The Linked Discourses

by Bhikkhu Sujato

The “Linked” or “Connected” Discourses (Saṁyutta Nikāya, abbreviated SN) is a collection of over a thousand short discourses in the Pali canon. The word “linked” refers to the fact that the texts are collected and organized by topic. In most cases the organizing principle is a particular theme of Dhamma, for example, the five aggregates, dependent origination, the noble eightfold path, mindfulness meditation, or the four noble truths. This collection contains the most extensive range of texts on these core themes. In other cases chapters are organized according to the person or kind of person who speaks. This collection has a full parallel in the Saṁyuktāgama (SA) of the Sarvāstivāda school in Chinese translation. In addition, there are two partial collections in Chinese (SA-2 and SA-3) as well as a number of miscellaneous or fragmentary texts in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. Much of the organizational structure of SN is shared with SA, suggesting that this structure preceded the split between these two collections.

3631 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2018

Reviews

[Totochelamouche · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why a noble disciple has no doubts about the meaning or origin of life: they have seen it for themselves (SN 12.49). Such an individual is independent of others and need not rely on a teacher. One need not be a perfected one (arahant) to understand dependent origination (SN 12.68).

This is a faith that is akin to the confidence and trust that a scientist needs when relying on the findings and theories of others in their field. It is essential in order to get anywhere; but at the same time, it is completely provisional. If there is anything that is contradicted by the evidence, it should be rejected. And once you have seen the truth for yourself, there is no need for faith, as pointed out by Venerable Sāriputta in SN 48.44.

In my translations, I have rendered verse as prose broken into lines, rarely attempting poetic virtue. To render these highly didactic verses, dense with doctrinal terms, into genuine English verse is no easy task. In many cases, especially with the summary verses, the text in Pali has little in the way of literary merit. Other texts, especially the later verses, display a learned command of complex and sophisticated literary forms such as is rare to find, even among writers of English poetry. Combined with the often obscure vocabulary, rare and archaic grammatical forms, and syntactic flexibility of Pali verses, the task of rendering them in readable and accurate English is hard and time-consuming, even without aspiring to poetic beauty. So my verse is workmanlike, and I can only hope that poets take up the task of rendering selected verses with the beauty they deserve.

Such views forget a basic principle of the teaching: it is akāliko—we can realize it here & now, no matter when we live.

This was a revelation for me, and I pursued this insight in my book A History of Mindfulness.

Despite its scientific appearance, this reductive view, too, is unsustainable. The ideas of rebirth and the existence of multiple dimensions of existence are not found just in popular narratives, but are central to core teachings such as dependent origination and the four noble truths—the second noble truth is precisely “the craving that leads to future rebirth” (yāyaṁ taṇhā ponobbhavikā). They can’t be simply written off as an uncritical inheritance from Indian culture.

But poetry is not just technically complex; it is ecstatic, inspired, divine.

But the texts as we have them are not collections of facts: they are stories. And the significance of a story lies in its meaning.

It is an elementary axiom of Buddhism that the gods are not metaphysical, in the sense that they do not exist in a separate realm governed by different principles than our own. On the contrary, they are impermanent and suffering, trapped in the cycle of transmigration just like us.

The verses are hymns, invoked in ritual to heighten the emotional response, to inspire awe, fear, or devotion.

Thin in their doctrinal content, they appear more as incantations for protection or blessings.

Thus the best lens through which to see such texts is neither as history nor as propaganda but as sacred story; that is, as myth.

This is a tricky concept. It stems from Upaniṣadic usage, where it refers to the various individuated entities in the world, each with their own “form” and “name”. Each of the rivers on the earth, to take a metaphor from the Prasna Upaniṣad (6.5), has its own shape, and is called by its own name; but when they return to the ocean they lose their names and shapes and are just known as the great ocean. The ocean in this metaphor stands for consciousness, which in the Upaniṣads is taken to be the eternal and infinite divinity of the cosmos.

