Venerable Nanda

At Kapilavatthu, Queen Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī, consort of King Suddhodana, gave birth to a son. The commentaries relate that on the day of his naming, the child made the assembled relatives glad, and so they named him Nanda, a word whose meaning runs toward gladness.

Nanda grew into a young man of uncommon beauty. The Book of the Discipline records his appearance plainly: he was handsome, pleasing to look upon, and only four finger-breadths shorter than the Blessed One — a detail that will matter again later.

After the Buddha had set the Wheel of Dhamma in motion, he travelled from Rājagaha back to Kapilavatthu, following the invitations King Suddhodana had sent again and again. The Dhammapada commentary tells that the elder Kāḷudāyī described the road and led the way, and that the Buddha related the Vessantara Jātaka in the assembly of his kinsmen.

The next day, going for alms, he established his father in the fruit of stream-entry with the verse beginning *"Uttiṭṭhe nappamajjeyya."* Afterwards he established Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī in the fruit of stream-entry, and the king in the fruit of once-returning.

One by one the members of the royal family were reaching the Dhamma. In that same household, two days later, there would be a wedding for Prince Nanda.

On the third day the palace held several great ceremonies for Nanda at once: his consecration, his entry into a new house, and his marriage to Janapadakalyāṇī, "the Beauty of the Land." In the middle of it all the Blessed One came for alms. He placed his bowl in Nanda's hands, spoke the words of blessing to the assembled kinsmen, rose from his seat and departed.

He did not take the bowl back.

The Dhammapada commentary says that out of reverence for the Tathāgata, Nanda could not bring himself to say even once, "Venerable sir, please take your bowl." So he carried it and followed in silence, calculating all the way.

At the head of the stairs he thought the Teacher would surely take the bowl there. The Teacher did not. At the foot of the stairs he thought it would surely be taken there. It was not. In the palace courtyard he thought it would surely be taken there. It was not.

Nanda wanted to turn back and could not. He walked on unwillingly, one hand still holding his elder brother's bowl, his mind still at the ceremony going on behind him.

The women who saw what was happening ran to tell Janapadakalyāṇī that the Blessed One had taken Nanda away, and would surely part him from her.

The Dhammapada commentary says she heard this and rushed out at once, her hair still bound up on only one side and drops of water still running down, calling after him:

"My lord, please come back quickly."

The commentary on the Etadagga tells the same scene a little differently: that she went up to the upper terrace, threw open the lattice window and called from there.

The two versions agree on what matters most — her words, and their effect on the man who heard them. The commentary records that her words seemed to fall crosswise and lodge in Nanda's heart.

He heard every word, and could do no more than glance back; his reverence for the Teacher would not let him so much as signal a reply. The procession walked on until it reached the monastery.

Once they had arrived, the Teacher asked the first question of that entire journey:

"Nanda, do you want to go forth?"

The question is harder to answer than it looks. The one asking was the elder brother he revered most, and the honest answer was no. The commentary states it plainly: out of reverence for the Buddha, Nanda could not say "I will not go forth." He answered instead:

"Venerable sir, I will go forth."

So the Teacher said to the monks: then let the monks give Nanda the going forth. The bridegroom of the wedding became a monk that same day.

The week was not finished. On the seventh day Rāhula's mother dressed her son and sent him to ask his father for his inheritance. The Blessed One considered that the wealth the boy wanted belongs to the round of rebirth and is cramped, and told Sāriputta to give Rāhula the going forth, so that he might receive the noble wealth instead.

When he heard the news, King Suddhodana could not contain his grief. He went and asked a favour: that in future no son be given the going forth without his parents' consent. The Blessed One granted it.

In less than a week, the Sakyan royal house lost both its heir and its youngest grandchild.

Later the Teacher returned to Rājagaha, and when the great monastery at Jetavana was finished he went to spend the rains there. Nanda followed as one monk among many, but his mind was still at the palace gate in Kapilavatthu.

The commentary on the Etadagga describes his condition vividly. From the day of his ordination he kept remembering Janapadakalyāṇī's words, until at moments it was as though she were standing not far off. When the discontent pressed hard, he would get up and walk out a little way.

But passing a thicket or a clump of bushes, it was as if the Ten-Powered One were standing there before him. The commentary compares him at such moments to a chicken feather thrown into a fire — and he would go back into his lodging.

This happened again and again, until one day he stopped keeping it to himself and told a number of monks what the Canon records:

"Friends, I do not delight in leading the holy life. I cannot maintain the holy life. I shall give up the training and return to the lower life."

One monk heard this, went to the Blessed One, and reported the words exactly as he had heard them.

