Samaññaphala Sutta
The Samaññaphala Sutta takes its name from a title that translates as 'The Fruit of Contemplative Life.' It stands as the second discourse of the Digha Nikaya. Its entire plot turns on one question. A king wants to know what a person actually gains from living as a contemplative. He has already asked several respected teachers without getting an answer he could use. That king will eventually put the question to the Buddha, and the answer he receives will do more than satisfy his curiosity. It will also draw out of him a confession he had never made about how he actually became king. The scholar Thanissaro Bhikkhu later described this discourse as 'one of the masterpieces of the Pali canon.' What could the Buddha give him that no other teacher had, and what would it cost the king to hear it?
On a bright uposatha night, King Ajātasattu of Magadha wanted to hear a Dhamma discourse, so he asked his ministers whether any teacher could 'enlighten and bring peace to our mind.' His ministers named several respected teachers, but Ajātasattu rejected every suggestion by staying silent. Only Jivaka, his physician, had stayed quiet through the whole exchange, and when the king finally turned to him, Jivaka answered at once: the Buddha, he said, was staying in his own mango groves.
The answer moved the king immediately. Ajātasattu ordered the elephants prepared and rode out with his followers toward the groves.
Fear caught him at the entrance. The hairs on his body stood on end, and doubt crept in as he turned to Jivaka: 'Are you not deceiving me, Jivaka? Do you not betray me and hand my life to the enemies? How come it happens that there is not a single sound heard at all, not even coughs or sneezes in the huge group of 1,250 Sangha monks?'
Jivaka answered calmly. 'Do not worry, your Majesty. I am not lying, or deceiving, or betraying you to your enemies. Proceed on, your Majesty! There, in the Hall, where the lights are lit.'
Reassured, the king pressed on toward the lit hall, though he still had no idea exactly where inside it the Buddha was sitting.
Inside the hall, Ajātasattu could not immediately tell which of the seated figures was the Buddha. Jivaka pointed him toward the group: the Buddha was sitting with his back to a pillar, surrounded by his disciples.
The king approached and gave his salutation, then stood watching the assembly. The monks sat in total silence, calm 'like a still, waveless lake,' and the sight prompted a personal thought: 'Can my beloved son, Udayi Bhadda, possess such calmness and composure as the Monks show me now?'
The Buddha asked in turn how the king directed his mind toward compassion and love. 'Bhante, I love my son very dearly, and I wish for him to possess the calmness as like the monks have now,' Ajātasattu answered.
Ajātasattu then prostrated himself before the Buddha, clasped his palms in salutation to the monks, and sat down at the Buddha's side. 'If my teacher doesn't mind, may I ask you a question?' he said. 'Ask what you want to ask, King,' the Buddha replied.
With permission granted, the king was finally ready to ask the question that had already taken him past six other teachers.
Ajātasattu opened with a list of ordinary trades: elephant-drivers, chariot-drivers, archers, cooks, barbers, potters, mathematicians, accountants, and many other skills. He said such workers already enjoy the real fruits of their skills in this life, using them to support themselves, their families, and their friends. They also give costly gifts to Brahmins and ascetics, hoping for a joyful rebirth in heaven. Could the Buddha, he asked, describe an equally real and visible benefit for someone who chose a contemplative life instead?
The Buddha turned the question back on him: had Ajātasattu already put it to any other teacher, brahmin, or ascetic? The king answered by repeating what six revered ascetic teachers had already told him, and every one of the six had left him dissatisfied. The discourse frames those six answers as its record of what those teachers actually taught, describing that circle of contemporaries as holding views ranging from amorality and fatalism to materialism, eternalism, and agnosticism.
Frustrated, Ajātasattu summed up the mismatch with a simile: 'Just as if a person, when asked about a mango, were to answer with a breadfruit; or, when asked about a breadfruit, were to answer with a mango.'
Only after six mismatched answers did the king finally put the same question to someone who had never yet weighed in.
Freedom from servitude opens the list. A former slave or farmer, once freed, becomes 'content with the simplest food and shelter, delighting in solitude,' and earns the respect of others simply by living that way. The Digha Nikaya presents this whole passage as one of the fullest surviving records of the Buddhist community's ethical code within the Sutta Pitaka.
Virtue follows solitude. The monk 'consummate in virtue sees no danger anywhere from his restraint through virtue,' and that restraint brings what the text calls the quiet pleasure of being blameless.
