Ananda

A monk stands in the doorway of a lodging at Kusinara, one hand on the lintel, crying where he thinks nobody can see. He has served one man for a quarter of a century, and that man is lying down for the last time between two sala trees in the grove outside. The monk’s thought, as the Pali text of the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta sets it down, is short and bitter: he is still only a learner, with work left to do, and the teacher who was so kind to him is about to pass away. Then someone comes with a message. The Buddha has asked where Ananda has gone.

His name means joy, or bliss, in both Pali and Sanskrit. He was a Sakyan, of the same warrior clan as Siddhartha Gautama, and the texts make him the Buddha’s cousin; the later commentaries, followed by the modern biographer Hellmuth Hecker, name his father as Amitodana, a brother of King Suddhodana, and have Ananda born on the same day as the Buddha himself. The Vinaya records him going forth together with a band of young Sakyan nobles, among them Anuruddha and Devadatta, a group whose members would go very different ways. In his first rainy season, after a talk on the five aggregates by the monk Punna Mantaniputta, Ananda reached the first stage of awakening, stream-entry. He would stay at that stage for a very long time.

Twenty years into the teaching, the Buddha asked for a permanent attendant, and Ananda accepted on terms. According to the tradition he asked for eight conditions. Four were refusals: he would not receive the Master’s robes, nor his almsfood, nor share his lodging, nor be taken along to meals the Buddha was invited to, so that no one could say he served for the perks. Four were requests: that he could pass on invitations, bring visitors from afar, ask questions whenever doubt arose, and have repeated to him any discourse given while he was away. It is the most careful job application in religious history.

What followed was twenty-five years of small, physical service. He brought water and tooth-wood, laid out the seat, washed the Master’s feet, rubbed his back, swept the cell and mended the robes, and he slept within call at night. Late in the Buddha’s life, at a stream churned brown by the wheels of passing carts, the Master asked him for a drink, and Ananda warned that the water was muddy. When he walked down anyway and dipped the bowl, the stream ran clear and cool before him, and Ananda came back up the bank saying it was marvellous.

His real gift was memory. In the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha names him foremost among the disciples in five things, among them having heard much and remembering it. The verses gathered under his name in the Theragatha claim eighty-four thousand teachings held in his head, and most Buddhist traditions give him the phrase evaṃ me sutaṃ, “Thus have I heard”, which opens discourse after discourse: a reporter’s formula, stating where he stood and adding nothing of his own.

He also spoke up when it counted. When Mahapajapati Gotami, the Buddha’s aunt and foster mother, asked that women be allowed to go forth and the Buddha refused her, Ananda put two questions to him. Could women reach the fruits of the path? They could. And had this woman not nursed him with her own milk after his mother died? The Buddha relented and founded the order of nuns under eight special conditions.

His worst hour came on the last journey. At the Capala shrine near Vesali the Buddha told him, three times over, that one who had perfected the bases of spiritual power could remain for a world-age if he wished, and that the Tathagata had done so. Three times Ananda said nothing, “as though his mind was influenced by Mara.” Soon afterwards the Buddha renounced his will to live on and announced that he would pass away in three months. Only then did Ananda beg him to stay. The answer was that the time for asking had gone, and the fault was his.

So the Kusinara scene has a weight behind it. Ananda had protested the place itself, a little wattle-and-daub town in the jungle, unworthy of the event, and had asked his last practical questions: how monks should conduct themselves towards women (“Don’t see them, Ananda”), what to do with the body (“Hinder not yourselves by honouring the remains”). When they found him at the door, the Buddha told him to stop weeping, reminded him that everything near and dear must be parted from, and thanked him for long years of acts of love that never varied. He then praised Ananda’s four wonderful qualities to the monks: monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen alike were glad simply to see him, and gladder still to hear him teach. Ananda went into the town to tell the Mallas that the end would come in the last watch of the night.