The Blessed One sent a monk to summon Nanda, and asked him directly whether it was true that he had spoken that way to a number of monks.

Nanda admitted it: "It is true, venerable sir." The Buddha asked further: for what reason would he give up the training and return to the lower life?

The answer Nanda gave, as the Canon records it, contains no complaint about the difficulty of the practice, no blame laid on anyone, and no attempt to make his own case look better:

"Venerable sir, when I was leaving home, a Sakyan woman, the Beauty of the Land, with her hair combed on only one side, looked up at me and said, 'My lord, please come back quickly.' Recollecting her words, I do not delight in leading the holy life."

What stayed before his eyes was neither the ceremony nor the kingdom, but hair left half-combed, and one short sentence.

The commentary on the Etadagga relates that the Teacher considered: Nanda is living far too heedlessly and cannot quiet his discontent; the fever of his mind should be cooled. Then he said, as if in passing, "Come, Nanda, let us go wandering in the deva world together."

Nanda asked back, as a man well aware that he had no psychic power: how shall I go to the places that those with such powers go to?

The Teacher's reply was as short as it could be:

"Only make up your mind to go; once you have gone, you will see."

The Canon tells the journey more briefly still: the Blessed One took Nanda by the arm, vanished from the Jetavana monastery and appeared among the devas of Tāvatiṃsa, as quickly as a strong man might extend his bent arm or bend his extended arm. There is no description of the way, because there was no way to describe.

What Nanda saw when he opened his eyes again was, according to the commentary, the celestial mansion of Sakka, king of the devas. The Canon states the number plainly: some five hundred celestial nymphs with feet like a dove's, coming to attend on Sakka. The commentary explains "feet like a dove's" as well — it means feet that are red.

The Blessed One asked a leading question first: do you see these five hundred nymphs? Nanda answered that he did.

Then came the real question:

"What do you think, Nanda? Which is the more beautiful, the better looking, the more inspiring — the Sakyan woman, the Beauty of the Land, or these five hundred nymphs with feet like a dove's?"

It is not a question about Dhamma. It asks about beauty, directly, and it asks it of a man who is suffering because of a single image he cannot get out of his eyes.

Nanda answered at once, exactly as he saw it — and it is his own answer that became the image people remember from this story:

"Venerable sir, just as a she-monkey whose limbs have been burnt, with ears and nose cut off — so too is the Sakyan woman, the Beauty of the Land. Compared with these five hundred nymphs, she does not amount to a fraction."

In the Canon this she-monkey is only a simile out of Nanda's own mouth. The Dhammapada commentary tells it a little differently: on the way, the Buddha first pointed out a real one. In a burnt field there sat a she-monkey with her ears, nose and tail gone, hunched on the end of a charred stump; only then did he show Nanda the nymphs and ask the same question.

Both versions end in the same place. The woman who yesterday was the most beautiful in the land had become, in his own eyes, a she-monkey with her ears and nose cut off. And the answer itself was an admission: the beauty he had been holding on to was something measurable — and once a thing can be measured, there is always something above it.

The Blessed One did not criticise that answer. He said something no one could have expected:

"Delight, Nanda. Take delight, Nanda. I am your guarantor for obtaining five hundred nymphs with feet like a dove's."

Nanda accepted the terms without disguise: if the Blessed One would guarantee that, then he would delight in the holy life.

Then the Buddha took him by the arm and they reappeared at Jetavana as before.

From that day Nanda practised the duties of a recluse day and night, for a reason he hid from nobody: to obtain the nymphs the Teacher had guaranteed him.

The news reached the monks quickly — that Nanda, the Blessed One's brother, the son of his maternal aunt, was leading the holy life for the sake of celestial nymphs, and that the Blessed One himself was his guarantor.

The commentary on the Etadagga adds a detail that changes the meaning of the whole episode: the Teacher himself instructed the monks that in the area where Nanda lived, they should go about saying that a certain monk had got the Ten-Powered One to guarantee him and was practising for that reason.

The monks accepted the instruction and stood talking near enough for him to see and hear. The words the Canon records are "hireling" and "one bought back by the Blessed One":

"They say Venerable Nanda is a hireling. They say Venerable Nanda has been bought back by the Blessed One. He leads the holy life for the sake of nymphs."

Nanda was troubled, ashamed and disgusted by those words. The commentary records what he thought at that moment: these monks are not speaking of anyone else, they are speaking about me — what I am doing must be wrong.

The mockery that hurt most turned out to be the most useful thing said to him, because it called the arrangement he had accepted by its real name: hired work. And a hired man is not the owner of the work.

Nanda withdrew from the group and lived alone — heedful, ardent and resolute.

