Venerable Ānanda

Ānanda was born into the Sakyan clan, a kinsman of the Buddha. The commentaries relate that when the relatives saw the child they were delighted, and so named him Ānanda, a word bound up with gladness and joy.

When the Buddha returned to Kapilavatthu and proclaimed the Dhamma, several Sakyan princes decided to go forth. Ānanda travelled with Bhaddiya, Anuruddha, Bhagu, Kimbila and Devadatta, and with them went Upāli, the barber who served them.

Once they had crossed the border, the princes took off their ornaments, wrapped them up and gave them to Upāli to carry home. But on the way Upāli thought: if I go back alone, people may suppose that I harmed the princes to take their wealth. Besides, if princes who live in comfort can give up a palace, why can I not give up the life I have?

So Upāli hung the bundle of ornaments on a tree and walked back to ask for the going forth together with the six.

When he caught up with them, the six princes brought their former servant with them into the Buddha's presence.

When they had all come before the Buddha, the Sakyans asked that Upāli be given the going forth before them.

In a society where birth decided who stood in front and who stood behind, this had an immediate effect, because monks pay respect to one another in order of ordination. If Upāli went forth first, the former princes would have to bow to a former barber and rise to greet him.

The Sakyans gave their reason plainly: they were Sakyans full of pride, and so they asked that Upāli go forth first, in order that they might bow to him, rise for him and salute him. In this way their pride would be worn down.

So Upāli was ordained first and the six former princes afterwards. From that day the man who had been a servant was their senior, and those who had been princes had to show him respect according to the Discipline.

The commentary on the Etadagga relates that not long after his ordination Ānanda heard the Dhamma from Puṇṇa Mantāniputta, foremost among preachers of the Dhamma, and attained the fruit of stream-entry.

Ānanda did not reach the Dhamma because he was a relative. He reached it by listening, reflecting and knowing for himself. From then on he studied in earnest, holding accurately the sequence, the content, the occasion, and who else had been present. If the Buddha taught while he was away, he would ask to learn it again afterwards.

These qualities would become an essential part of the duty waiting for him.

For the first twenty rains after the awakening, the Buddha had no monk serving as his permanent attendant. Various monks took turns receiving his bowl and robe and accompanying him. Sometimes the duty went smoothly; sometimes gaps or difficulties arose.

The commentaries tell of one occasion when Nāgasamāla, accompanying the Buddha, came to a fork in the road. The Buddha advised taking one way, but Nāgasamāla insisted on the other and asked to part from him. Before long he was attacked by robbers and came back to the Buddha wounded.

The duty therefore involved more than a bowl and a robe. An attendant had to know the time — when to ask and when to be silent, who should be admitted, and which words needed to be followed up and learned in full.

As the Buddha grew older, the Sangha saw that he should have a permanent attendant. Many monks offered themselves. One sat silent.

That monk was Ānanda.

When asked why he had not offered himself, Ānanda did not say that he was unprepared. According to the commentarial account, he considered that if the Buddha wanted him, the Buddha would call him. To seize the closest of all duties without being asked might make people suspect that he wanted gain or honour.

So the Sangha asked Ānanda to accept the duty, and the Buddha agreed. Even then Ānanda did not consent at once.

He asked for eight conditions. The first four were things he would not receive: fine robes, fine food, lodging together with the Buddha, and being taken along to invitations on account of his position as attendant.

He explained that if he accepted these, people might say that Ānanda looked after the Teacher because of what he got from it. A duty that ought to be service would be seen as a way of seeking advantage.

Having stated what he would not receive, he then asked for four things.

The last four requests were not personal comforts. He asked that the Buddha go to invitations that Ānanda had accepted on his behalf; that he be allowed to bring visitors who had travelled far into the Buddha's presence; that he be allowed to come and ask whenever a doubt arose; and that the Buddha repeat any teaching given while Ānanda was absent.

These conditions let him bring travellers in, ask his questions, and learn every discourse, even those he had not been present to hear.

So Ānanda began his duty as permanent attendant, which lasted through the final twenty-five rains.

Each day of an attendant is made of a great many small tasks: preparing water, caring for bowl and robe, cleaning the dwelling, receiving visitors, reporting invitations, and staying near whenever the Buddha had need of him.

