SN 12.13

Samaṇabrāhmaṇa sutta: Ascetics and Brahmins

Samaṇabrāhmaṇasutta

Āhāravagga

One who does not understand dependent origination is no true ascetic.

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At Sāvatthī.

“Mendicants, there are ascetics and brahmins who don’t understand old age and death, their origin, their cessation, and the practice that leads to their cessation. They don’t understand rebirth … continued existence … grasping … craving … feeling … contact … the six sense fields … name and form … consciousness … They don’t understand choices, their origin, their cessation, and the practice that leads to their cessation. I don’t deem them as true ascetics and brahmins. Those venerables don’t realize the goal of life as an ascetic or brahmin, and don’t live having realized it with their own insight in this very life.

The terms “ascetics and brahmins” is often used as a generic catch-all for ‘religious practitioners” (SN 3.1:2.1). “Ascetics” (samaṇa) include the renunciate practitioners of the non-Vedic religions such as the Buddhists, Jains, and Ājīvakas. Such religious movements typically rejected Vedic authority and caste system, and proposed their own philosophy and practice (DN 2:2.2). “Brahmins” were a hereditary caste of Vedic priests charged with maintaining scripture and performing rituals. In the Vedas, brahmins served worldly prosperity and, more vaguely, heavenly rebirth. Perhaps under the influence of the ascetics, they later developed a renunciate movement of contemplatives who looked for a merger with Divinity beyond the cycle of rebirth.

Literally, “they are not deemed by me as ascetics among ascetics, or brahmins among brahmins”. The Buddha recognized these terms as spiritually valid, even if the individuals sometimes do not live up to them. This distinction is not uniquely Buddhist, for we find it among the Jains (eg. Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 17) and brahmins (eg. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.8.10).

There are ascetics and brahmins who do understand old age and death, their origin, their cessation, and the practice that leads to their cessation. They understand rebirth … continued existence … grasping … craving … feeling … contact … the six sense fields … name and form … consciousness … They understand choices, their origin, their cessation, and the practice that leads to their cessation. I deem them as true ascetics and brahmins. Those venerables realize the goal of life as an ascetic or brahmin, and live having realized it with their own insight.”

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