The Canon does not say how long it took. It says only that before long he realised for himself, with direct knowledge, the supreme goal of the holy life for the sake of which clansmen rightly go forth from home into homelessness:

"Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being."

Venerable Nanda became one among the arahants.

That very night, when the first watch had passed, a deity of surpassing beauty lit up the whole of Jetavana and came to report the news to the Blessed One.

The Canon adds that the knowledge had arisen in the Blessed One as well. He already knew, before the deity arrived.

When that night had passed, Nanda came to the Blessed One, paid homage and sat down to one side.

The first thing he spoke of was not the attainment he had won, but an old arrangement he had come to settle.

"Venerable sir, the Blessed One is my guarantor for obtaining five hundred nymphs with feet like a dove's. I release the Blessed One from that guarantee."

The Blessed One replied that he had already known Nanda's mind with his own mind, and that a deity had told him too. Then he spoke the sentence that closes the whole affair:

"Nanda, when your mind was liberated from the taints through non-clinging, then I was released from that guarantee."

The guarantee ended by itself — not because anyone broke a promise, but because the one who had asked had nothing left to ask for. At that moment the Blessed One uttered this inspired utterance:

The monk who has crossed the mire of sensual desire, who has crushed the thorn of sensual desire, who has reached the destruction of delusion — he is not shaken by pleasure or by pain.

One day afterwards the monks asked Nanda: before, you told us you were discontented; how is your mind now?

He answered briefly that he had no concern left for the household life.

They did not believe him. They said Nanda was speaking falsely and claiming arahantship, when only days ago he had said he was discontented — and they took the matter to the Blessed One.

The Buddha did not reproach those who doubted. He explained with an image everyone in that assembly had seen all their lives: a roof, and rain falling on it.

The commentary records his words: in the days gone by, Nanda's person was like a house badly thatched; now it is like a house well thatched. Then he spoke these verses:

Just as rain leaks through a badly thatched house, so lust pierces an undeveloped mind.
Just as rain does not leak through a well thatched house, so lust does not pierce a well developed mind.

The commentary explains a "badly thatched house" as one thatched loosely, with small gaps here and there, and points out that lust is not the only thing that gets in: defilements such as hatred, delusion and conceit pierce such a mind in the same way. At the end of the verses, it says, a great many people attained the noble fruits, beginning with stream-entry.

Later the monks were discussing in the Dhamma hall how Nanda had grown discontented on account of Janapadakalyāṇī, and how the Teacher had used celestial nymphs as bait and so brought him round.

The Teacher came and asked what they were discussing. When he had heard, he said that this was not the first time — in the past too he had drawn Nanda in by the very same means. Then he told a story of the past.

When King Brahmadatta was ruling in Bārāṇasī, there was a merchant named Kappaka. His donkey could carry a load of one kumbha and travel seven yojanas a day. Once he went to Takkasilā and let the donkey wander loose until his goods were sold.

The donkey met a she-donkey. She asked where he had come from, on what business, how much he could carry, how many yojanas he could walk — and then a last question: in the places you go, is there any she-donkey to rub your feet or look after you?

The donkey said there was none. Then, she said, you must be suffering a great deal.

When Kappaka had sold his goods and came to call him for the journey, the donkey replied: you go; I will not. Kappaka threatened to make a goad with a sharp spike sixteen inches long and jab him with it. The donkey threatened back: in that case I shall plant my forefeet, throw up my hindquarters, and bring all your goods down.

The merchant looked around, saw the she-donkey, and changed his method. He said he would find him a young she-donkey for a wife. Hearing this the donkey was delighted, and promised on the spot to walk fourteen yojanas.

A few days later the donkey asked him to keep his word. Kappaka answered that he would not break his own word and would find him a wife — but the food he provided was for one animal only. Whether it would be enough for two was for the donkey to work out; and when there were young ones, whether it would be enough for them as well was likewise for him to work out.

The commentary ends the episode there: hearing this, the donkey lost all hope.

When the Jātaka was finished, the Teacher identified the birth: the she-donkey of that time was Janapadakalyāṇī, the donkey was Nanda, and the merchant was himself.

One episode in the Book of the Discipline records a side of Nanda quite unlike his discontent — and it says more about his old habits than anything else does.

Once at Jetavana, Venerable Nanda was wearing a robe the size of the robe of the Sugata, the Well-Gone One. The senior monks saw him coming at a distance and rose from their seats, thinking the Blessed One had arrived.

Only when he came close did they realise their mistake. They found fault and complained: how could Venerable Nanda wear a robe the size of the Sugata's robe? And they reported it.

