Who Was Ananda? Life of the Buddha's Closest Companion

Who was the Buddha's disciple Ananda? What was he like? What was his life like? These are the kinds of questions we'll be answering in today's video. If you're, incidentally, if you're new to this channel and interested in living a wiser and a kinder and a calmer life, consider subscribing to this channel where we'll be discussing material like this about early Buddhism, the people involved in it, the history and so on. So Ananda has the reputation of being basically everybody's kind of favorite early disciple. He's sort of the ordinary everyman who is surrounded by larger than life figures. Although looked at in a certain way, Ananda himself is pretty much larger than life. He was supposed to have been the Buddha's cousin, one of the Buddha's cousins, and was the Buddha's close attendant for many, many years. He is basically, he's known as the Buddha's attendant, although he wasn't his attendant for his entire career, the Buddha's entire career, he was for a very, very significant amount of time. And part of his humanity in the early suttas was that he didn't become enlightened until actually after the Buddha's death. And he also played the role of being essentially the preserver of the Dharma. And that is an extremely important role. So, but in this video, I'll go through sort of four general topics when it comes to Ananda's life. The first being about his knowledge, the second about his compassion, the third about his humanity, and the fourth being the controversies that surrounded him after the Buddha's passing. But as we'll see, the role of Ananda is, again, sort of as an every person and every man who is there at the Buddha's side so that we can sort of be at the Buddha's side in the person of Ananda because he's more normal than many of the other people surrounding the Buddha. And as a result, we can feel a certain amount of kinship and sympathy with him as a figure in early Buddhism and see the Buddha through his eyes. The first point to make about Ananda, although it's perhaps not the most important thing to know about him, was that he was actually very knowledgeable about the Dharma itself, in the sense that at times when the Buddha was tired, he would ask Ananda to actually give a Dharma talk in his place. One relatively famous example of this is when the Buddha had a backache, which would happen from time to time, at least it's recorded as such in the suttas when he was older. He would, at times, want to stretch out and stretch his back, and so he would tell Ananda to give a talk. And so one of these examples is he gave Ananda, as a result, since the Buddha had a backache, gave a talk to a number of laypeople about the Dharma. And it's not simply that this is a Dharma talk, but that Ananda's talk was really quite comprehensive and involved a large amount of material about the Dharma, up to and including the attainment of enlightenment. So it's interesting to contemplate that the Buddha not only allowed, but encouraged somebody like Ananda, who was not himself enlightened, to give a talk about the entire path, including enlightenment itself, because he knew that Ananda was knowledgeable about these matters. And we might take this to heart nowadays and understand that somebody doesn't necessarily need to be completely enlightened, shall we say, in order to be able to give a good Dharma talk. Indeed, if that were the case, we would have very, very few people giving Dharma talks, if any, nowadays. Secondly, Ananda was famously compassionate, and we might say interested in justice in the larger sense. It was Ananda who intervened with the Buddha when it came to allowing nuns into the Sangha, into the order of monastics. It's said that, and this, I should say, this story about Ananda's role here is somewhat controversial and potentially historically inaccurate for various reasons, and I'm not gonna get into in this video. I did an earlier video on this general topic. I'll leave a link to it down below. But suffice to say that there are inconsistencies in the story in various respects. But nevertheless, I'll just give the story as we find it in the texts. As we find it in the texts, the person of Mahapajapati Gautami, she is the Buddha's stepmother. The Buddha's mother apparently died soon after he was born, and so he was raised by Mahapajapati Gautami. She, at some point, came to the Buddha and asked to be brought into the order, asked to be ordained as a nun. She would be the first nun, because there weren't any. And she also had various women friends who wanted to be ordained as well. And the Buddha turned her down. In fact, he said to have turned her down three times. When Ananda became aware of this, he saw that Mahapajapati Gautami was distraught about something. He went up and asked her what she was distraught about, and she told him that she'd wanted to become a nun and that the Buddha had refused. And so Ananda decided to intervene on her behalf with the Buddha and to try essentially to convince him that it would be good to allow nuns. And so he had a discussion. Ananda had a discussion with the Buddha, it's said. And one of the things that he brought up, one of the questions he asked the Buddha was whether it was indeed the case that women were able to achieve all of the same attainments