This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Perspectives on the Honeyball Sutta with Jaya Rudgard. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Jaya Rudgard at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
So I want to say something first of all about considering the different relationships that we can have to suttas1 and sutta study, and their place in our practice. I’m imagining that all of you have some interest in suttas, otherwise you wouldn’t have come to this. I also realized, I was saying to Rob that I neglected to find a sexy title for this particular session, so it just said “Honeyball Sutta.” A little bit cryptic. So I imagine that at least wasn’t off-putting to you, and some of you were curious or knew that that was an important sutta that you’d like to revisit.
Sometimes we can find the suttas quite dry and unrelatable. Sometimes we can find them inspiring, intimidating, fascinating, exasperating, and so forth. For me, I’ve been through patches of more and less interest in the suttas. Some of us maybe just know a small handful of suttas and like to keep pondering those few. And some people want to throw themselves in and read the whole Pali2 Canon and so forth. From my perspective, there’s no one right relationship to have with the suttas. It’s like, how can I use them to nourish my practice? Are we interested in looking at the Pali, or just looking at suttas in English or if they’re available in our other native language?
I always like to remind myself that at the time of the Buddha, most people only heard one or two teachings. We sort of think because all this stuff is available to us that we need to get on top of it all or master it all. But actually, any one sutta is a doorway into potentially the whole of the Dharma. So it’s about the quality of our engagement with the teaching rather than the quantity of teaching. I imagine that at the time of the Buddha, most people will have heard very few teachings. Of course, there were certain monks and nuns who will have heard a lot, and some who memorized them and so on, but those would have been a minority of the people who learned from the Buddha.
My own background with this is that I’m not a Pali scholar. I’m not a Buddhist scholar either. I’m just a practitioner who enjoys reading suttas. Maybe partly because my degree at college was in Latin and Greek literature, I could feel a little less intimidated by ancient texts than sometimes we might be. As a nun, I learned to chant various traditional Pali chants which included some suttas and passages that come from the suttas. So that was my first introduction. Then there was the little book that some of you might know, Nyanatiloka’s “The Word of the Buddha,” which was about the first sort of anthology of translations of the suttas put together before all these translations by people like Bhikkhu Bodhi3 were published. That was when I joined the monastery in the mid-90s. That was the thing that was available to us.
Around the same time, Bhikkhu Bodhi published the translation of the Majjhima Nikāya4, the middle-length discourses, and I kind of threw myself into that because I felt that was the way to get closer to the Buddha and to his world. Slightly naively, I think I thought if I give up reading everything else, all the things that enmesh us in this very crazy world that we’re all living in right now, and stop reading newspapers and things and just read the Majjhima Nikāya, somehow I could plonk myself into the mindset of an ancient bhikkhuni and that would be really helpful. Of course, that was very naive, and I now realize we can’t just immerse ourselves in the thought world of the Buddha because we’re coming at it through a certain perspective, which is what today’s sutta is all about. But still, it’s a really useful exercise to try to get a little closer to what he might have been thinking and meaning. And now of course, we also have online all these wonderful things like Access to Insight and Sutta Central.
So why this sutta? I think like probably most of you, I realized really early on in my practice how much unhelpful thinking my mind engages in. Anyone else have that issue? I came across the word papañca5, which I initially understood, and still one could loosely think of it, as excessive, unhelpful thinking. And this sutta, the Honeyball Sutta, really addresses this question of papañca and refines our understanding of it. So I became familiar with it through what it had to say about papañca.
But also, when one looks not just at the section on papañca itself but at the whole sutta, the sutta is really also about conflict and non-conflict and our capacity to listen, which is why I think it’s so important and so relevant to us right now. And then it gets its name, the honeyball or honey cake, because of what Ānanda says to the Buddha at the end of the sutta. “Oh, it’s as if a hungry, thirsty, tired person had come across this sweet, nourishing treat like a honey cake.” And the Buddha said, “Okay, yes, exactly. Let’s call it the Honey Cake Discourse.” I was trying to think of a contemporary equivalent, and there were too many options, so you have to pick your own, whether that’s the chocolate fudge sundae. Most Dharma practitioners I know are too healthy to have that as your top hit, but something of that case.
This sutta can be considered in three parts if you like. The first part that sets the scene and presents a problem. The second part which is like the diagnosis of the problem, and then the third part is what can be done about it. The middle part is by far the longest because this teaching is really a descriptive sutta rather than a prescriptive sutta, in that it’s mostly concerned with describing how something arises rather than going into a lot of teaching of what you therefore have to do about it. So when we get to considering what to do about it, then we kind of pull in resources from elsewhere.