The Blessed One questioned him as to whether the report was true. He admitted it. The Buddha reproved him and laid down a training rule forbidding a monk to have a robe made the size of the Sugata robe or larger, specifying the measurement: nine spans in length and six in width, by the Sugata span.

The Discipline does not say whether this happened before or after his awakening. But it says everything necessary: a man so beautiful that a whole monastery rose to greet him by mistake knows perfectly well that he is beautiful.

The verses he spoke later admit as much themselves, beginning with the confession that he had once been given over to adorning himself. The commentary on the Theragāthā explains "adorning" as ornaments for the body, such as bracelets, and cosmetics such as garlands and perfumes.

In the Aṅguttara Nikāya the Blessed One spoke of Nanda in front of the monks, concealing neither his virtues nor what had once been his problem:

"Monks, in rightly speaking of Nanda one should call him a clansman, a man of strength, one who inspires confidence, one of strong lust."

Then he raised the question himself: how is this possible? Because Nanda guards the doors of his sense faculties, knows moderation in eating, is devoted to wakefulness, and possesses mindfulness and clear comprehension.

The first of these he expanded with an example so small it is startling — the act of glancing.

"Monks, if Nanda should look to the east, he does so having gathered his whole mind, thinking: as I look to the east in this way, evil unwholesome states of covetousness and grief will not overwhelm my mind."

The west, the north, the south, below, above and the intermediate directions are all set out in exactly the same way.

As for the rest, the discourse says that he reflects wisely before eating — not for amusement, not for intoxication, not for adornment, not for beautification; that during the day and the first watch of the night he purifies his mind by walking and sitting, in the middle watch lies down in the lion's posture, and in the last watch rises and purifies his mind again; and that he knows feelings, perceptions and thoughts as they arise, as they persist, and as they pass away.

The man who once could not walk out of a monastery because of a single voice caught in his mind had become a monk who could not even glance in one direction without doing it knowingly.

Later, while staying at Jetavana, the Teacher placed Venerable Nanda in the position of foremost among the monk disciples who guard the doors of the sense faculties.

The commentary explains that it is not as though any of the Teacher's disciples fails to guard those doors. Nanda received this position because, in whichever of the ten directions he might look, he never looked without mindfulness and clear comprehension.

Behind that position lies a longer story. The commentary relates that in the time of the Buddha Padumuttara he was born into a family in the city of Haṃsavatī. One day, while listening to the Dhamma, he saw the Teacher place a certain monk in the position of foremost among those who guard the doors of the sense faculties.

So he made a great offering to the Blessed One and the Sangha, and formed the aspiration that in a future age he too might be such a disciple.

Along that long road the commentary tells one more story. In the time of the Buddha Atthadassī he was born as a great turtle in the river called Vinatā. One day he saw the Teacher standing on the bank about to cross, and lay down at his feet to invite him onto his shell, then swam swiftly across the current and carried him to the far bank.

What he asked for on that day was the ability to guard the doors of his own mind. Not psychic power, not supreme wisdom, not gain and honour. And it was the very thing he had to pass through all that discontent to reach, in his final life.

Venerable Nanda left only two verses. The commentary says he spoke them after attaining arahantship, while reviewing the defilements he had abandoned and the happiness he had gained:

Through unwise attention I was given over to adorning myself; I was restless, fickle, afflicted by sensual lust.
Practising in the proper way, as taught and guided by the Buddha, kinsman of the Sun, skilled in means, I drew my mind up out of the flood of becoming.

He does not mention the nymphs. He does not mention his companions' mockery. He does not mention the ceremony he walked out of half-finished. What he mentions is his own lack of wise attention, and the Teacher's skill in means.

The commentary on the Theragāthā explains that skill with two similes: one is drawing out a peg with another peg and throwing it away; the other is a physician who first saturates the body by having the patient drink oil, and only then draws out the poison by purging.

So the guarantee about the nymphs is not a promise that had to be explained away afterwards. It was the second peg, and the oil given to drink before the poison is drawn. The Teacher began from what the patient actually wanted that day, and then led him free of both.

The commentary sums up how Nanda felt at the end: seeing the Teacher's skill in means, he was filled with gladness, for the Buddha had lifted him out of the mire of becoming and set him on the dry ground of Nibbāna.

The compiled biography says only, briefly, that Venerable Nanda lived out his span assisting the work of the Dispensation for a suitable time, and then attained final Nibbāna.

What he left behind is not a legend about beauty, nor the trip to Tāvatiṃsa, nor the taunt about being a hireling. It is an observation any of us can test on any day, as long as we still have to open our eyes: the difference between a developed mind and an undeveloped one is simply whether, when the rain comes down, it leaks.