Long Discourses: A Translation of Dīgha Nikāya

by Bhikkhu Sujato

The Long Discourses (Dīgha Nikāya, abbreviated DN) is a collection of 34 discourses in the Pali canon (Tipiṭaka) of the Theravāda school. The word “long” refers to the length of the individual discourses, not the collection as a whole, which is in fact the smallest of the five Pali Nikāyas. It is one of the fundamental collections of early Buddhist teachings, depicting the Buddha in a lively range of settings. Compared to other collections it contains more extended narratives in diverse literary styles. Many discourses feature interreligious dialog with brahmins and other non-Buddhists. This collection parallels the Dīrghāgama (DA) of the Dharmaguptaka school, which is the first text in the Taishō edition of the Chinese canon. Several uncollected suttas in Chinese and Sanskrit also belong to this collection. Two-thirds of a Dīrghāgama from the Sarvāstivāda school has been found, but only small portions have been published.

Genres: Buddhism

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Published January 1, 2018

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[Sato]

The Dīgha Nikāya (Collection of Long Discourses) is a collection of scriptures found in the Pāḷi Canon, the most complete extant early Buddhist canon, belonging to the Theravada school of Buddhism. These scriptures contain discourses between the Buddha, his disciples, lay-followers and non-Buddhists, giving insight into different aspects of the Buddhist teaching. As the name suggests, the sutras in the Dīgha Nikāya are quite extensive, with some being more elaborate versions of shorter texts.

I won't rate this, since this is a religious text and as a Buddhist I would not be unbiased. However, I want to give some commentary to this particular set of scriptures.

Firstly, if you never read or heard anything about Buddhism, this is definitely not a good starting point. Many of the discourses are repetitive in structure, since that eases memorization, and they were transmitted orally before being written down. Also, there are many terms, people and events that are probably quite overwhelming. Many of the sutras are rich in content and require / suggest diving deeper by reading further or putting their teachings into practice. If your goal is to get a basic understanding of Buddhism, then my suggestion is to look elsewhere.

The Dīgha Nikāya does belong to the Theravada school as mentioned, which is why other schools might not deem it a must-read. However, I think that any person who calls themselves a Buddhist should take a look at the Pali canon, if anything because of its age. I also feel that Buddhists (and non-Buddhists) in the West often shy away from it, because the study can be taxing and because the canon full of Indian gods and rebirth doesn't agree with their idea of what Buddhism is or what its teaching entails. Of course, it has to be read critically and there are sections clearly implemented into the sutras at a later date, but that does not change the fact how rich and insightful the scriptures are.

Last thing I want to mention is the translation, which I found a little strange in its wording from time to time. It is not a huge complaint, but I think it should be adressed. I don't deem myself knowledgable enough to truly judge its precision, but I've read other translations of some of the sutras that seemed a tad more elegant.

[Totochelamouche · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gradual Training is found, in somewhat varying forms, in the Majjhima (MN 27, MN 51, MN 38, MN 39, MN 53, MN 107, MN 125), the Aṅguttara (AN 4.198, AN 10.99), and even the Abhidhamma (Vb 12, Pp 2.4:114).

I grew up in Perth, Western Australia. It’s a city that is often described as “nice”, a somewhat backhanded compliment. The weather is bright and sunny, it’s safe and prosperous, life is good. But it’s not a place where anything particularly happens. Certainly not anything meaningful or interesting to anyone outside of Perth.
As a musician, I would sing songs about New York, about Paris, about Memphis or Singapore or even Darlinghurst. I didn’t know those places, but I knew that they were meaningful places, places deserving of a song. My own life, by contrast, seemed entirely on the surface. The bright sun and clear skies of Perth had no poetry, it banished all the shadows, everything was just so bland. There was nothing to sing about.
You’re sensing a plot twist coming up, and you’re right. In those days—the early 80s—the Perth indie music scene produced its finest band, the Triffids. The singer Dave McComb wrote about things that had happened to me: “he swam out to the edge of the reef, there were cuts along his skin.” I knew what that was like, not because someone had told me, but because I’d done it myself.

There were the meditation masters of the Thai forest tradition in which I had ordained—Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Mun, Ajahn Thate, Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo. I grew to find sustenance also in the great scholar-monks of the modern Theravada—Venerables Ñāṇatiloka, Ñāṇapoṇika, Ñāṇamoḷī, Guṇaratana, Bodhi, Narada, Kaṭukurunde Ñāṇananda, Buddhadasa [...]