The sutta is Majjhima Nikāya number 18. It’s in the Majjhima Nikāya, which is the place where we find the middle-length discourses that tend to give us more backstory or more story than the suttas in the Aṅguttara or the Saṃyutta Nikāya6. So we get a sense of context, which is I think why I really enjoyed engaging with that as the first volume of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translations, because they situate the Buddha in his society, in his world.
I’d say this one we can think of it maybe as a little drama with five scenes. The first one is the Buddha; he’s staying in his hometown area, and he’s been wandering for alms and he comes back. Then he has an encounter with Dandapani7, another person from his same village or town who is known to him. Then he recounts this encounter to the monks in the second scene. Then he leaves the monks, and the monks have a conversation amongst themselves where they realize they haven’t quite understood what he said and they should have asked him. Then a scene between the monks and Mahākaccāna8, who they go to ask to explain further what the Buddha said. And then the last scene is that the monks go back to the Buddha to say, “What do you think of what Mahākaccāna told us?”
So we’re going to go through it sort of scene by scene.
The sutta begins: “Thus I have heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living in the Sakyan country at Kapilavatthu in Nigrodha’s park. In the morning, the Blessed One dressed and went into Kapilavatthu for alms. After his meal, he went to the great wood for the day’s abiding and sat down at the root of a bilva sapling for the day’s abiding.”
“Dandapani the Sakyan, while walking and wandering for exercise, also went to the great wood, and he went to the bilva sapling where the Blessed One was and exchanged greetings with him. When this courteous and amiable talk was finished, he stood at one side leaning on his stick and asked the Blessed One, ‘What does the recluse assert? What does he proclaim?’”
The Buddha replies, “Friend, I assert and proclaim such a teaching that one does not quarrel with anyone in the world with its gods, its Maras, its Brahmas, with its recluses and brahmins, its princes and its people. Such a teaching that perceptions no more underlie that brahmin who abides detached from sensual pleasures, without perplexity, free of worry, free from craving for any kind of being.”
“When this was said, Dandapani the Sakyan shook his head, wagged his tongue, raised his eyebrows, and departed.”
So, this Dandapani, his name means “stick-in-hand.” The commentaries say that even when he was young, he used to go about with this gold walking stick, which is considered a kind of conceit or a sign of arrogance. In the monastic rule, there’s this little rule about not supposed to teach somebody who’s carrying a stick, maybe because it could be used as a weapon or maybe it’s a sign of disrespect. He’s a somewhat arrogant person. He’s also known for having sided with Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin who tried to cause a schism in the Saṅgha. So Dandapani is somebody who has a bit of a grudge against the Buddha.
He approached the Buddha and made the usual courteous and amiable greeting, but then he stood to one side leaning on his stick and said this rather impolite, not very respectful way of addressing the Buddha: “What does the recluse proclaim? What does he assert?” It’s like he’s saying, “Well, tell us what your teaching’s all about.” He hasn’t got a real Dharma question to bring.
So the Buddha gives him this very short answer: “Friend, I assert and proclaim such a teaching that one does not quarrel with anyone in the world.” This recalls another sutta in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, in the section on the khandhas9, where the Buddha says, “I do not dispute with the world, rather it is the world that disputes with me. A proponent of the Dharma does not dispute with anyone in the world.” This is an interesting thing to contemplate. What does he mean by that? Unlike Dandapani, who’s almost looking for a fight, the Buddha never goes looking for a fight. People might come and start arguing with him, but he doesn’t go and start an argument with others.
He then goes on to say, “…such a teaching that perceptions no more underlie that brahmin who abides detached from sensual pleasures, without perplexity, free of worry, and free of craving for any kind of being.” Dandapani has referred to him as a recluse, and he refers to himself as a brahmin. Of course, we know that the Buddha was from the warrior caste, but you may be familiar with teachings where the Buddha talks about what really makes a brahmin and what doesn’t. In the Dhammapada10, for instance, there’s a chapter on brahmins where the Buddha says that a brahmin is somebody who is basically freed from greed, hatred, and delusion. It’s not about caste, it’s about nobility of being.
Then this strange expression, “perceptions no more underlie.” The Pali is saññā nānusenti. It’s not lying alongside, or not underlying, not being implied or inclined towards. So we can say a person is not preoccupied or taking a stand on particular preconceptions, because Dandapani is really identified with his views and his preconceptions.
And then the last thing that the Buddha says is that he also abides detached from sensual pleasures, without perplexity, free of worry, and free from craving for any kind of being. You’ll recognize here detachment from sense pleasures and freedom from doubt and worry as being without hindrances in the mind. And then free from craving for any kind of being. The Pali is without taṇhā11, as we know taṇhā is craving for either becoming or non-becoming.
