The Buddha was pissed at Sunakkhatta

I think most of us on our spiritual journey assume that enlightenment is a kind of edifice, albeit a mental edifice constructed from the practice of moral behavior and various ideas.

In the Mahasihanada Sutta we learn that Sunakkhatta left the Buddhist order because the Buddha did not have any superhuman states, in addition to the fact that the Dharma the Buddha claimed to have realized had been hammered out by reasoning.  In other words, Sunakkhatta wanted superhuman states and not receiving them from the Buddha, quit. He wasn’t impressed with the idea that the teaching of the Buddha simply led to the destruction of suffering.

What caught my attention is Sunakkhatta claimed that, “The recluse Gotama teaches a Dhamma [merely] hammered out by reasoning” (M. i. 168), which of course the Buddha denies; moreover that asserting such Sunakkhatta would end up in hell.  To put it mildly, the Buddha was pissed and rightly so.

It is easy for the beginner and even the veteran to have assumed from the very beginning of their study that doing Buddhist things such as meditation, practicing awareness, living in the here and the now, and taking particular vows and trying to live by those vows is pretty much what Buddhism is all about.  But it is not.  Such a life is not even close.  It just makes is somewhat easier to accept the fact that gnosis of a transcendent state (nirvana) is what the Buddha is teaching.  This state cannot be reasoned or thought out.  One cannot, so to speak, behave their way to this transcendent state which, incidentally, is beyond suffering. 

Awakening to this transcendent state is just that, an awakening to something the adept has never experienced before; something outside of the entire human biological sphere.  By analogy (a crazy one I admit) it is like a radio signal realizing that all of the music comes from itself, not from the radio which only amplifies the signal.  Prior to this, the radio signal only knew of the radio and its parts—it did not know that it even existed.

When the adept sees what the Buddha saw, any idea that this transcendent state is subjective—something he created and reasoned out, is put aside.  It simply is not true.

 

Comments

[Michael]

If I am not mistaken...even though Gotama is said to have promised Sunakkhatta no miracles, nevertheless various sutras report that Gotama taught that diligent practice confers superhuman abilities, and Gotama makes such claims even in the sermon in which he criticizes Sunakkhatta's apostasy. Moreover Sunakkhatta's denunciation of Gotama apparently occurred shortly after the massacre of the Sakya clan, which Gotama could not prevent despite trying, despite the supposed ability of a sage to multiply and `become many'. Sunakkhatta may have foolish to expect miracles. But the sangha is not exactly a meeting of the skeptic's society, if you catch my drift.

Regarding your radio analogy, Sunakkhatta was said to have experienced visions as a fruit of diligent practice but complained to Gotama that he never experienced supranormal sounds.