But I believe that there is not a single one who has nothing to offer.

As a person of faith, I believe that the Buddha was a perfected human being. The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, is made up of people who are usually notably imperfect. Sometimes we feel inspiration and uplift, other times disappointment or disillusionment.

Around 30 BCE they were written down in the Āluvihāra in Sri Lanka [...]

They are accompanied by an extensive and detailed set of ancient commentaries (aṭṭhakathā).

And the books of the Khuddaka Nikāya are very mixed. There are six fairly short books that are supplements to the main four nikāyas, mostly in verse: the Dhammapada, Udāna, Itivuttaka, Sutta Nipāta, Theragāthā, and Therīgāthā.

I almost completely avoid sideways glances at the various Chinese and other parallels. Understanding these relations is critical, and the entire basis of SuttaCentral is founded on this fact.

But it is no small thing to “approach” a spiritual teacher. It takes time, effort, curiosity, and courage; many of those people would have been more than a little nervous.

If we wish to build up knowledge step by step, we can’t rely on simply reading the suttas in order. Students often find it helpful to use a structured reading guide such as that offered here. On SuttaCentral, we offer several other approaches.

In academic works, texts are often referenced by volume and page of the Pali Text Society (PTS) edition of the original Pali. This is a regrettable and clumsy convention, since it binds references to a specific paper edition. I hope it is swiftly abandoned in favor of proper semantic references. However, the PTS volume/page numbers are displayed on SuttaCentral in case you need to look up a legacy reference.

It is an elementary principle of historical scholarship that the background story is of a somewhat later date than the main doctrinal material. Such stories vary considerably in the parallels, showing that the traditions treated narrative more flexibly than doctrine.

Such abbreviation is not a modern invention; it is found throughout the manuscripts, and indeed there is no edition that fully spells out all the repetitions. The Pali texts have their own convention for indicating abbreviations, marked with the syllable pe, itself an abbreviation of peyyāla.

Abbreviations are both “internal” or “external”.

In external abbreviations, an abbreviated passage cannot be fully reconstructed from the context, but requires looking up another text to fill in the blanks.

Buddhist manuscripts rarely have titles at the start like modern texts. Rather, the title is recorded at the end. In modern editions, these titles have been added at the start for clarity.

The vagga is the most widespread and distinctive structural unit in early Buddhist texts. It usually consists of ten texts, which may be ten discourses, ten verses, ten rules, and so on.

[...] Dharmaguptaka (Chinese) and Sarvāstivāda (Sanskrit) [...]

The literal meaning of nipāta is “fallen down”, and it is a generic term for texts that have been placed together. In the Aṅguttara, it is used for each division of texts gathered together by number: the group of discourses consisting of one item, and so on. Elsewhere it is used, for example, in the title of the Sutta Nipāta, the “Group of Discourses”.

Whereas the nipāta is quite generic, the saṁyutta has a more specific meaning: texts collected according to a similar theme or subject matter.

Archeology is, unfortunately, of limited use, as there are few archeological remnants from the Buddha’s day. In fact, before the time of Ashoka—perhaps 150 years after the Buddha—there are very few remains at all of ancient India, until the time of the Indic Valley civilization, many centuries earlier. For the period we are interested in, what has been found consists of some pottery and similar small implements, as well as a few remnants of fortifications around Kosambī. The paucity of evidence is due to two main reasons. The first is that buildings at the time were mostly of wood or other perishable materials. And the second is that archeological work in India has been very spotty and incomplete.

His family name was Gotama; the earliest texts do not mention his personal name, but tradition says it was Siddhattha.

These technological and economic shifts were mirrored in the political sphere. There were two major forms of governance. Traditional clans such as the Sakyans or the Vajjians followed an ancient restricted form of democracy, where decisions were made in a town council, and the clan elected a leading member as temporary ruler. Other nations, like Kosala and Magadha, had formed a more familiar kind of kingdom, with an absolute hereditary monarch.

Of even greater significance, towards the end of his life, Magadha was announcing its intentions to invade the Vajjian republic. History attests to the success of this policy: in the decades following the Buddha’s death, Magadha conquered virtually all of the sixteen nations, establishing an unquestioned supremacy over the region, and establishing pan-Indian trade networks. So powerful was the resulting kingdom that Alexander the Great’s troops rebelled at the mere rumor of Magadhan military might.

