ABSTRACT
The very long suttas of the Pali canon effect a slow chemical reaction in the listener that is like a meditation practice in itself. They take hours to chant in complete form: on a special blessing ceremony such as an all-night Mahapirit, one long chant follows another, listeners look around, drop in and out to get a cup of tea, meditate, listen attentively or even doze off. The sense of leisurely exploration through narrative, action, dialogue, bardic lists of names, along with the repetitive rhythms of the chant, can make the listener feel as if aeons are passing in the manner of some Buddhist heavenly realm. It is difficult to communicate in an anthology this sense of ease, considered so important for meditation and listening to long texts, but some extracts are included here from the most comprehensive longer text on the subject of meditation, the Samaññaphala-Sutta.1 An intensely dramatic and sophisticated work, it places the Buddha’s teaching in a poignantly evoked narrative context. Not only does it include the classical description of the hindrances and the four jhanas – found with much the same formula, of which this is possibly the first example, elsewhere in the canon – but also it provides in the treatment of the six ascetics the most notable Buddhist criticism of his contemporaries, and vindication of the sakgha, or order of monks, as the exemplars of the meditative life. Whatever author or authors constructed the final text, it is a dramatic tour de force, embodying both within the frame story and the explication of the doctrine a carefully constructed enactment of the Buddha’s message. Only the sections directly pertaining to meditation are included, but some sort of background should be given first.2
