The First Visit to Rajagriha
Accompanied by the Kashyapa brothers and the thousand new arhats, the Buddha then traveled to Rajagriha, the capital of Magadha, in order to keep the promise he had made earlier to King Bimbisara that he would return and teach the Dharma if he should succeed in attaining enlightenment. The Buddha’s reputation preceded him and as he approached Rajagriha, the king and his entourage of brahmin householders came out to meet him after hearing the following:
Now the good name of Master Gautama has been spread thus: ‘That Blessed One is such since he is accomplished, fully enlightened, perfect in knowledge and conduct, sublime, the knower of worlds, the incomparable leader of men to be tamed, the teacher of gods and men, enlightened, blessed. He makes known this world with its deities, its Maras and its divinities, this generation with its monks and brahmins, with its princes and men, which he has himself realized through direct knowledge. He teaches the Dharma that is good in the beginning, good in the middle and good in the end, with the meaning and the letter, and he explains a holy life that is utterly perfect and pure.’ It is good to go and see such accomplished ones. (Ibid, p. 65)
However, when King Bimbisara saw him accompanied by Uruvilva Kashyapa and his brothers and the thousand former matted-hair ascetics, he was at first confused and wondered if the renowned Uruvilva was the teacher and the Buddha the disciple. Uruvilva Kashyapa made it clear that he and his brothers and their former followers were all in fact disciples of the Buddha. The Buddha then taught the progressive teachings and then the Buddha Dharma itself to King Bimbisara and the brahmin householders of Rajagriha. The king and many others attained to stream-entry as a result and thereupon took refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha of monks and became lay followers of the Buddha. The king invited the Buddha and his followers to dinner and then donated the Bamboo Grove just outside the city of Rajagriha to the Sangha where they could dwell under the trees and in caves.
Some time later, at King Bimbisara’s urging, the Buddha declared that on the uposhadha days, the eighth, fourteenth and fifteenth days of the lunar half month, the monks of a given residence should all gather together to expound the Dharma. These were the days of the half moons, full moon and new moon in a complete lunar month and had long been considered sacred days when other groups of ascetics would gather together to teach their doctrines. It was the king’s hope that if the Buddhist monks also assembled and taught on these days then more people would have a chance to hear and take refuge in the three jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Many years later, the Buddha instructed the monks to recite the monastic precepts that he had set forth on either the fourteenth or fifteenth day of each half lunar month. The monks are to recite these together after each monk had been given a chance to confess to any wrongdoing and perform any necessary expiation or receive any necessary penalty. In this way, the assemblies of monks remind themselves of the proper way of conduct and begin afresh every two weeks. During these days, Buddhist lay followers can come to hear the Dharma. Many even take upon themselves eight precepts for the duration of the day. The first five consist of the five major precepts which Buddhist lay followers already take, but the next three are taken temporarily so they can briefly partake of the self-discipline and simplicity of the monastic life. These eight are:
1. Not to kill
2. Not to steal
3. Not to engage in sexual relations
4. Not to lie
5. Not to indulge in intoxicants
6. Not to eat after noon or before dawn
7. Not to attend singing recitals, dances or other forms of entertainment;
or wear ornaments or perfume
8. Not to sleep on soft or luxurious beds
It was during the Buddha’s stay in Rajagriha that his two greatest disciples joined him. Shariputra and his lifelong friend Maudgalyayana were born to brahmin families in neighboring villages near Rajagriha. As young men they were both disillusioned with worldly life. Together they left home to find enlightenment and eventually became the leading disciples of the skeptical philosopher Sanjaya. This teaching did not satisfy them for long however, and so they both set out again to find the truth. The two friends even made an agreement that whoever discovered it first would find and tell the other. Shariputra traveled to Rajagriha and there he met Ashvajit. Ashvajit was one of the five ascetics who became the first disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha. Ashvajit’s calm demeanor so impressed Shariputra that he asked him who his teacher was and what teaching he had received. Ashvajit told Shariputra about Shakyamuni Buddha and then gave him a summary of the Dharma as he understood it in the following verse:
Of those things that arise from a cause,
The Tathagata has told the cause,
And also what their cessation is:
This is the doctrine of the Great Recluse.
(Great Disciples of the Buddha, p.7)
Upon hearing these words, Shariputra’s quick mind realized the profound implications of this seemingly simple verse and became a stream-enterer. At that moment, he knew that Shakyamuni Buddha was the teacher he and his friend had been looking for. Shariputra immediately went to Maudgalyayana and shared with him Ashvajit’s verse. Maudgalyayana also became a stream-enterer. The two seekers agreed to see Shakyamuni Buddha, but first Shariputra insisted they go to their former teacher Sanjaya and try to convince him to join them. Sanjaya, however, was not willing to relinquish his position as a teacher in order to become the disciple of another. He even tried to convince Shariputra and Maudgalyayana to stay – offering them positions as co-leaders of his own movement. Shariputra and Maudgalyayana were not interested in mere leadership, they were determined to attain liberation under a true teacher, and so they both left and took 250 of Sanjaya’s disciples with them. When Shakyamuni Buddha saw the two friends coming to meet him, he announced to the assembly that these two would become his chief disciples. The Buddha ordained the two as monks at that time.