Rūpa is more extensive in scope than the Western concept of “matter”. It includes material properties that are perceived purely in the mind, such as shape or color seen as visions in meditation.

While the doctrine of the “three marks” is found throughout all Buddhist texts, it is here in the Khandha Saṁyutta that it rises to prominence.

[...] At its simplest level this refers to painful feelings, whether physical or mental (dukkha-dukkhatā). By itself, this is a profound observation, as virtually every moment of our waking lives is afflicted by some form of pain or irritation.

But meditative realization is not something that just happens automatically; one must continually contemplate and observe the aggregates (SN 22.40, etc.).

It’s best to avoid thinking of the external sense fields as “objects”, since in the suttas they are depicted in relation to the observing mind, and not as independently existing entities. There is no word for “object” in this sense in the early texts: existence is not objective, it is relational. The term ārammaṇa, which came to be used in this sense much later in the Abhidhamma, means “support” in the suttas.

As so often, the context draws upon and redefines Brahmanical terminology. The “six sense fields” (saḷāyatana) were first mentioned in the Buddha’s third teaching, the famous Fire Discourse (Ādittapariyāya Sutta) which appears in this collection at SN 35.28. This sermon was given to a large assembly of Brahmanical ascetics, following a period when the Buddha stayed in their “firehouse”, a kind of shrine room for worshiping the sacred flame. And in Sanskrit, this place is called an āyatana.

One of the key projects of the Brahmanical Upaniṣads was to reinterpret the deities of the Vedas.

The teachings of the Fire Sermon respond to several key Upaniṣadic passages.

It is correlated with the three feelings: pleasant feeling stimulates desire; painful feeling provokes hate; and neutral feeling slips into delusion (MN 44:25, MN 128:28, SN 36.3).

It is in order to understand this suffering that one undertakes the spiritual path (SN 35.81, SN 35.152).

A standard passage on sense restraint, familiar from the Gradual Training, speaks of preventing harmful qualities from invading the mind amid sense experience (SN 35.120, SN 35.127, SN 35.239, SN 35.240).

The first seven saṁyuttas offer a detailed treatment of seven sets of factors on Buddhist practice. These sets came to be known to the later traditions as the 37 bodhipakkhiyā dhammā, or “qualities leading to awakening”. Note that this term is not used in this way in the suttas; it is, rather, applied to one of the sets, the five faculties (SN 48.55, etc.). While the 37 factors are mentioned throughout the canon, it is in this book that we find the primary source for these teachings.

Before his death, it seems, the Buddha had begun to systematize these various presentations, putting together seven sets of qualities pertaining to the path, totaling 37 factors. Each set presented the path to liberation from a slightly different perspective.

Four right efforts:
1. to prevent the bad
2. to give up the bad
3. to give rise to the good
4. to maintain and grow the good

Five faculties The mental qualities that lead to liberation, and which characterize the mind of one on the path.

The quality of wisdom, for example, is called “observation of principles” (dhamānupassanā) as the fourth kind of mindfulness meditation, “inquiry” (vīmaṁsa) in the bases for psychic power, “wisdom” (paññā) in the faculties and powers, “investigation of principles” (dhammavicaya) in the factors of awakening, and “right view” (sammādiṭṭhi) in the noble eightfold path.

But here, in the teachings regarded by the Buddha himself as his core message and practice, we find only balanced and reasoned development of behavior, emotions, and intellect.

Right view (sammādiṭṭhi) Understanding the four noble truths.

One hears the teaching and gains an initial understanding (right view). Then one determines to live following this (right thought), undertaking the essentials of ethical conduct in speech (right speech) and body (right action), and ensuring that one does not earn money in a manner that causes harm (right livelihood). With this foundation one makes an effort to purify the mind (right effort), undertaking meditation (right mindfulness) leading to deep absorption (right immersion) (SN 45.28).

