The Sūtra of Nanda’s Going Forth

In this sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamuni, accompanied by Ānanda, visits the house of Nanda during his stay in Banyan Grove near Kapilavastu. The Buddha explains to Nanda the importance and benefits of going forth as a monk. Nanda expresses hesitation about going forth, so the Buddha uses two memorable analogies to explain to Nanda how fortunate he is to have obtained an auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to have the opportunity to become a monk. Nanda is deeply impressed by the Buddha’s teaching and decides to renounce worldly life and go forth.

The setting of the teaching is Kapilavastu, the ancient city and capital of the Śākya state, where Siddhārtha Gautama lived until the age of twenty-nine before he renounced worldly life. Seven years after his awakening, he returned to Kapilavastu for the first time since his departure, upon his father’s request. His cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, his half-brother Nanda, his barber Upāli, and even his son Rāhula joined the saṅgha in Kapilavastu, and the propagation of several rules of the Vinaya later took place in Banyan Grove.1

Having specified the setting, the text follows a typical sūtra structure as the narrative unfolds, beginning with the Buddha visiting the home of his younger half-brother Nanda, accompanied by his disciple Ānanda. In the dialogue that ensues, the Buddha begins by asking Nanda why he does not go forth. Nanda replies with the request, “Blessed One, please explain what is meant by the words going forth.” At this request, the Buddha proceeds to give a teaching, in verse, explaining the meaning of going forth and describing how fortunate Nanda is to have obtained an auspicious human birth, to have met the Buddha, and to have the opportunity to become a monk. The Buddha also mentions royal and lay devotees who decided to go forth. He then encourages Nanda to do the same.

The Buddha begins by defining going forth (Skt. pravrajyā, Tib. rab tu byung ba), listing its advantages. The expression to go forth means to renounce the worldly life of a householder, or lay person, and become a monk or nun.2 In the translated text several other variations of this expression appear, such as “abandon one’s land and go forth” (Tib. sa bor nas rab tu byung), “abandon one’s home and go forth” (Tib. khyim rnams bor nas rab tu byung), “go forth and renounce the world” (Tib. rab tu byung bar nges par ’byung ba), and “go forth from home into homelessness” (Tib. khyim nas khyim med par rab tu byung).

After hearing about the manifold advantages of going forth, Nanda hesitates and says that he will remain a lay person, but he will make various offerings and donations to the Buddha and the saṅgha. The Buddha explains that no offering can remotely compare to the intention to go forth. The Buddha then uses two memorable analogies to illustrate how fortunate Nanda is to have obtained favorable circumstances and met the Buddha, and he again encourages him to go forth, comparing the rarity of meeting a buddha to the rarity of the uḍumbara flower.

The two analogies that the Buddha gives to illustrate the difficulty of obtaining a human birth are the improbability of a blind turtle putting its head through a yoke tossed about on the waves of a vast ocean, and the improbability of a mustard seed passing through the eye of an upright-standing needle when a handful of seeds are tossed at it. Both analogies are widely known as illustrations of the rarity of obtaining a human birth. This sūtra seems to be the only mention in full in the Kangyur of the analogy of the blind turtle,3 and it is therefore presumably to this canonical source that Śāntideva refers in his Bodhi­caryāvatāra.4 The Buddha adds that the “favorable conditions” of a rebirth in which there is the opportunity to go forth are even more fortunate. Thus, he persuades Nanda to make the most of this opportunity and become a monk. The sūtra concludes with Nanda going forth and, together with Ānanda, praising the speech of the Buddha.

Nanda was to became an important monastic disciple of the Buddha, but several accounts of his early experience of going forth suggest that it was not an easy commitment for him to make. The Buddha (as Siddhārtha Gautama) and Nanda were the two sons of King Śuddhodana, but were half-brothers since the Buddha’s mother, Māyādevī, had died seven days after his birth. Nanda’s mother was the king’s second queen, Mahāprajāpatī Gotamī, the Buddha’s maternal aunt and the woman who raised him after his mother’s death. Of the Śākya kingdom’s nobility, Nanda and the Buddha’s son Rāhula in particular, as well as their cousins Ānanda and Devadatta, were thus important as potential royal successors, and one could imagine that all of them eventually choosing to follow the Buddha in renouncing such positions for the spiritual life was seen as consequential from a temporal perspective. No such considerations are directly mentioned in any of the texts that relate Nanda’s going forth,5 but in the present text they can perhaps be discerned in the explanations and comparisons the Buddha uses as he describes the benefits of going forth.

