ABSTRACT
This chapter engages in a textual reading of the Samannaphalasutta. Buddhism’s preoccupation with itinerancy, which, among other things, had antagonized the Vedic practitioners, comes out clearly in this text. Here, the Buddha himself encourages itinerancy and goes on to explain why the Buddhist monks wander. This chapter argues that the Buddha’s discourse is reflective of how the trope of itinerancy, as symbolic of a gratuitory worldview, an alternate utopia and spiritual growth – what Deleuze and Guattari, Braidotti, de Certeau, and others would refer to as nomadology – is rooted in the ‘Indic structure of feeling’.