The factors are sequential, with each serving as condition or fuel for the next (SN 46.3). Multiple suttas stress this aspect of conditionality. Each of the awakening factors is nourished by a specific kind of fuel (SN 46.51). The set as a whole emerges from the practice of the four kinds of mindfulness meditation and the series of practices that underlie them (SN 45.6). They affect and condition the mind in distinct ways; thus when the mind is tired, it’s best to develop investigation, energy, and rapture, but when restless, develop tranquility, immersion, and equanimity. But mindfulness is always useful (SN 46.53). And the factors themselves are the condition for awakening (SN 46.56).

Most of the awakening factors refer to the emotional aspects of the spiritual path, the joy and peace of meditation. This is further emphasized in SN 46.54, which connects the awakening factors with the four immeasurables or divine meditations—love, compassion, rejoicing, and equanimity.

But in meditation, it is important to keep focus. The standard formula phrases this through the use of the reflexive idiom kāye kāyānupassī. Here the locative case is used quite literally to mean “one of the bodies in the body”, or as we would say in English, a particular aspect of the body.

The Pali compound satipaṭṭhāna resolves to sati + upaṭṭhāna. This phrase is familiar from the Gradual Training, where it refers to the moment when a practitioner sits down in seclusion and begins meditation by “establishing mindfulness” (satiṁ upaṭṭhapetvā).

Today it is common to speak of “mindfulness in daily life”, but in the suttas, this is called sampajañña, which I translate as “situational awareness”. This is one of the series of practices in the Gradual Training that lays the groundwork for formal meditation.

Here, as described in MN 10, one does not merely observe the presence and absence of various factors, one understands the reason why they appear and disappear. And understanding causality is the heart of insight.

This idea that an indriya is a potency or ability or strength possessed by a person is further developed in the remainder of the saṁyutta, which introduces a series of faculties beyond the basic five. Together with the five faculties, these make up a list of 22 faculties, which became a standard set in the Abhidhamma (see Vb 5).

Bhikkhu Sujato was born as Anthony Aidan Best on 4/11/1966 in Perth, Western Australia. He grew up in the pleasant suburbs of Mt Lawley and Attadale alongside his sister Nicola, who was the good child. His mother, Margaret Lorraine Huntsman née Pinder, said “he’ll either be a priest or a poet”, while his father, Anthony Thomas Best, advised him to “never do anything for money”. He attended Aquinas College, a Catholic school, where he decided to become an atheist. At the University of WA he studied philosophy, aiming to learn what he wanted to do with his life. Finding that what he wanted to do was play guitar, he dropped out. His main band was named Martha’s Vineyard, which achieved modest success in the indie circuit.
A seemingly random encounter with a roadside joey took him to Thailand, where he entered his first meditation retreat at Wat Ram Poeng, Chieng Mai in 1992. Feeling the call to the Buddha’s path, he took full ordination in Wat Pa Nanachat in 1994, where his teachers were Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Jayasaro. In 1997 he returned to Perth to study with Ajahn Brahm at Bodhinyana Monastery.
He spent several years practicing in seclusion in Malaysia and Thailand before establishing Santi Forest Monastery in Bundanoon, NSW, in 2003. There he was instrumental in supporting the establishment of the Theravada bhikkhuni order in Australia and advocating for women’s rights. He continues to teach in Australia and globally, with a special concern for the moral implications of climate change and other forms of environmental destruction. He has published a series of books of original and groundbreaking research on early Buddhism.
In 2005 he founded SuttaCentral together with Rod Bucknell and John Kelly. In 2015, seeing the need for a complete, accurate, plain English translation of the Pali texts, he undertook the task, spending nearly three years in isolation on the isle of Qi Mei off the coast of the nation of Taiwan. He completed the four main Nikāyas in 2018, and the early books of the Khuddaka Nikāya were complete by 2021. [...]
In 2019 he returned to Sydney where he established Lokanta Vihara (The Monastery at the End of the World).

But it’s only suffering that comes to be,
lasts a while, then disappears.
Naught but suffering comes to be,
naught but suffering ceases.”