The commentaries set out those tasks vividly: Ānanda prepared two kinds of water and three kinds of tooth-wood; he massaged the Buddha's hands, feet and back; he swept the area around the Fragrant Chamber; and he considered what the Teacher would need at which hour. By day he stayed close by. At night he carried a large lamp and walked around the Fragrant Chamber nine times, so as to answer the moment the Buddha called, and so as not to let drowsiness overcome him.

Ānanda had to protect two things at once: the Buddha's quiet, and the hopes of those who were waiting. If he let everyone in at once, the Teacher would get no rest. If he shut people out too firmly, someone who had travelled far might lose the most important opportunity of a lifetime.

So his memory worked together with his attentiveness: remembering who had come and why, who was still waiting, and which matter should be reported at which time.

At Vesālī, Ānanda found Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī — who had raised Prince Siddhattha after his mother died — standing outside with swollen feet, her body covered in dust and her face wet with tears, having travelled there with Sakyan women to ask for the going forth.

Learning that the request had not been granted, Ānanda offered to go in and speak for them. He asked about the principle directly:

"Venerable sir, are women, having gone forth from home into homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline proclaimed by the Tathāgata, capable of realising the fruit of stream-entry, the fruit of once-returning, the fruit of non-returning, or the fruit of arahantship?"

The Buddha answered that women who go forth in this Dhamma and Discipline are indeed capable of realising all four fruits.

Once the Buddha had said they were capable, Ānanda spoke of Mahāpajāpatī's kindness as his maternal aunt and the one who had nursed him. In the end the Buddha laid down the conditions for ordination, she accepted the eight garudhammas, and the order of nuns came into being, as the Discipline records.

Once Devadatta arranged for the elephant Nāḷāgiri to be made drunk and released into the street along which the Buddha was walking for alms. People panicked and fled into their houses as the elephant charged straight on.

Ānanda stepped out and stood in front of the Buddha, hoping to take the danger himself. Three times the Buddha told him to move aside, and still he stood there, until the Buddha used his psychic power to remove Ānanda from the path and extended loving-kindness toward the elephant.

Nāḷāgiri slowed, its fury subsided, and it knelt down before him. And Ānanda's refusal to move, even after hearing the Buddha's word three times, shows how completely he was prepared to give his life for the Teacher.

The Buddha praised Ānanda in five respects: foremost among monks who are learned, who are mindful, who have a good grasp of the course of the teaching, who are resolute, and who serve as attendant.

When he did not understand, he asked. When he missed a teaching, he requested it again. When he had understood, he reviewed it and passed it on. For this reason a great many discourses have Ānanda in them — as listener, as questioner, as the one who made an opportunity for others to ask, or as the one who relates how the occasion arose.

He did not only remember the words. He remembered where the event took place, who had asked, and why the Buddha had spoken. These details would matter enormously when the time came to gather the Dhamma after the Buddha's final passing.

One day Ānanda said to the Buddha:

"Venerable sir, this is half of the holy life — good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship."

The Buddha answered at once:

"Not so, Ānanda. Not so, Ānanda. This is the entire holy life — good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship."

He then explained that a monk with a good friend may be expected to develop the Noble Eightfold Path, and that it is by relying on him as a good friend that beings subject to birth, ageing, death, sorrow and suffering are freed from those things.

In the final rains, while staying at Vesālī, the Buddha told Ānanda that one who has well developed the four bases of spiritual power could, if he wished, remain for an aeon or for the remainder of an aeon. He spoke in this way three times.

But Ānanda did not recognise the hint, and did not ask him to remain. The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta explains that his mind was overpowered by Māra. Later, when the Buddha had relinquished the life-force, Ānanda understood and made the request — but by then the time had passed.

Ānanda asked three times, and the Buddha said that this was now a time that could not be altered. From Vesālī the last journey continued on toward Kusinārā.

On the night at Kusinārā, while the Buddha lay gravely ill and close to his final passing, a wanderer named Subhadda came asking for audience, wanting to put a question no one else could answer.

Three times Ānanda refused him with the same words:

"Enough, Subhadda. Do not trouble the Tathāgata. The Blessed One is weary."

But the Buddha heard, and said:

"Enough, Ānanda. Do not hinder Subhadda. Let Subhadda see the Tathāgata. Whatever question Subhadda asks me, he will ask seeking knowledge, not seeking to trouble me."

So Subhadda was admitted. He listened to the Dhamma, asked for the going forth, attained arahantship, and became the last disciple to realise the Dhamma in the Buddha's own presence.