as men, including enlightenment. And the Buddha said indeed that they were, that women were just as capable as men of achieving all of the attainments. And it seems as though after this discussion, the Buddha changed his mind and decided to allow women into the Sangha as nuns, as what are called bhikkhuni. Now, in a traditional understanding, it's impossible for an enlightened being to change their minds because it's supposed that they are ethically perfect, they have perfected themselves. And so the idea of changing their minds is somehow impossible. However, all I can say is if you read the story as it's presented in the early texts, it certainly comes across as a case of the Buddha having changed his mind because of the intercession of Ananda. In any event, ever since that point, Ananda was associated with the nuns, associated with the establishment of the order of nuns as kind of their protector in a sense. The way that people viewed Ananda in this respect eventually came back in controversies that we'll come to later on. The third point to know about Ananda is his essential humanity. It's through Ananda, through Ananda's human eyes, his normal, that is to say non-enlightened eyes, that we get to recognize some of the few tragedies and sad occurrences that happened in the early Sangha. That is to say, when sad things happen, things that would to us be sad happen, enlightened monastics are not gonna react to them the same way that you and I would because they're beyond clinging, they're beyond dukkha and sadness in this respect. But Ananda not being enlightened himself is much closer to the suffering involved in ordinary life. So for example, when Sariputta passed away, Ananda was distraught. Now, Sariputta is, some of us will know, was the Buddha's really his right-hand disciple, his most advanced disciple in wisdom, and also, not incidentally, a close friend of Ananda's. And at one point, Sariputta later, late on in the history of the Sangha, went off and actually died, and another monastic had to bring back his robe and bowl. And Ananda reacts, as I say, with deep sadness. He says, since I heard this, my body feels like it's drugged, I'm disoriented, and the teachings don't spring to mind. And many of us will, I think, share such similar experiences of feeling drugged, feeling absolutely overcome by sad experiences in our lives to the extent that we forget the teachings. We know, perhaps, indirectly, that there are some practices we can do to make things better, but we've forgotten about them simply because we're so overwhelmed by the sadness. And here we read Ananda having a similar kind of experience. And in response to this, I should say, the Buddha gives Ananda a Dharma talk, a talk on the reflection that we will eventually be separated from all things that we find dear because all things essentially pass away. This is one of the Buddha's five famous reflections. I did an earlier video on that topic, and I'll leave a link to that video down below. So it does prompt the Buddha to respond to him compassionately as one person to another, trying to relieve his suffering by helping him to understand this occurrence with deeper wisdom. More famously, perhaps, Ananda was also there, present, when the Buddha himself passed away. And indeed, in the weeks and months before the Buddha's passing, Ananda was with him seemingly almost all the time and records many of the final sort of poignant and also deep and important discussions that the Buddha has, such as the discussion that the Buddha says he taught with an open hand, that he kept nothing back, so that there were no secret teachings that were hidden only to him or to a small number of initiates, but rather that all of the teachings were public. These kinds of last bits of information from the Buddha were recorded through Ananda and through his eyes. He also, again, we also see, I should say, the sadness in the Buddha's passing. Indeed, in the hours before the Buddha passed away, Ananda is described as leaning on a door jamb inside of a door and lamenting, he says. He says, oh, I'm still only a trainee with work left to do and my teacher's about to become fully extinguished, he who is so kind to me. That is, he's reflecting on the fact that he's still got work to do and that his teacher, the person who really should be around to help him, cannot be, that all things pass and that this will pass too. And in that way, I think he reflects all of us, all of how we would all feel being there at the time when the Buddha would pass away, this kind of sadness that basically none of his other really senior monastics would share because they were enlightened. And so they were beyond this kind of lamentation, which is an expression in early Buddhism of dukkha, of sadness, the kind of thing that we overcome by being able to attain enlightenment. Now, I should parenthetically say that if you're enlightened, you're still aware of the, shall we say, the tragedy in passing and that it's not a good thing for Ananda, I should say, for Sariputta to pass away, for the Buddha to pass away, even the enlightened were aware of that, but they didn't lament it in the same way that Ananda does. And so it's harder for us perhaps as unenlightened humans to feel affinity for somebody who is enlightened in this experience rather