After a week of intensive practice, Maudgalyayana attained the fourth stage of enlightenment and became an arhat. Maudgalyayana soon proved very good at training monks to refine their meditative stability and insight to the point where they could become arhats. Because he was so adept in the miraculous powers that resulted from meditative practice such as the power of mind-over-matter, clairaudience, clairvoyance, mind reading, and the ability to recall past lives, he would become known as the foremost in developing supernatural powers.
After another week had passed, Shariputra also became an arhat while listening to the Buddha preaching a sermon to Dighanakha, Shariputra’s nephew. It is said that Shariputra took two weeks to attain enlightenment because he needed to think through and examine all the implications and permutations of the Buddha’s teachings. Because he did this, he was second only to the Buddha in preaching the Dharma, and several sutras are actually taught by Shariputra with the full approval of the Buddha. Because of this he was known as foremost in wisdom.
Shortly after the appearance of the two chief disciples, Mahakashyapa joined the Sangha. Mahakashyapa grew up in a brahmin family near Rajagriha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha. His father was very wealthy and owned a large estate encompassing sixteen villages. Despite growing up in luxury (or perhaps because of it) Mahakashyapa wished to renounce the world and live a simple life in search of enlightenment. His parents insisted that he marry and he reluctantly agreed. However, he commissioned an artist to caste a golden statue based on his idea of what a perfectly beautiful woman should look like. He demanded that the woman his parents chose to be his wife should look exactly like the statue. Of course, he never imagined they would find a woman to match the statue but much to his dismay they succeeded. The woman, whose name was Bhadra Kapilani, also wished to leave the home life. In fact, they had deep karmic affinities for each other due to having spent many past lives together perfecting virtue and seeking enlightenment. They ended up being a good match for each other due to their shared aspirations. Not long after Mahakashyapa’s parent’s passed away and he inherited their estate, the couple agreed that the time had finally come when they could both leave the home life and take to the road as homeless wanderers seeking enlightenment. So that it would not cause a scandal, they both agreed to part company and take different roads.
[[Bhadra [Kapilani]] ended up going to Shravasti, the capital of the kingdom of Koshala. There she stayed for a number of years with an order of non-Buddhists nuns near the Jeta Grove monastery until the establishment of the Buddhist order of nuns – a story that will be related below. At that time, Bhadra Kapilani joined the Buddhist nuns and attained the stage of arhat and freed herself from the bonds of birth and death. She became known as the foremost among the nuns for recalling her past lives, many of which were spent as the wife of Mahakashyapa in his previous lives. Bhadra Kapilani was also know for her patience and compassion, and was a popular teacher of the Dharma.
Mahakashyapa ended up meeting the Buddha on the road outside Rajagriha. The Buddha was sitting beneath a banyan tree emitting rays of light, and Mahakashyapa saw this and recognized all the signs and marks of a great man on him. He immediately went up to the Buddha and declared that he would be his disciple. The Buddha responded by saying that anyone who tried to explain enlightenment without any real knowledge of it in the presence of someone as perceptive and sincere as Mahakashyapa would have their head split into seven pieces. In other words, the assertion of a falsehood in the face of the honesty and sincerity of someone like Mahakashyapa will cause the liar to “fall apart.” The Buddha then gave him a brief teaching and accepted him as a disciple. At that time, Mahakashyapa folded his outer robe and gave it to the Buddha to use as a seat. The Buddha remarked upon the softness of the robe and Mahakashyapa immediately asked the Buddha to keep it. In return, Shakyamuni Buddha offered his own ragged robe that had come from a cremation ground. Mahakashyapa joyfully accepted. This was the only time that Shakyamuni Buddha ever exchanged robes with a disciple.
From that time on Mahakashyapa took up the dhuta, the various ascetic disciplines sanctioned by the Buddha for those who wished to strengthen their self-discipline and live as simply as possible. These disciplines included using only cast-off rags instead of accepting donated robes, eating only by begging door-to-door instead of accepting invitations to dinner, eating only once a day, only sleeping outdoors, and other such practices which were austere but not harmful in sub-tropical India. Mahakashyapa even became known as the foremost in ascetic discipline.
At this point, the Sangha had grown to more than 1,250 disciples and the people of the kingdom of Magadha were beginning to worry that the would lose all their sons, husbands and fathers to the Buddha’s Sangha. They even began to taunt and harass the monks when they went on their begging rounds, asking them who the Buddha planned to lead away next. The Sangha appeared to be some kind of virulent cult and needed time to prove itself. The Buddha instructed the monks to be courteous and to tell those who asked that they only sought to follow the Dharma. He told them that people would be impressed by their patience and composure. They would also come to understand that it was not the Buddha’s intention to recruit all the men (at this time there was no order of nuns) into the monastic Sangha. He predicted that by the end of the week the sensationalized fears about the Sangha would become old news. Just as he predicted, after a week the people of Magadha came to understand and even appreciate the true nature of the Sangha.