We hear frequent laments about how unpredictable wealth is, whether the older forms of wealth in cattle and land, or the newer forms in money and career.

There were no temples, no images, and no cult of devotion (bhakti). There is no mention of a system of avatars, nor of familiar concepts from modern Hindu-inspired spirituality such as śakti, kuṇḍalinī, chakras, or yoga exercises.

No-one considered, for example, the worship of a local dragon (nāga) to have anything to do with the rites of the brahmins.

To be sure, much of Hinduism is drawn from the Vedas, in the same way that much of Catholicism is drawn from the Hebrew scriptures that Christians call the Old Testament.

They were unreliable, but could be wooed through simple offerings of rice, flowers, or ghee.
Animist beliefs were derived from local legends and rituals, not from religious philosophy. However, the higher religious paths such as Buddhism or Jainism, rather than repressing such beliefs, were happy to assign them a minor role in the scheme of things, so long as they eliminated harmful practices like human or animal sacrifice.
Throughout the Buddhist texts, we hear of yakkhas (spirits), nāgas (dragons), gandhabbas (fairies), garudas (phoenixes), and many more. The Buddhist attitude towards such beings might best be described as “good neighborliness”. Neither they, nor any higher beings, are worshiped or looked to for salvation. Rather, they are treated with respect and dignity, for who knows? If they are real, it would be good to have them on your side.

In the early Buddhist texts there are three Vedas: Ṛg, Sāma, and Yajur; the Atharva is mentioned, but was not yet considered to be a Veda.
The Ṛg Veda grew out of the cultural and religious milieu of the ancient Indo-European peoples. It shares a common heritage with the Avestan texts of Iranian Zoroastrianism, and more distantly, the mythologies of Europe.

[...] Kuru country (modern Delhi) [...]

Six prominent ascetic schools were acknowledged in the time of the Buddha. The Buddha counted himself as an ascetic, too, in view of the many similarities between his own movement and theirs.
Like the Buddhist mendicants, the other samaṇas were typically celibate renunciates, living either in solitude or in monastic communities, and relying on alms for food. The most famous movement— and the only one to survive until today—was Jainism, which flourished under their leader Mahāvīra, known as Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta in the Buddhist texts.

Many translators use “defilement” to render kilesa, but since kilesa appears only rarely in the early texts, I use “defilement” for āsava. Both terms refer to a stain, corruption, or pollution in the mind.

The Buddha tells a legend of the past, in which a king is persuaded to give up violent sacrifice, and instead to devote his resources to supporting the needy citizens of his realm. However, even such a beneficial and non-violent sacrifice pales in comparison to the spiritual sacrifice of giving up attachments.

DN 2: The Fruits of the Ascetic Life (Sāmaññaphalasutta) [...] This is one of the greatest literary and spiritual texts of early Buddhism.

In several versions apart from the Pali, this story continues directly into the account of the First Council. This narrative is the 21st chapter of the Vinaya Khandhakas [...].

The early texts refer several times to a mysterious set of bodily characteristics
known as the “marks of a great man”. These are said to fulfill a Brahmanical prophecy that one who possesses such marks will either become a universal emperor or a fully awakened
Buddha. This prophecy and the list of thirty-two marks have not been exactly identified in extant Brahmanical texts, but recent research has uncovered a complex system of similar
marks in old Brahmanical texts, many of which invite comparison with the Buddhist list. The story of the two paths is a classic mythological theme, found in the oldest known myth, the story of Gilgamesh.

This begins with the story of the passing away of the Jain leader Mahāvīra. The Pali texts call him nigaṇṭha nātaputta, which is often misunderstood as a proper name. Nigaṇṭha, rather, means “knotless” and is a term for a Jain ascetic, while nāta is a misspelling of his clan, the Ñātikas. Nigaṇṭha nātaputta therefore means “the Jain ascetic of the Ñātika clan” [...]

During the journey in the Mahāparinibbānasutta, Ānanda asks the Buddha to reveal the fate after the death of devotees in the town of Ñātika. This otherwise obscure town was the main city of the Ñātika clan, to which the Jain leader Mahāvīra belonged, and it appears to come to prominence to show that even his own people became Buddhists.