than Ananda himself. Now, the fourth topic when it comes to Ananda has to do with the time after the Buddha's death, what we call the Parinirvana, and the controversy that surrounded Ananda at that time. Now, what happened after this death was that a number of enlightened monastics got together, it's said, in what's been understood, translated as the first council, in which all of these monastics were basically trying to, we might say, canonize early Buddhism. That is to say, come up with a group of suttas that they could, and I should say also other material that they could memorize together in order to preserve the teaching of the Buddha, because they knew the Buddha had passed away, they were concerned that the Dharma not be lost after his passing. The way to do that was to come to a general consensus among enlightened monastics about what the Dharma was, and also what the Vinaya was, what the teachings about the law, the regulations that surrounded monastic life were, because without this kind of consensus, you're gonna have schisms, you're gonna have arguments. And Ananda, as the Buddha's closest attendant, would have to play a central role in this kind of council, if we might call it that. Indeed, Ananda would play a central role because he was known as the person with the best memory. I mean, that is to say, not only was he the Buddha's close attendant, but he also was famed for having memorized the Buddha's sutras. That is to say, the Buddha's discussions, dialogues, arguments, everything that the Buddha said, Ananda was supposed to have been able to remember. And so he would be looked upon to be the storehouse who they would have to go to, at least at the beginning, to establish what was Dharma and what was not. The problem was that at this point, soon after the Buddha's death, Ananda was not yet enlightened. And this was supposed to be a meeting of enlightened monastics. In any event, it's said that the night before the council was supposed to begin, Ananda made a final push and was able to attain enlightenment himself so that he was able to attend this conference as an enlightened monastic. That's at least what the story is. And when it came, therefore, to the council meeting, Ananda was looked upon as the person who would recite the suttas. So there were, in fact, two different monastics. Ananda would recite the suttas, and another monk named Upali would recite the vinaya, that is to say the monastic law. And the idea was that, sorry, I'm sorry, Ananda would recite all the suttas, and everybody, all the monastics around would listen, would see if they were in agreement with him, if they had anything to add or correct, they could do that. And this was under the direction of the most senior monastic at the time, a man named Mahakassapa, or Kassapa. And so Kassapa directed this discussion, really it was a presentation by Ananda, it's said. And so Ananda went through all of the material in the suttas, which would be thousands of pages of what I have behind me, in fact, in books. And each of the suttas begins with the phrase, thus have I heard. And that phrase is supposed to have been spoken by Ananda at the beginning of each of these discourses, or suttas. So he would begin by saying, thus have I heard, the Buddha said so and so, this and this, at this place, at this time, and so on. And that's why they're in the form that they are, at least this is the traditional understanding. Now, as to the controversy, I said that this conference, this meeting, was headed by Mahakassapa. And Mahakassapa, as well as being the most senior monastic and somebody very interested in practice, in correct practice, was somebody who was not particularly fond of the nuns' order, that's the way it comes down to, that's the way it seems. And one of the reasons it seems this way is that Mahakassapa really led a charge against Ananda, a number of different essentially censures or criticisms of Ananda during this meeting. A number of them that seem to have been all surrounded around the notion that Ananda had been instrumental in getting the Buddha to agree to allow nuns. And as I say, there were a number of different charges here. A lot of them seem, in retrospect, if we read them nowadays, to be really trumped-up charges that are basically added on because they didn't like Ananda for what he'd done. And the meeting seems to have ended cordially, at least that's how it comes down to us. Ananda is said to have accepted the chastisement that was given to him. He's said to have accepted the punishment that his fellow monastics believe that he was due, although he also said that he did not believe that he had done anything wrong. And indeed, this same matter persists with us down to this day. To this day, there are controversies that continue about the establishment and continuation of the nuns' order in several different schools of contemporary Buddhism. And indeed, I did a recent video on this very topic, and I'll leave a link to that video up on the screen if you haven't seen it. I suggest taking a look. If you're getting something out of these videos of mine, consider taking a look over at my Patreon page. It's linked down below, and seeing if you want to help support us and join us. Thanks so much, and we'll catch you on the next video. And meanwhile, all of you, be well.