Reference: Exploring the Words of the Buddha
This is a summary of MN 36: The Longer Discourse to Saccaka (Mahasaccaka Sutta)
The Buddha meets again with Saccaka and in the course of a discussion on “development of body” and “development of mind” he relates a detailed narrative on his own spiritual quest.
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MN 36 Summary
(1 – 3) Introduction
(4 – 9) Bodily painful feelings overwhelm the mind. Mental painful feelings overwhelm the body. Should one pursue development of the mind over the development of the body? Isn’t self-mortification necessary for the development of the body and mind? Before this question can be answered one should understand what it means for the body and mind to be developed. Arisen pleasant feeling invades the mind and remains because body is not developed; and arisen painful feeling invades the mind and remains because mind is not developed. The body is developed when the arisen pleasant feeling does not invade the mind and remain. This is accomplished through Vipassana meditation. The mind is developed when the arisen painful feeling does not invade the mind and remain. This is accomplished through development of concentration through Samadhi meditation.
(10 – 16) Buddha started on his quest because neither pleasant nor painful feelings invaded his mind and remained. He found household life to be crowded and dusty and saw that life gone forth is wide open. It was an easy decision for him to make to go forth from the home life into homelessness and strive for the utterly perfect and pure holy life.
(17 – 19) It occurred to Buddha that one is incapable of knowledge and vision and supreme enlightenment as long as one does not live bodily and mentally withdrawn from sensual pleasures. Not only that, one should fully abandon and suppress internally all sensual desire, affection, infatuation, thirst, and fever for sensual pleasures. Without fulfilling these prerequisites, no amount of self-mortification is going to make one capable of knowledge and vision and supreme enlightenment. But once these prerequisites are fulfilled, self-mortification does not make one any more capable of knowledge and vision and supreme enlightenment.
(20 – 30) Buddha had discovered the futility of the practice of self-mortification by direct experience. He tried to crush his mind with mind by applying extreme effort. He tried doing breathingless meditation and took it to extreme, such that there were violent pains in his head and violent burning in his body. He tried taking very little food until he became so emaciated that his belly skin adhered to his backbone, and he nearly died. He went farther in the practice of self-mortification than anybody alive, but he only ended up exhausting himself and making his body overwrought and uncalm. Though the painful feelings were extreme, Buddha did not allow them to invade his mind and remain. He realized that he had not attained any superhuman states, any distinction in knowledge and vision worthy of the noble ones. He wondered if there were another path to enlightenment.
(31 – 33) Buddha then recalled a time when he was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, quite secluded from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states, he had entered upon and abided in the first jhana. He suddenly realized that to be the path to enlightenment. Here was a wholesome pleasure that had nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unwholesome states. There was no reason to not follow that path. But he could not pursue that path with a body so excessively emaciated. So Buddha started to eat solid food to regain his strength. Buddha went against the conventional belief that self-mortification was the right way; and he was criticized for that.
(34 – 44) Quite secluded from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states, Buddha then entered upon and abided in the first jhana. Thus, he went up to fourth Jhana. Then he applied his purified concentration to recollect his manifold past lives with their aspects and particulars; to knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings; and to knowledge of the destruction of the taints. Buddha says, “When I knew and saw thus, my mind was liberated from the taint of sensual desire, from the taint of being, and from the taint of ignorance. “When it was liberated there came the knowledge: ‘It is liberated.’ I directly knew: ‘Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.’” Any pleasant feelings that arose, Buddha didn’t let those feelings invade his mind and remain. Subsequent to his enlightenment, Buddha taught the Dhamma to others only to give them knowledge.
(45 – 48) Another prevalent belief of those times was that accomplished and fully enlightened ones didn’t sleep in the day because sleeping in the day was abiding in delusion. Buddha knew that people had no understanding of what it meant to be deluded or undeluded. Buddha then explains: Deluded is one who has not abandoned the taints that defile. Undeluded is one who has abandoned the taints that defile. The Tathagata has abandoned the taints that defile…done away with them so that they are no longer subject to future arising.
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