the mental continuum.
It is the pacifier of all the diseases linked to the afflictions.
It is what reveals the path to those who have lost their way.
It is what shows the essential nature of all phenomena.
It is what liberates us from all bonds.
It is what dispels all the darkness of ignorance.
It is what dissolves the obscuring darkness of the visual defects of
unknowing.
It is what encourages the lazy to make efforts.
It is what disenchants those who violate ethical behavior.
It is what delights those with perfect ethical behavior.
It is what supremely delights the diligent.
It is what delights those who take pleasure in seclusion.
It is what deeply satisfies meditators.
It is the weapon for those engaged in subduing the enemy, the
afflictions.
It is what grants victory to non-returners.
It is the abode for the homeless.
It is the protector for those without protection.
It is what grants fearlessness to those gripped by fear.
It is the refuge for those without refuge.
It is the means of attaining happiness for suffering ones.
It is what liberates those bound by the fetters of saṃsāra.
Nanda, this is what we call going forth.
“It is honored by gods and humans.
It is worshiped by kings.
It is what is intended by all buddhas.
It is the complete renunciation of one’s dwelling place.
It is the guide on the path to nirvāṇa.
It is the shaving of the burden of hair.
It is the saffron robe, the sign of being free from desires.
It is the field of appropriate endeavor.
It is the victory banner of the sages.
It is what vanquishes the arrogance
of evildoing demons.
It is what fully delights gods and humans.
Therefore, Nanda, if going forth is like this, why would you not go
forth?
“Nanda, the happiness of going forth is far superior even to the
happiness of the dominion of a universal monarch. What’s more, Nanda,
favorable circumstances are exceedingly difficult to find, even in one
billion eons,
yet for a buddha to have come is far more difficult to find than even that.
Nanda, royal sages wishing for liberation, as well as universal monarchs
endowed with the seven royal treasures, together with their retinues of queens,
have abandoned their lands and gone forth. Similarly, householders and
congregations of brahmins have also abandoned their homes and gone forth.”
Thereupon the noble son Nanda replied to the Blessed One, “O
Honorable One! I will remain a householder and give donations, make merit,
and venerate the Blessed One and the community of śrāvakas. I will also
supply them with monastic robes, alms, bedding, medicine for healing
illnesses, and other necessities, too.”
The Blessed One replied as follows: “If for one hundred years
faithful noble sons and noble daughters were to make offerings of monastic
robes, alms, cushions, medicine for healing illnesses, and other necessities
to as many thus-gone, worthy, complete, and perfect buddhas as would fill
the whole universe and its three realms, Nanda, it would not compare to as
much as a sixteenth fraction of the intention to go forth and renounce the
world.
“Nanda, it is very difficult for you to find
Such favorable conditions for going forth.
Nanda, the teacher has appeared before you;
So, do not disappoint me!
“Suppose, Nanda, that this whole wide world comprised the waters
of one great ocean in which there dwelled a single, blind turtle, and that
there was also a single yoke with a hole, tossing about. Considering
this, that blind turtle entertains the thought that
it must put its neck through the hole of this yoke, but the yoke with its
hole is buffeted by the wind and tossed about in all directions. In that
case, Nanda, what are the chances that the blind turtle’s neck would ever
accidentally enter the hole of that yoke, even in a hundred years? In the same way, Nanda, this human birth may not be
found, nor the excellence of a favorable circumstance.
“Nanda, it is very difficult for you to find this human birth;
and thus, if you have found perfect favorable conditions,
“Nanda, you have found the very difficult to find
Favorable conditions for going forth.
Nanda, the teacher has appeared before you;
So, do not disappoint me!
“Suppose, Nanda, someone tosses some white mustard seeds at the
eye of an upright-standing needle. In that case, Nanda, what are the chances
that any single white mustard seed would pass through the eye, even in a
hundred years? In the same way, Nanda, this human birth
may not be found, nor the excellence of a favorable circumstance.
“Nanda, it is very difficult to find this human birth; and thus,
if you have found perfect favorable conditions,
“Nanda, you have found the very difficult to find
Favorable conditions for going forth.
Nanda, the teacher has appeared before you;
So, do not disappoint me!
“Why is that so?
“If the word buddha was not heard
Even in ten billion eons,
And even in ten trillion eons,
How would it be possible to see a buddha?
“As the uḍumbara flower
Is extremely rare to find among trees,
A buddha is similarly difficult to find.
Yet, now you have found me!
“Nanda, it is very difficult for you to find
Such favorable conditions for going forth.
Nanda, the teacher has appeared before you;
So, do not disappoint me!”
Thereupon, Nanda, the noble son, shaved off his hair and beard,
donned saffron robes, and, with deep faith in the teachings of the
Victorious One, went forth from home into homelessness.
After the Blessed One had thus spoken, Venerable Ānanda and
Nanda, the noble son, praised the speech of the Blessed One.
Thus concludes “The Sūtra of Nanda’s Going
Forth.”
Colophon
This text was edited by Tsang Devendrarakṣita.
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
This is a reference to saṃsāra, which is called
an “ocean of milk” since the beings therein are sustained by their
mother’s milk which, if accumulated over countless rebirths, would
be enough to fill an ocean.
This is a reference to saṃsāra, which is called
a “mountain of bones” since the skeletons of the beings born therein
would, if accumulated over countless rebirths, be enough to form a
mountain.
Śākyamuni
shAkya thub pa
ཤཱཀྱ་ཐུབ་པ།
Śākyamuni
An epithet for the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha
Gautama: he was a muni (“sage”) from the Śākya clan. In this text
and elsewhere, he is counted as the fourth of the first four buddhas
of the present Good Eon, the other three being Krakucchanda,
Kanakamuni, and Kāśyapa. He will be followed by Maitreya, the next
buddha in this eon.
Kapilavastu
ser skya’i gnas
སེར་སྐྱའི་གནས།
Kapilavastu
An ancient city, capital of the Śākya state,
where Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha Śākyamuni) lived until the age
of twenty-nine when he renounced worldly life. Later, some years
after his awakening, the Buddha returned to Kapilavastu, where his
cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, his half-brother Nanda, his barber
Upāli, and his son Rāhula joined the monastic community.
Banyan Grove
n+ya gro dha’i kun dga’i ra
ba
ནྱ་གྲོ་དྷའི་ཀུན་དགའི་ར་བ།
Nyagrodhārāma
A grove of banyan trees (Skt. nyagrodha, Tib. nya gro dha) near
Kapilavastu, where the Buddha resided during his first visit to the
city after his awakening. It was donated to the monastic community
by King Śuddhodana, the father of the Buddha. It is said that
several rules of the Vinaya were promulgated there.
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