One distinctive unifying detail of these discourses is that they do not end with the standard phrase saying that the listeners rejoiced in the teachings, but instead finish directly with a teaching or a verse on the subject of impermanence or the long-lasting of the dispensation.

At this point one has a profound insight into the nature of reality, letting go of three of the ten fetters that bind a person to rebirth.

But wallowing in suffering gets you nowhere.

It continues with items found in such common teachings as the five precepts and the ten paths of skillful action.

The Gradual Training is not a path of suffering, but one of grace and joy and freedom.

While the content is similar in each place that the Gradual Training appears, the Dīgha versions feature a pronounced emphasis on beauty and pleasure.

It seems that the Buddha preferred to encourage his monastics by exhorting them to follow the highest ideals of conduct and meditation. Only reluctantly did he set up the legal system of the Vinaya texts, with its procedures and punishments.

The Gradual Training is an expansion of the threefold training (tisso sikkhā): ethics (sīla), meditative immersion (samādhi), and wisdom (paññā).

It is no coincidence that these elaborate texts are often addressed to the brahmins, who were the self-proclaimed spiritual leaders of the time. [...] It seems that one aim of the Dīgha was to impress such learned men. These discourses offer a wide range of examples of how the Buddha related to those of other religious paths.

Nevertheless, the PTS texts are not particularly reliable. They were put together over a considerable period of time, with scant resources and few workers. The editors used whatever manuscripts they had to hand, and, apart from a general preference for Sri Lankan readings, it is hard to discern a consistent or clear methodology in their choices of readings. The limitations of these editions are well known among experts in the field, and in some cases updated and improved editions have been published.

For my translation of the nikāyas, I preferred to use the Mahāsaṅgīti edition. This is essentially a digital representation of the Burmese textual tradition of the 6th Council, itself based on the 19th century 5th Council text. It is based on the digital edition prepared by the Vipassana Research Institute, with extensive proofreading and corrections by the Dhamma Society of Bangkok. The Mahāsaṅgīti is a consistent and carefully edited digital text, and for that reason was chosen as the root Pali text for SuttaCentral.

The PTS editions introduced a number of ideas from European scholarship. Most obviously, they used a set of conventions for presenting Indic scripts with European letters. This system is lossless, so texts may be automatically changed from one script to another. It enables easy comparison between the editions of the Pali canon from different countries, which traditionally had been written in diverse local scripts. They also introduced titles at the start of texts, punctuation and capitalization, page numbers, footnotes, variant readings [...].

In modern Theravāda, the commentaries have become a sadly and unnecessarily divisive issue. Some people take the entire tradition uncritically and regard the commentaries as essentially infallible. Others flip to an extreme of suspecting anything in thencommentaries, rewriting Theravādin history as a conspiracy of the commentaries. But any serious scholar knows that the commentaries are often helpful, even indispensable, on countless difficult and obscure points. Without them, there is no way we would have been able to create the accurate dictionaries and translations that we have today. Yet they cannot be relied on blindly, for, like any resource, they are fallible, and must be read with a careful and critical eye. On some doctrinal issues, the position of the commentaries had shifted considerably from the stance in the suttas, and not in illuminating ways.

I once read some advice from a Burmese Sayadaw—I am afraid
this was many years ago and I have forgotten who it was—on how
to use the commentaries. He said—and I paraphrase—something
like this. First read the sutta. Try to understand it. Read it and meditate
on it again and again. If there’s anything you don’t understand,
see if it can be explained elsewhere in the suttas. If, at the end of
the day, you still cannot understand it, check the commentary. If it
answers the question, good. But if, after equally careful study, the
commentary is still unclear, then check the subcommentary.
This has always seemed like sound advice to me, and I have tried

I once read some advice from a Burmese Sayadaw—I am afraid this was many years ago and I have forgotten who it was—on how to use the commentaries. He said—and I paraphrase—something like this. First read the sutta. Try to understand it. Read it and meditate on it again and again. If there’s anything you don’t understand, see if it can be explained elsewhere in the suttas. If, at the end of the day, you still cannot understand it, check the commentary. If it answers the question, good. But if, after equally careful study, the commentary is still unclear, then check the subcommentary.

The main commentaries were compiled by the monk Buddhaghosa at the Mahāvihāra monastery in Anuradhapura, then the capital of Sri Lanka, in the 5th century.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like this guy’s footnotes

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audio book via Audible.