MN 132Ānanda and One Fine Night
Pāli / Sanskrit:Ānandabhaddekarattasutta
The same discourse as MN 131, but spoken by Venerable Ānanda.
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– Middle Discourses 132
Ānanda and One Fine Night
So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery.
Now at that time Venerable Ānanda was educating, encouraging, firing up, and inspiring the mendicants in the assembly hall with a Dhamma talk on the topic of the summary recital and the analysis of the one who has one fine night.
Then in the late afternoon, the Buddha came out of retreat, went to the assembly hall, where he sat on the seat spread out, and addressed the mendicants, “Who was inspiring the mendicants with a talk on the summary recital and the analysis of the one who has one fine night?”
“It was Venerable Ānanda, sir.”
Then the Buddha said to Venerable Ānanda, “But in what way were you inspiring the mendicants with a talk on the summary recital and the analysis of the one who has one fine night?”
“I was doing so in this way, sir,” replied Ānanda.
And how do you run back to the past? …
And how do you not run back to the past? …
And how do you anticipate the future? …
And how do you not anticipate the future? …
And how do you falter amid presently arisen phenomena? …
And how do you not falter amid presently arisen phenomena? … That’s how you don’t falter amid presently arisen phenomena.
That’s how I was inspiring the mendicants with a talk on the summary recital and the analysis of the one who has one fine night.”
“Good, good, Ānanda. It’s good that you were inspiring the mendicants with a talk on the summary recital and the analysis of the one who has one fine night.”
And the Buddha repeated the verses and analysis once more.
That is what the Buddha said. Satisfied, Venerable Ānanda approved what the Buddha said.
The “…” is an abbreviation carried over from the Pāli original itself, called peyyāla. The early canon was memorized and recited, so passages repeated verbatim from a preceding discourse were commonly contracted to an elision mark rather than written out in full. Venerable Thích Minh Châu's translation preserves this convention. Some texts therefore look short — but that is the canonical form, not missing content or a truncated translation. The elided passages can be read in full in the preceding discourses of the same chapter.
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