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Burning

Translator: Bhikkhu Sujato

sn / sn35

Linked Discourses 35.28 · 3. All

At one time the Buddha was staying near Gayā on Gayā Head together with a thousand mendicants. ^[1]

There the Buddha addressed the mendicants:

“Mendicants, all is burning. ^[2]

And what is the all that is burning?

The eye is burning. Sights are burning. Eye consciousness is burning. Eye contact is burning. The painful, pleasant, or neutral feeling that arises dependent on eye contact is also burning.

Burning with what? ^[3]

Burning with the fires of greed, hate, and delusion. Burning with rebirth, old age, and death, with sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. ^[4]

The ear … nose … tongue … body …

The mind is burning. Ideas are burning. Mind consciousness is burning. Mind contact is burning. The painful, pleasant, or neutral feeling that arises dependent on mind contact is also burning.

Burning with what?

Burning with the fires of greed, hate, and delusion. Burning with rebirth, old age, and death, with sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress, I say.

Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with the eye, sights, eye consciousness, and eye contact. And they grow disillusioned with the painful, pleasant, or neutral feeling that arises dependent on eye contact.

They grow disillusioned with the ear … nose … tongue … body … mind … painful, pleasant, or neutral feeling that arises dependent on mind contact.

Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed.

They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’”

That is what the Buddha said.

Satisfied, the mendicants approved what the Buddha said.

And while this discourse was being spoken, the minds of the thousand mendicants were freed from defilements by not grasping.

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[1] This is the famous “third sermon”. After the Buddha’s awakening at Uruvelā, he went to Varanasi to teach the five mendicants (SN 56.11), then returned to Uruvelā, where he stayed with and ultimately converted a community of dreadlocked fire-worshiping ascetics led by three Kassapa brothers. The elaborate narrative prominently features the ascetics’ reverence for fire, over which the Buddha wielded mastery. They took ordination, then he taught this discourse (Kd 1:15.1.1).

[2] The Buddha starts with the uncommon term āditta, which refers to a current state (“is burning”, “has been set of fire”), avoiding the use of aggi (Sanskrit agni), which would evoke the deity of that name.

References to agni, to sarva (“all”), and to Agni as all, are legion in Vedic texts. Since all sacrifices are Agni (4.5.1.13), Agni is all the gods (1.6.2.8, 3.1.3.1, 3.4.1.19, 4.6.3.2), or is the Self of all the gods (14.3.2.5). Fire consumes all, so all food is of Agni (10.1.4.13). But the direct inspiration for this discourse is probably the famous “Honey Lore”. Situated just after the revelation that the true Self is infinite consciousness, this passage identifies all aspects of being, including fire, as “honey”, since they partake of the immortal, the divine, and the “all” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.5). Likewise, after his teaching that the aggregates, including all forms of consciousness, are “not self” (SN 22.59), the Buddha inverts the message of the Honey Lore, pointing out that “all” we experience is on fire.

[3] Or perhaps, “Set on fire by what?”

[4] These “three fires” are also at AN 7.47 and Iti 93.

Only after establishing that the senses are “burning” does the Buddha complete his inversion of Vedic values: it is fire itself which, far from being a benevolent deity, is aflame with greed, hate, and delusion. This had to wait until the Buddha was sure in his students, for it has the unpalatable implication that the god himself is subject to such flaws. After all, the ritual is performed with verses of desire (chandas) in order to secure worldly prosperity (Snp 1.2) or an eternity in heaven (SN 42.6:2.1); it is carried out by means of sacrificial violence (MN 51:10.7, AN 4.39, SN 3.9); and it is based on a delusional way of seeing the world, the blind leading the blind (MN 95:13.23).