When he knew that the Buddha would pass away that night, Ānanda went off and stood weeping, leaning against the door-post, thinking that he was still a trainee with work to do, not yet an arahant, and that the teacher who had helped him was about to go.

The commentary to the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta unfolds that grief into the whole daily round that was about to end: from tomorrow, to whom would he offer the water for washing the face, whose feet would he wash, for whom would he prepare the lodging, whose bowl and robe would he receive, and whom would he follow? The loss was not only in his thoughts; it touched every task Ānanda had repeated for twenty-five years.

The Buddha knew, and had him called back, and said:

"Enough, Ānanda. Do not grieve, do not lament. Have I not already told you that there must be parting, separation and change with regard to everything dear and agreeable?"

He then praised Ānanda for having attended on him with loving-kindness of body, speech and mind, constantly, in his presence and behind his back. And he said:

"Ānanda, you have made merit. Apply yourself to the effort, and you will soon be free of the taints."

Those last words were not only consolation. The Buddha reminded him of parting, and then urged him to hasten his effort, because Ānanda's own work was not yet finished.

Ānanda took on the duty of informing the Mallas, arranging for each family to pay their respects in turn, and asking what should be done after the Buddha's passing. Grief was still there, but the work in front of him had to go on.

When the Buddha passed away beneath the sāla trees, there was no longer any bowl or robe for Ānanda to receive and carry after him. Twenty-five years of attendance ended in a single night.

Mahā Kassapa then resolved to hold the First Council and chose five hundred arahants to take part. Ānanda held in memory so much of the Dhamma and of the events surrounding it that the council could hardly proceed without him.

But there was one condition that closeness, memory and long service could not substitute for.

He was not yet an arahant.

Ānanda was chosen for the council because no one could replace the knowledge he had heard. But the assembly had settled that the participants would be arahants, and he was still a trainee with inner work to complete.

The time he had spent looking after others now had to be turned back on his own mind. Ānanda intensified his effort, walking up and down and developing mindfulness of the body for a long time — and still it did not come.

The commentary to the Brahmajāla Sutta relates that he recalled the Buddha's words that he had made merit and would soon be an arahant, and considered that the Buddha does not speak wrongly. So the reason his mind had not been freed was not a lack of effort, but effort so strenuous that his mind had become restless. He decided to balance his effort and to rest from walking meditation.

The commentary relates that Ānanda came down from the walking path, washed his feet, entered his lodging, sat on the bed and reclined to rest. When both feet had left the ground and his head had not yet reached the pillow, his mind was freed from the taints.

He attained arahantship in a moment that could not properly be called walking, standing, sitting or lying down — and so it has been remembered as happening between the four postures.

When morning came, Ānanda joined the First Council as an arahant. The work the Buddha had said would soon be accomplished was accomplished a few hours before the meeting began.

At the First Council, Mahā Kassapa questioned Upāli on the Discipline, and then questioned Ānanda on the Dhamma: where the Buddha had spoken this discourse, with reference to whom, and what it contained.

Ānanda began his answers with the words familiar from a great many discourses:

*Evaṃ me sutaṃ* — Thus have I heard.

Then he named the place, the person, and the occasion for which the Buddha had given that teaching. What he had gone back and learned again for twenty-five years was now used in full, on a day when the Teacher was no longer there.

The commentaries relate that when Ānanda was one hundred and twenty years old, he saw that his life-span was exhausted and announced seven days in advance that he would attain final Nibbāna. The news reached the people on both banks of the Rohiṇī river. Those on one side said that they had done much for the elder and that he would surely pass away among them; those on the other side said the same.

If he chose one bank, the other might be aggrieved, and there could be a quarrel. So Ānanda rose above the middle of the river, taught the Dhamma one last time, and — as the commentary records — resolved that his relics should divide into two portions, falling on either bank.

People often remember Ānanda as the man with the great memory, but the events of his life show more than that. He accepted his duty without trading the position for gain; he asked on behalf of Mahāpajāpatī; he stood in the path of Nāḷāgiri; and he brought the one who arrived at the last hour in to see the Teacher.

As for that excellent memory, it did not stop at being a personal ability. When Ānanda said "Thus have I heard" at the First Council, what he had listened to and reviewed for so long became the essential evidence by which the Dhamma was carried on to later generations.