Having heard this from the Buddha, Dandapani furrows his brow, wags his tongue, raises his eyebrows, and left leaning on his stick, shaking his head. This is something that Māra does also in some of his encounters with the Buddha. When the Buddha says something to Māra that doesn’t meet Māra’s hopes and expectations, Māra pulls these faces and leaves in disgust.
That evening, the Buddha goes to join the rest of the monks and he tells them the story of what happened when he met with Dandapani. A certain bhikkhu asked the Blessed One, “But venerable sir, what is the teaching that the Blessed One asserts whereby one does not quarrel with anyone in the world? And venerable sir, how is it that perceptions no more underlie that brahmin who abides detached from sensual pleasures, without perplexity, free of worry, free from craving for any kind of being?”
The Buddha replied, “Bhikkhus, as to the source through which perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation beset a man—if nothing is found there to delight in, welcome, and hold on to, this is the end of the underlying tendency to lust, to aversion, to views, to doubt, to conceit, to desire for being, to ignorance; the end of resorting to rods and weapons, of quarrels, brawls, disputes, recrimination, malice, and false speech. Here these evil, unwholesome states cease without remainder.”
After saying that, the Blessed One rose from his seat and went into his dwelling.
Here we have the introduction of this idea of “perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation.” The Pali word is a compound, papañca-saññā-saṅkhā. It’s not a word that seems to occur much anywhere else. It’s said to beset a person (purisa), which is the individual or the personality. Bhikkhu Sujato says that this is the conventional sense of self that comes from desire and ignorance. It takes a “me” to get beset by views and opinions.
The thing that I think is really significant is it doesn’t talk about eradicating these papañca-saññā-saṅkhā. It says if nothing is found to delight in, welcome, and hold to in the sources of these proliferations, then this is the end of the underlying tendencies to these unwholesome qualities.
The monks realize that the Blessed One has gone and they think, “Oops, he gave us a summary in brief without telling us the detail. Who can we go ask for the detail?” And then they think of Mahākaccāna, who is a wise, older monk, and so they go visit him.
Mahākaccāna replied, “Friends, it is as though a man needing heartwood, seeking heartwood, wandering in search of heartwood, thought that heartwood should be sought for among the branches and leaves of a great tree standing possessed of heartwood after he had passed over the root and the trunk. Similarly, you think that I should be asked about the meaning of this instead of the Blessed One when you were face to face with the teacher earlier. That Blessed One knows what should be known, sees what should be seen… he is the master of the teaching, the lord of the Dharma, the Tathāgata. This is the time to ask its meaning from the Blessed One so that we could keep it in our minds.”
The bhikkhus persist, praising Mahākaccāna’s ability to expound on the detailed meaning. He then agrees to explain.
“Then listen, friends, and attend closely to what I shall say… I understand the detailed meaning of it to be as follows: Dependent on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises. The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, there is feeling. What one feels, that one perceives. What one perceives, one thinks about. What one thinks about, that one mentally proliferates. With what one has mentally proliferated as the source, perceptions and notions tinged by mental proliferation beset a man with respect to past, future, and present forms cognizable through the eye.”
He then repeats this formula for the other five sense doors: ear and sounds, nose and odors, tongue and flavors, body and tangibles, and mind and mind-objects.
This process goes from the sense organ and the object of awareness. The three—sense organ, object, and consciousness—come together in a moment of contact. With contact, there’s feeling tone, vedanā12—registering the contact as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. What one feels, one perceives. Perception is the act of recognizing or labeling something. What one perceives, one thinks about (vitakka13). This is the mind applying itself, starting a thought process. Then, thinking proliferates with this papañca.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu doesn’t translate papañca as proliferation; he translates it as “objectification,” because it’s making the thing that’s perceived into an object that’s “out there” in relation to “me.” It’s starting to reify, to concretize, and take a stand in relation to the object.
One of the interesting things about the way the Buddha describes this process is he first talks about it as an impersonal process: “dependent on the eye and forms… there is contact… with contact as condition there is feeling.” Then he says, “what one feels, one perceives.” So it starts to become a little bit more personal; “I” get involved. We move from impersonal arisings to something that’s personal, that I’m doing. And then by the end of it, we’ve got to not “I’m doing it,” but “it’s being done to me.” The proliferations are besetting me. It’s like a process that we engage with, then it runs away with us.