There is another well-known version of the story leading to Nanda’s going forth that also illustrates the careful skillful means through which the Buddha introduced the idea to him.6 It relates that the Buddha, on the third day of his arrival at Kapilavastu, after taking part in a meal in Nanda’s house, handed his bowl to Nanda and departed, thereby propagating the Dharma to his half-brother without words. However, Nanda, not understanding this, followed him to Banyan Grove to return the bowl. There, the Buddha asked Nanda if he would become a monk. Although Nanda had just married, he went forth.

Details of the difficulties Nanda subsequently experienced at the start of his life as a monk are related in several other canonical texts. They are found, for example, in a sutta in the Pali Canon entitled The Nanda Sutta (Udāna 3.2)7 as well as in The Finer Points of the Monastic Discipline (Vinayakṣudrakavastu, Toh 6)8 and The Teaching to Nanda on Entry into the Womb (Nanda­garbhāvakrānti­nirdeśa, Toh 57).9 According to the version of the story found in the latter, although Nanda became a monk, he could not focus on the spiritual path because he missed his wife. Recognizing this, the Buddha took Nanda to the Heaven of the Thirty-Three (Skt. Trāyastriṃśa, Tib. sum cu rtsa gsum). On their way, Nanda saw a blind female monkey clinging to a tree. The Buddha asked him how the physical appearance of his wife compared to that of the monkey, to which Nanda replied that the physical appearance of the monkey could not compare in any way to the beauty of his wife. Finally, when they reached the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, Nanda saw beautiful celestial nymphs there. When the Buddha asked whether he considered his wife or the nymphs more beautiful, Nanda confessed that the physical appearance of his wife could not compare in any way to the beauty of the nymphs. The Buddha promised Nanda that he would meet the nymphs if he did not disrobe. Thereupon, Nanda endeavored with great intent, but nevertheless the monks scorned him for his attachment to sensual desire. Recognizing his attachment to sensual desire, the Buddha took Nanda to the hells, where Nanda saw for himself what awaited him after his sojourn in the Heaven of the Thirty-Three to sport with the nymphs. In the end, Nanda would recognize the true nature of desire and become an arhat.

The story of Nanda was so well-known that the early Indian poet Aśvaghoṣa wrote a poem about his conversion entitled Handsome Nanda (Skt. Saundarananda).10

Despite the multiplicity of accounts of Nanda’s going forth, however, the Buddha’s advice to him on the importance and benefits of doing so, as set out in the present short sūtra, does not seem to be included in any of the longer texts transmitted in the Mūlasarvāstivāda and Lokottaravāda vinaya traditions and its provenance remains unknown.

There is to our knowledge no extant Sanskrit version of this sūtra. It seems to have been translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan no later than the early ninth century, as its title is recorded in the Denkarma11 and Phangthangma12 Tibetan imperial translation catalogs. Versions of the Tibetan translation are found in all the known Kangyurs. A Mongolian translation of the text is available in the Mongolian Kanjur,13 entitled Nandi toyin boluγsan-u sudur (The Sūtra of Nandi’s Ordination).14 A Chinese translation of a similarly titled sūtra is available in the Taishō Canon (難提釋經 Nandi shi jing, Taishō 113), but it bears little resemblance to the Tibetan translation. The colophon names its translator as Fa Ju (Skt. Dharmalokā), who was active in Luoyang between 290 and 306 ᴄᴇ, toward the end of the Western Jin dynasty.15 There is to our knowledge no English translation of the text to date, nor any translation into another European language.

As for the Tibetan versions of this text, those included in the Kangyurs of the Thempangma line, such as the Stok Palace Kangyur (Tib. stog pho brang bka’ ’gyur), provide no information about who translated the text in their colophons, which say only that the text “is included in the first teachings of the Buddha” (Tib. ’di bka’ dang por gtogs so), that is, the teachings included in the first turning of the wheel of the Dharma. However, in the short colophon of the versions found in Kangyurs belonging to the Tshalpa line, such as Degé, Lithang, and Choné, as well as in independent or “mixed” Kangyurs such as Lhasa and Narthang, only the editor of the translation is named, Tsang Devendrarakṣita (Tib. rtsangs de ben dra ra k+Shi ta). This figure is named as the text’s translator in Butön’s History of Buddhism (Tib. bu ston chos ’byung).16 Furthermore, the colophon of the version found in the Gondhla collection states that the sūtra was edited and finalized by the Indian scholar Dharmākara (Tib. dar ma ka ra ba) together with the monk-translator Tsang Devendrarakṣita.17 Dharmākara is the only attested Sanskrit name of a scholar who worked on Tibetan translations during the imperial period that vaguely corresponds to the odd dar ma ka ra ba.18

This English translation is based on the Tibetan version in the Degé Kangyur, in consultation with the Stok Palace Kangyur version, the variant readings recorded in the Comparative Edition (Tib. dpe bsdur ma) of the Kangyur, and the Phukdrak (Tib. phug brag) manuscript Kangyur.