Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 87. The Value of Training in Religion.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

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This is an excerpt from the *Milindapañha* (Questions of King Milinda), a classical Pali Buddhist text structured as a philosophical dialogue between the Greek king Milinda and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena. The passage addresses a doctrinal puzzle: if a layperson achieves saintship (arahantship) but cannot immediately obtain monastic ordination, what happens to them? Nāgasena's answer is uncompromising — such a person must either enter the monastic order or pass into Nirvana that very day; there is no third option. The monk defends this position against the king's objection that saintship seems cruel if it "slaughters its possessor," arguing that the fault lies not with saintship itself but with the inherent weakness of the lay state, which cannot sustain the attainment. Nāgasena illustrates this through three analogies: rich food killing a weak stomach, a heavy stone breaking a thin stalk of grass, and a low-born man collapsing under the weight of a kingdom he cannot sustain. The passage is distinctive for its frank acknowledgment that monastic life is spiritually superior to lay life — not as a moral judgment, but as a structural claim about what the lay condition can bear — and for its use of earthy analogies to resolve a precise point of soteriological logic.

Buddhism in Translations - § 87. The Value of Training in Religion.

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