The order held its first council at Rajagaha, five hundred monks under Mahakassapa, and Ananda was the only candidate still unawakened. He practised through the night before it opened. When at last he went to lie down, and in the moment when his feet had left the ground and his head had not yet touched the pillow, his mind was freed. He made it with no time to spare. At the council Mahakassapa questioned him on the discourses, and Ananda answered with place and people: the Brahmajala, he said, was spoken between Rajagaha and Nalanda, at Ambalatthika, concerning the wanderer Suppiya and the young brahmin Brahmadatta. Then the elders charged him. He had not asked which minor rules could be abolished. He had stepped on the Buddha’s rains-robe while sewing it. He had let women honour the body first, and their tears had soiled it. He had not begged the Buddha to remain. He had urged the ordination of women. To each he gave the same reply: he did not see it as wrongdoing, but out of faith in them he confessed it. Afterwards it was Ananda who travelled to Kosambi to lay the Brahma penalty on the unruly monk Channa, who fainted on the spot.

A later Mahayana scripture, the Shurangama Sutra, known from its Chinese text, gives him a harder test. Begging alone from house to house, he passed a brothel where Matangi’s daughter, using a spell of the Kapila sect, drew him down onto an impure mat and brought him to the edge of breaking his vows. The Buddha sent Manjushri with a mantra to break the spell and bring them both back. Ananda bowed and wept, regretting that he had given himself to learning and never perfected his strength in the Way.

How he died depends on who is telling it. Tradition gives him a hundred and twenty years. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian, travelling in India around 400 CE, heard at a confluence of rivers that the old monk had been going from Magadha to Vaisali to die, with King Ajatasatru chasing him in a grand carriage and the Licchavis of Vaisali coming out to meet him. Caught midstream between two parties who would each resent losing him, he burned his body in the middle of the river in a fiery ecstasy of samadhi and divided it in two, half to each bank, and each king raised a relic mound over his share. A Pali tradition tells the same scene over the Rohini river, with the Sakyans and the Koliyans on either side.

Ananda’s power was never miracle. It was nearness and recall: he was there, he listened, and he could give it back word for word. His limits were the other side of the same coin. He was so close to the man that he missed what the teacher was offering, he reached the goal later than any of his peers, and a single spell could walk him to the edge of ruin. The discourses still open with his voice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Ananda in Buddhism?

Ananda was the Buddha’s cousin and his personal attendant for the last twenty-five years of the Buddha’s life. He was a Sakyan who went forth with other young nobles of the clan, including Anuruddha and Devadatta. He is best remembered for his memory, which made him the chief reciter of the Buddha’s discourses at the first council.

Why do Buddhist sutras begin with “Thus have I heard”?

Most Buddhist traditions attribute the phrase “Thus have I heard” (Pali evaṃ me sutaṃ) to Ananda. It marks the discourse as something he heard from the Buddha and is reporting without additions. The Buddha named Ananda foremost among his disciples for having heard much and remembering it.

What did Ananda do for women in Buddhism?

Ananda persuaded the Buddha to allow women to be ordained after the Buddha first refused Mahapajapati Gotami, his aunt and foster mother. He asked whether women could reach the fruits of the path, which the Buddha confirmed, and reminded him that Mahapajapati had nursed him. The order of nuns was then founded under eight special conditions.

Why was Ananda criticised at the first council?

At the first council at Rajagaha the elders charged Ananda with five faults, including failing to ask the Buddha to remain alive for a world-age and urging the ordination of women. He also failed to ask which minor rules could be dropped, stepped on the Buddha’s robe while sewing it, and let women honour the body first. Ananda said he did not see these as wrongdoing but confessed them out of faith in the assembly.

How did Ananda die?

The accounts disagree. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian recorded that Ananda, caught on a river between King Ajatasatru and the Licchavis of Vaisali, burned his body in a fiery samadhi and divided it into two halves, one for each bank. A Pali tradition sets the same scene on the Rohini river between the Sakyans and the Koliyans, and tradition says Ananda lived to 120.

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