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WorkGautama Buddha

The Udāna: Inspired Utterances of the Buddha

Eighty short scenes, each closing on a verse the Buddha speaks when he sees what has just happened, among them the blind men and the elephant.

by Gautama Buddha200 passages held

  • German, a translation held here
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Original title
Udāna
Original language
Pali

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Overview

Each of the Udāna's eighty short pieces runs to one pattern: something happens, the Buddha sees what it means, and he speaks a verse, an udāna or "inspired utterance". The book opens under the tree of awakening, where the Buddha sits for seven days after his awakening, and its eight chapters of ten pieces each reach as far as the meal that Cunda the smith served him on his last journey. Like the rest of the canon, the book was handed down orally and written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE. Karl Seidenstücker published the first German translation from the Pāli at Augsburg in 1920. He had helped found the first Buddhist association in Germany in 1903 and had written his doctorate on the Udāna at Leipzig in 1913. In the sixth chapter, ascetics and brahmins of rival schools have fallen out at Sāvatthī over whether the world is eternal and whether the life-principle is the same thing as the body, each side calling its view true and the rest folly. The Buddha answers with a story. A king had all the men born blind in the city shown an elephant, each touching one part of it; the one given the tail said an elephant was like a broom, and the dispute over what an elephant is ended in a fistfight. The eighth chapter opens on talks about nibbāna (Nirvana), the end of suffering, and describes it as a realm with neither earth nor water, fire nor air, neither this world nor another.

Key concepts

What is nibbāna in the Udāna?

Nibbāna is the end of suffering, described here mostly by what it is not. It is a realm with neither earth nor water, fire nor air, neither this world nor another, with no coming and no going, no standing, no passing away and no arising. The Udāna insists all the same that it is real, and not a mere nothing.

What does 'in the seen, only the seen' mean?

It is the teaching given to Bāhiya: let what is seen count only as seen, what is heard only as heard, what is thought only as thought. Nothing is added, no 'I' who sees and no 'mine' that is seen. Then, the Buddha tells him, you are neither here nor beyond nor in between, and that is the end of suffering. Bāhiya is freed on hearing it, and dies the same day.

Why is the 'not-I' hard to see?

Because every experience seems to come with someone having it. One of the verses on nibbāna says it outright: hard to see is the not-I, not easy to grasp is the truth. The difficulty is not in the doctrine but in the habit of feeling oneself behind every sight and thought. For the one who knows, the verse goes on, craving is overcome, and for the one who sees, there is nothing at all to cling to.

What are the five things that ripen a mind for release?

The Buddha lists them for Meghiya, the monk who wanted to meditate alone too soon. First, a good friend and companion. Then virtue, living by the rule; talk that leads to dispassion and calm; energy to drop unwholesome qualities and develop good ones; and wisdom that sees things arise and pass away. The good friend comes first because the other four, he says, grow from that friendship.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Blind Men and the Elephant

Rival ascetics at Sāvatthī quarrel over whether the world is eternal, each calling his own view the truth and the rest folly. Why do sincere people who see part of something fight over the whole?

The Buddha answers with a story. A king had the men born blind in his city brought before an elephant, each made to touch one part of it, and asked them what an elephant is. Those who felt the head said a pot, those who felt the tail a broom, and the argument ended with fists. The rival teachers, he says, are like them: they do not know what matters and what does not, what is true and what is not, cling each to his part, and quarrel because they have seen only one side of the matter.

  • philosophical disagreement
  • metaphysics
  • ignorance
  • wisdom
  • attachment
  • anger

Enter a dialogue

The Unborn

Everything a person meets is born, comes to be and passes away. The book asks whether there is anything that is not, and what difference it makes if there is.

The book opens under the tree of awakening, where the Buddha traces the arising of suffering through its conditions, forward and back. It ends on nibbāna: a realm with neither earth nor water, fire nor air, neither this world nor another. There is, the Buddha says, something not born, not become, not made, not formed, and were there not, no escape from the born would be known. To Bāhiya, a seeker in haste, he gives the shortest teaching of all: in the seen, let there be only the seen.

  • nirvana
  • liberation
  • rebirth
  • death
  • causation
  • equanimity
  • happiness

Enter a dialogue

What the Moment Shows

Each piece begins with something that simply happens: boys beating a snake, a grandmother's grief, a monk's longing for his bride. What does an ordinary event reveal to someone who sees it clearly?

The pattern never varies: an event, the Buddha's grasp of what it means, a verse. Boys beating a snake to death show that whoever seeks happiness by tormenting others who also seek it will not find it. Visākhā, grieving for her granddaughter, hears that those with a hundred dear ones have a hundred sorrows. Queen Mallikā admits to King Pasenadi that no one is dearer to her than herself. Meghiya, eager to meditate alone in a lovely mango grove, learns that a mind first needs a good friend.

  • craving
  • desire
  • suffering
  • death
  • ethics
  • monastic life
  • generosity
  • community

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held
200
distinct concepts
253
by passages held, corpus-wide
#350

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “craving” and “liberation”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
cravingliberation10
cravingsuffering6
liberationsuffering6
monastic liferenunciation5
liberationmindfulness4
liberationspiritual practice4
meditationspiritual practice4
liberationmeditation3
meditationsuffering3
renunciationspiritual practice3
meditationmindfulness2
mindfulnesssuffering2
renunciationsuffering2
cravingmeditation1
cravingmindfulness1
liberationrenunciation1
meditationmonastic life1
meditationrenunciation1
mindfulnessmonastic life1
mindfulnessspiritual practice1
monastic lifespiritual practice1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1892 Buddhistische Anthologie

    A book assembled by its translator, not a book of the canon, and the start of a sequence: Neumann went on to translate the Dhammapada in 1893 and the verses of the monks and nuns in 1899.

     DE
  2. Dialogues of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya)

    Of the five collections of the Buddha's discourses in the Pāli Canon, this one comes first and holds the longest pieces. Many of them stage an encounter: a brahmin, a king or a rival ascetic arrives with a question.

     EN
  3. Psalms of the Early Buddhists I: Psalms of the Sisters (Therīgāthā)

    The companion to the Theragāthā, the verses of the elder monks, and less than half its length.

     EN
  4. Psalms of the Early Buddhists II: Psalms of the Brethren (Theragāthā)

    Twenty-one chapters ordered by the length of each poem, from single verses up to Vaṅgīsa's seventy-one, ascribed to the Buddha's first monks.

     EN
  5. Sutta-Nipāta

    An anthology rather than a single discourse: five chapters of verse and verse-dialogue, gathered into the miscellaneous fifth collection of the canon.

     DEEN
  6. The Book of the Kindred Sayings (Saṃyutta Nikāya)

    Built by topic rather than by length, unlike the two collections before it: here causation, the aggregates of a person and the six senses each receive a book of their own.

     PIEN
  7. The Dhammapada (Dhammapada)

    The best known of the canon's verse anthologies, filed with the miscellaneous fifth collection. Many of its verses recur elsewhere in the canon, and several early schools kept their own version.

     EN
  8. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikāya)

    Where the Dīgha stages debates, this collection shows the Buddha at work as a teacher, with monks, householders and ascetics. Neumann's version, the first complete one in a European language, keeps the German spelling of the 1890s, with forms such as giebt and Gleichniss.

     DE
  9. The Udāna: Inspired Utterances of the Buddha (Udāna) you are here DE
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