The extraordinary Irreducible Mind, a sustained critique of reductionist theories of mind, assembles hundreds of studies into various kinds of extraordinary phenomena. While a reasonable person may well remain skeptical, it seems there is a significant body of evidence in support of such things as mind-reading or recollection of past lives. The ability to fly or to touch the sun remain, sadly, unattested.

It is primarily an anti-metaphysical doctrine, not a psychological one. [...] This meaning is quite different from the modern psychological notion of self, and it is inappropriate, and potentially harmful, to apply the teaching of not-self in cases where a person is suffering from a disorder of identity.

We attach, too, to our physical bodies, reveling in health [...]. We attach to our perceptions, such as our sense of belonging to a [...] religion [...].

Ānanda resolves the contradiction with the simile of a man walking to a park. Before setting out, one has the desire, the energy, the idea, or the curiosity to reach the park. But when you get there, those things vanish. In the same way, the desire or enthusiasm to reach the goal of spiritual practice carries you to the goal, but once there it is no longer needed.

The view that the aggregates are self is called “identity view” (sakkāyadiṭṭhi). It is possible to identify with any or all of the aggregates in a myriad of ways, commonly set out as twenty forms of identity view (SN 22.1, etc.).

Enthusiasm (chanda) This is one of the most common words for “desire”. While not formally mentioned as an item in the other lists of the bodhipakkhiyadhammā, it appears in the formula for the four right efforts. It is the desire to do good, to practice, to escape suffering.

The current saṁyutta deals with iddhi, another Vedic term with a similar meaning of “success, power, potency”. Note that the Pali iddhi is identical in meaning with two Vedic terms, siddhi and ṛddhi, but formally it is derived from the latter.

Inquiry (vīmaṁsā) Inquiry or investigation into the Dhamma, but especially into what obstructs meditation and what helps it. In this context, it is not too far in meaning from “curiosity”.

Wisdom (paññā) Understanding impermanence and the four noble truths.

Energy (viriya) The effort to give up the bad and develop the good.

The indriyas are innate potentials that can be manifested in the right conditions.

Keen (ātāpī) possessing persistent and unflagging energy.
Aware (sampajāno) possessing situational awareness.
Mindful (satimā) possessing mindfulness.
Rid of desire and aversion for the world (vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṁ)
having eliminated the overt forms of desire and
aversion through the practice of sense restraint.

The noble eightfold path is said to be a “divine vehicle” which carries us to awakening, its factors compared to the parts of a chariot (SN 45.4).

Right mindfulness (sammāsati) The four kinds of mindfulness meditation.

Overall, they strongly emphasize meditation, although other dimensions of spiritual practice, such as ethics and study, are also found.

And remember, this path is not walked alone. For all the emphasis on solitary meditation, this saṁyutta reminds us that good friendship is the whole of the spiritual life (SN 45.2, SN 45.3), for good friendship precedes the noble eightfold path (SN 45.49).

From the very first teaching of the Buddha (SN 56.11) we learn that the aggregates are suffering. In the second sermon—the Discourse on Not-Self (Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta) at SN 22.59 [...].

Later forms of Buddhism, starting with the Abhidhamma texts, treated this aggregate as if it were a catch-all, whose purpose was to include everything not mentioned under the other aggregates.

The suttas use three main terms for the mind: mano, citta, and viññāṇa.

The term āyatana refers to something “stretched out”, a domain, field, or dimension of activity.

Except perception, all of these are also found in dependent origination, where they have similar definitions.

[Jer Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sujato is an amazingly generous monastic who has translated the entire corpus of core texts of early Buddhism. This book is part of a collection that would cost hundreds of dollars if sold commercially, but which are available for free.

It’s just incredible.

His translation decisions from the original Pali are often different from other scholars like the famous Bikkhu Bodhi, but whenever I’ve investigated, Sujato provides strong and informed explanations for his choices.

These texts are as clear as they could plausibly be, though as with all translations from Pali, readers will benefit from a familiarity with Buddhist concepts and history, because the original texts are very interdependent and complex.