Simplicity comes next, summed up in a single line: 'Wherever he goes, he takes only his barest necessities along. This is how a monk is content.'
Mental calm follows through mindfulness and alertness, as the monk clears his mind of covetousness, ill will, anger, sloth, drowsiness, restlessness, anxiety, and doubt, the five qualities the text groups together as the Five Hindrances.
Jhanic bliss caps this stage of the path. The monk reaches four jhanic states, each one permeating the body with rapture, pleasure, equanimity, and a pure, bright awareness.
These early fruits stayed close to ordinary human experience. What the Buddha described next moved into territory far stranger.
With his mind 'concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability,' the monk turns that same mind toward knowledge and vision. He examines his own body and discerns it as 'endowed with form, composed of the four primary elements, born from mother and father, nourished with rice and porridge, subject to inconstancy, rubbing, pressing, dissolution, and dispersion.' His consciousness, the text adds, is 'supported here and bound up here.'
Supernatural powers follow this insight. 'Having been one he becomes many; having been many he becomes one. He appears. He vanishes. He goes unimpeded through walls, ramparts, and mountains as if through space.' He also 'dives in and out of the earth as if it were water' and 'walks on water without sinking as if it were dry land,' and 'sitting cross-legged he flies through the air like a winged bird.' 'With his hand he touches and strokes even the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful,' and through 'the divine ear-element, purified and surpassing the human,' he hears 'both kinds of sounds: divine and human, whether near or far.'
Mind reading comes next. He can tell whether another person's consciousness holds passion, lust, delusion, or concentration, the same categories the Satipatthana Sutta later applies to mindfulness of the mind.
Three further knowledges round out the sequence. He recalls his own past lives, watches the rebirth of other beings, and comes to know the ending of suffering along with the fermentations of sensuality, becoming, and ignorance.
Release completes the path. 'His heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, is released from the fermentation of sensuality, the fermentation of becoming, the fermentation of ignorance,' and with that release comes a plain recognition: 'Released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.' Hearing this complete account, King Ajātasattu declared himself a lay follower of the Buddha.
The king had gotten the answer he came for, but he was not finished with the Buddha yet.
After declaring himself a follower, Ajātasattu admitted something he had never told the Buddha: he had killed his own father to take the throne.
The Buddha did not excuse it. He told the king plainly that a transgression had overcome him, calling him 'so foolish, so muddle-headed, and so unskilled as to kill your father,' whom he named 'a righteous man, a righteous king,' killed 'for the sake of sovereign rulership.'
Yet the Buddha accepted the confession. He explained that recognizing the transgression and making amends 'in accordance with the Dhamma' was itself 'a cause of growth in the Dhamma & Discipline of the noble ones.'
The Buddha then named the exact cost of that killing. Had Ajātasattu not killed Bimbisara, the father he had just called righteous, 'the dustless, stainless Dhamma eye would have arisen to him as he sat in this very seat.'
Common questions
What is the Samaññaphala Sutta about?
The Samaññaphala Sutta, whose title translates as 'The Fruit of Contemplative Life,' is the second discourse of the Digha Nikaya. It records King Ajātasattu of Magadha asking the Buddha what a person actually gains from living a contemplative life, after other teachers left him dissatisfied.
Who was King Ajātasattu in the Samaññaphala Sutta?
King Ajātasattu was the son and successor of King Bimbisara of Magadha. In the discourse he visits the Buddha at night to ask about the benefits of contemplative life and later declares himself a lay follower of the Buddha.
Why was King Ajātasattu afraid when he approached the Buddha in the Samaññaphala Sutta?
He grew fearful and suspicious on arriving at the mango grove because the 1,250 monks gathered there made no sound at all, not even a cough, and he worried his physician Jivaka was leading him into an ambush.
What did King Ajātasattu confess to the Buddha in the Samaññaphala Sutta?
He confessed that he had killed his own father, King Bimbisara, in order to become king. The Buddha called it a transgression but accepted the confession because the king recognized it and sought amends in accordance with the Dhamma.
What are the fruits of the contemplative life described in the Samaññaphala Sutta?
The Buddha describes a progression running from contentment with simple food and shelter and virtue's freedom from blame, through jhanic states of rapture and equanimity, to insight knowledge, supernatural powers, mind reading, three further knowledges, and release from samsara.
How did Thanissaro Bhikkhu describe the Samaññaphala Sutta?
Thanissaro Bhikkhu called it 'one of the masterpieces of the Pali canon.'