The sutta continues with Mahākaccāna explaining that when there is a sense door, an object, and consciousness, it’s possible to discern contact. When there is contact, it’s possible to discern feeling, and so on. Conversely, when there is no eye, no form, and no eye-consciousness, it’s impossible to discern contact, and therefore impossible to discern feeling, perception, and the rest of the chain.
What struck me here is that perhaps a degree of papañca is inevitable as part of the way the mind is constructed. In order to function in ordinary life, some degree of objectification is necessary. The Buddha would have to know which were his robes and which was his bowl. The difference, the really key piece in this teaching, is about how much we delight in these things, how much we attach to them, and how much we identify with them.
It reminded me of a passage in the Dhammapada (verses 254-255): “There are no footsteps in the sky. You won’t find the sage out there. Ordinary beings are enamored with obsessive thoughts. Tathāgatas are free of obsessive thinking.” Ordinary people delight in papañca, and Buddhas delight in nippapañca (non-proliferation). I’m not sure that it means that Tathāgatas never proliferate. It just means that they don’t fall under its spell, they don’t take delight in it, and they don’t take a stand on the fruits of their proliferations or their perceptions. They don’t form an identity from it. They don’t take it to be permanent. They don’t take it to be fixed. This means that there’s a freedom to respond appropriately.
So, given this predicament, how do we engage with this? In the Sakka’s Questions Sutta (Dīgha Nikāya 21), Sakka14 asks the Buddha why beings who wish each other well still end up fighting. The Buddha says it’s because of envy, stinginess, liking and disliking, desire, thinking, and papañca proliferation. Sakka then asks how to practice for the cessation of papañca.
The Buddha gives a very pragmatic answer. He says there are two kinds of happiness to be pursued and not to be pursued, two kinds of unhappiness, two kinds of equanimity, and so on. Whatever you pursue that causes unskillful qualities to increase, this is not to be pursued. Whatever causes skillful qualities to increase, these should be pursued. He doesn’t say contact should be stopped. He says you should know which sort of sense contacts are to be pursued and which are not to be pursued. You have to reflect for yourself.
The practice is having recognized the unreliable, conditioned, and inevitably prejudiced nature of our perceptions, and not taking a stand on them. We are all meeting the moment through a lens. If we’re aware of that, then we can creatively engage in the process and see what method of nurturing skillful qualities and allowing unskillful qualities to decline is going to be appropriate.
This is the work of practice: recognition, becoming mindfully aware of what is actually happening. “Allow” is like moving into a relationship of non-conflict with what is already manifesting. “Investigate” is putting it under the lens of Dharma. And “Nurture” or “Non-identification” is moving away from clinging to a more caring and compassionate relationship to what’s here.
This whole internal mental machinery, linking up from contact that we’re not usually aware of, can constantly get us into trouble if we’re not paying attention to it. It’s not that what’s going on “out there” doesn’t matter or even doesn’t exist, but what’s really important is what’s being generated in this heart-mind right now. That is both shaping what’s being experienced out there and is what’s responding to what’s perceived out there. All these teachings seem to point us back to that responsibility.
Sutta: A discourse or sermon by the Buddha or one of his senior disciples. ↩
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan language, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism. ↩
Bhikkhu Bodhi: A prominent American Buddhist monk and scholar known for his translations of the Pali Canon. ↩
Majjhima Nikāya: The “Middle-length Discourses,” one of the five major collections of suttas in the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pali Canon. ↩
Papañca: Mental proliferation, conceptual elaboration, or objectification. It’s the mind’s tendency to take a simple sensory experience and build complex narratives, judgments, and identities around it, often leading to conflict and suffering. ↩
Saṃyutta Nikāya: The “Connected Discourses,” another major collection of suttas, organized by topic. ↩
Dandapani: A member of the Buddha’s Sakyan clan. His name literally means “stick-in-hand,” referring to the staff he carried. ↩
Mahākaccāna: One of the Buddha’s most distinguished disciples, renowned for his ability to explain the Buddha’s brief statements in detail. ↩
Khandhas: The five “aggregates” or “heaps” that constitute what we call a person: form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), perception (saññā), mental formations (saṅkhāra), and consciousness (viññāṇa). ↩
Dhammapada: A popular collection of the Buddha’s sayings in verse form, part of the Khuddaka Nikāya. ↩
Taṇhā: “Thirst” or “craving.” It is identified in the Second Noble Truth as the cause of suffering (dukkha). ↩
Vedanā: Feeling tone, the immediate affective quality of an experience, categorized as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. ↩
Vitakka: Initial thought or the application of the mind to an object. ↩
Sakka: In Buddhist cosmology, the ruler of the Tāvatiṃsa heaven, one of the highest deities but still a being within saṃsāra. ↩