Ven. Ananda's Attainment of Arahantship

 Today I am sharing with you the story of Venerable Ananda, the Buddha's cousin that we all know is the person whom we are in-debted with for remembering the Buddha's teachings and re-collecting them for us. As Buddhists know, the first few words in a Buddhist Sutra/Sutta - "Thus have I heard" - the "I" is referring to Ven. Ananda. This post here contain rare stories on Ven. Ananda that even senior Buddhists have not heard before. But I am going to share it. 

Many Buddhist temples have the statue of Ven. Ananda. He is usually depicted as a young monk on the right side of the Buddha. Ven. Mahakasyapa being the other monk on the left side of the Buddha. Ven. Mahakasyapa is usually depicted as an elderly monk. This may lead us to believe that Ven. Ananda is very much younger than the Gautama Buddha. But this is so far from the truth. In actual fact, Ven. Ananda is of the same age as Siddhartha Gautama. They were even born on the same day (together with a few others). He served the Buddha only at the age of 50 onwards (according to Theravadian texts) and served the Buddha not only as an attendant but also memorising his teachings. Whenever Ven. Ananda was not around, the Buddha would brief him at another private session so that Ven. Ananda could be the main person who has all the teachings of the Buddha. It is not like what we have now - a video recorder and other equipment. We are very fortunate and yet, many of us takes the Buddha's teachings for granted. We should be very grateful to Ven. Ananda. 

Ven. Ananda attained Enlightenment at a late age, i.e. after the Buddha's passing (parinibbana). He was indeed very worried he was the only one not yet an Arahant. He was at that time only a Sotapanna. Many senior monks had convened a council of meeting to collect the Buddha's teachings and being the main person responsible to memorise the teachings, he was not invited by the Sangha yet (being not yet an Arahant). He was, indeed, hard pressed to achieve Arahantship before the meeting date. People may wonder whether he was too "loaded with knowledge" to achieve Enlightenment. Not really. It was a case of him not having the time to really practice properly, time being taken to memorise the Buddha's teachings and attending to the Buddha's daily needs. He was also the Buddha's secretary and possibly the chief administrator. But I am sure he does practice and through the years, he had built up a strong practice base, and certainly a huge accumulation of merits by serving the Buddha and memorising the Dharma. After the Buddha's passing, he practices late into the night, constantly pushing himself. But still nothing. No attainment. Then one day, he realised that he might have pushed himself too hard. 

As the simile goes, if the guitar string is too tight, it may break. And if too loose, the tune will not be correct. He decided to take a rest and relax a little. He sat down on one side on a chair. Then he started to lie down. As he took his feet up and slowly lower down his body, suddenly he achieved Arahantship. Yes, finally he achieved this Enlightenment! This was very similar to what Ch'an Buddhism would call as "sudden enlightenment". So, it's not true that "sudden enlightenment" cases are confined only to Ch'an/Zen Buddhist practitioners. 

But was it really "sudden"? Yes, it may be "sudden" but it is not like Ven. Ananda had no prior practice at all. He had, as I mentioned. It only took the right condition to break up the final barriers and whereupon he could penetrate the truth through his vipassana practice. Another source, stated that it was Vajjiputta who had advised Ven. Ananda to put aside his worldly chores, isolate himself to do some serious retreat to the forest to deepen his practice, which the latter heeded, and resulted in his attaining Arahant. So, we all can learn from this advice. There are benefits to doing long and proper retreats, away from the hustle and bustle of daily living. 

I want to note here that it was early this morning around 1am plus, before I go to sleep, that I finally understood how the method of vipassana practice could lead one to understand the nature of anicca, dukkha and anatta. Once this is understood, the propensity to create defilements is cut off, and existing defilements is eliminated. Thus, enlightenment is attained. This is what I was looking for. Some teachings only emphasise to you the enlightenment aspects without telling you the cutting off of defilements. If attainment is without cutting of defilement, then it is NOT a true attainment. Attainment of samadhi, for example, do not cut off defilements, although some samadhi could be useful. Samapatti samadhi could be used to sort of "push aside" physical illnesses to delay one's death, so that one could help more sentient beings. 

I will end this post by relating the story of Ven. Ananda's own parinibbana. He was served by two communities - one on each side of a river. As he approached his death, each community invited him to their village to be the site of his parinibbana. Do you know what he did? He told both communities he will passed into parinibbana at the middle of the river. Indeed, he floated to the middle of the river, and in mid-air, his body burst into flames. The relics split into two - one on each side of the river. So, both community got their share of Ven. Ananda's relic. Wow! I thought this was spectacular.  

Ven. Ananda lived to 120 years old for the sake of the Buddha's dispensation of the Dharma. Ven. Hsu Yun also lived to 120 years old. I am not saying they used this samadhi. But one disciple of the Buddha who was said to have probably used this was Ven. Sariputta (who was the Buddha's chief disciple). He was without illness for most of his life. One day he knew he had only one week of life left. And he sought the Buddha's permission to return to his hometown to teach the Dharma to his mother. Only after he successfully guided his mother whereupon his mother attained Sotapanna-hood, then only at the break of dawn he vomitted pots and pots of blood. And then he passed into parinirvana. Only with this kind of samadhi, can a person do that. I will possibly relate in more detail in another post on how he guided his mother if you guys are interested. 

So, if you like this post on Venerable Ananda, I hope you would take the time to read my older posts, such as this one - https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2010/07/tantric-lessons-from-miss-tatsy.html

#VenerableAnanda #vipassana #Sariputta #samadhi #suddenenlightenment 

note: pic of Ven. Ananda is sourced from wikimedia.org.