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IM: What are some of your favorite sutta passages?
BB: When I first began to read Buddhist texts while I was in graduate school, I was naturally impressed by the Buddha’s teachings on dependent origination, the five aggregates, nonself, etc., which take us to the heart of the Dhamma. But one of the suttas that made the strongest impressions on me is not to be found among these deep texts on meditation and realization. When I read the suttas on dependent origination and nonself, I thought: the Buddha is certainly enlightened, but maybe not perfectly so. However, when I came to the Sigalaka Sutta (Digha Nikaya 31) my doubts were dispelled. When I read this sutta, particularly the section on “worshipping the six directions” (In the Buddha’s Words, pp. 116–18), and saw how one who had fathomed the deepest truths of existence could also teach in detail parents how to bring up their children, a husband and a wife how to love and respect each other, and an employer how to care for his workers, I then knew: This teacher is indeed perfectly enlightened. To my mind, this sutta showed that the Buddha possessed not only the “ascendant wisdom” that rises up to the highest truth, but the “descending wisdom” embraced by compassion that drops down again to the level of the world and, in the light of the fullest realization, teaches and guides others in the way that suits them best.
One of the features of the suttas that impressed me the most, when I first read them and even now, are the similes. It seems that the Buddha was capable of picking up any natural phenomenon or any object from everyday life and turning it into a striking simile that conveys an important point about his teaching. The sun, moon and stars; flowers and trees, rivers, lakes and oceans; the changes of the seasons; lions, monkeys, elephants and horses; kings, ministers and warriors; craftsman, surgeons and thieves—the list of things that enter into his similes becomes almost endless. Sometimes you might be reading a series of suttas that seem as dry as dust, and suddenly you come across a simile so fresh and vivid that the image never fades from your mind even after decades.
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