The Awakening of Angulimāla
Shaun Campbell, Editor
“The nature of a room is not affected by its level of cleanliness. Similarly, our buddha-nature is not defined by the presence or absence of our emotional afflictions.” — Guo Gu
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” — Oscar Wilde’s Lord Illingworth, in A Woman Of No Importance
The story of Angulimāla, the career thief and murderer-turned-Buddhist saint, is one of the best known accounts in Buddhist scriptures, largely because of the dramatic turn his life later takes after his conversion as a Buddhist monk. The Buddha had often warned not to judge people from appearances or even their external behavior. In the case of Angulimāla, the Buddha had seen in him a hidden potential to win freedom, not only from his criminal cravings, but also the freedom from all suffering, to be achieved by his realizing the true nature of everything, just as it really is.
Early in the Buddha’s ministry, one of his disciples, King Pasenadi, of India’s ancient city of Kosala, had a spiritual advisor known as Bhaggava Gagga. This chaplain was a Brahmin, a learned member of the most respected social class who, nonetheless, had vowed a life of frugality.
One inauspicious day, Bhaggava Gagga and his wife, Mantani, gave birth to a son. Superstitious as he was, the father immediately consulted his son’s horoscope, but was shaken to find that his son had been born under the planetary “thieves-constellation,” a sign which predestined his ill-fated newborn to a life of sorcery, violence, and certain criminality.
Along with the birth came another unusual portent: reports were that, within the armory of the nearby city of Savantthi, all the weapons had suddenly begun to sparkle.
That next morning, the Brahmin Bhaggava went to the palace as usual and asked the king how he had slept.
“How could I have slept well?” retorted the king. “I woke up in the night and saw that my weapons lying at the end of my bed were brightly sparkling. Of course, I was perturbed and afraid even. Should this mean danger to the kingdom, or to my life?”
Bhaggava reassured him, “Do not fear, my King! The same strange thing happened throughout the whole city. It hardly concerns you. Anyway, last night my wife bore me a son, but unfortunately his horoscope revealed the robber-constellation. This must have been the cause of all the weapons sparkling.”
“Will he be a lone robber, or the leader of a gang?” the king wondered aloud.
“He will steal alone, your Majesty,” answered Bhaggava. “But what if we were to kill him now and prevent his future misdeeds?”
“Since he will be a loner,” advised the king after some reflection, “raise him properly and educate him. Maybe then he will lose his propensities towards evil.”
With that aim in mind, Bhaggava and Mantani chose to name their boy “Ahimsaka,” which means “Harmless One.” They hoped that he would grow into his name, and that his latent tendencies would remain dormant.
And, in fact, as he grew up, indeed Ahimsaka was well-behaved, but also unusually strong. He was also intelligent and very studious. And so it stood to reason (or so his parents hoped) that any evil dispositions in their son had been removed by their good education and by the wholesome religious atmosphere of home. And so far, his parents couldn’t have been more pleased.
In time, Bhaggava sent Ahimsaka for a higher education at Taxila, the great and ancient university of India. There, a preeminent teacher accepted Ahimsaka as his student, and Ahimsaka, devoted as ever to his studies, surpassed many of his fellow students.
He likewise served his teacher so humbly and faithfully and was so pleasant to be around that Ahimsaka soon became his teacher’s favorite. Before long, the teacher even began treating Ahimsaka as his own son, sharing his family’s food with him. This special treatment and his academic success made Ahimsaka’s fellow students very jealous.
“We have got to put a stop to this special treatment,” they agreed. And they settled on falsely accusing Ahimsaka, and slandering him before the teacher. Of course, it would be difficult to chip away at the armor that Ahimsaka’s studiousness, admirable conduct, and nobility had brought him. So the students decided to have three waves of them approach the teacher in succession, with the purpose of denigrating Ahimsaka.
At first, the teacher paid the students no heed at all and scolded them for saying that Ahimsaka was plotting against him. But the second and then third group of students came to the teacher, voicing the same slander and — even worse — that Ahimsaka was having an affair with the teacher’s wife. The confidence of the teacher then wavered, as a seed of doubt slowly took root. Suspicion began to flow into the teacher’s misled allegiance. Given Ahimsaka’s shrewdness and physical strength, the teacher came to believe that his fictive son might even want him dead!
And thus aroused, suspicion has a way of finding things to confirm it. And the teacher’s suspicion became conviction: ”I must kill him or be killed myself,” he thought.
But after further consideration the teacher had a another thought: ”It will not be easy to kill such a strong, young man. Anyway, his death, if done by me, will obviously mar my reputation. I must devise another way to punish him, as well as rid me of him for good.”
Not long afterward, Ahimsaka completed his studies and prepared to return home. As was customary, Ahimsaka wanted to honor his teacher with a gift of fealty. Not knowing quite what to offer, Ahimsaka asked the teacher, “What shall I give?”
“Why,” the teacher said, “You must bring me a thousand little fingers, each taken off of right hands. This will then be your concluding homage to the sciences you have learned.”
One of those sciences was, of course, that of reading horoscopes, and so the teacher had likely, himself, cast Ahimsaka’s horoscope to find his propensities towards violence and crime. The teacher now intended to induce these tendencies by expecting Ahimsaka to complete deeds during the course of which he would be killed himself, or be caught by the king’s men who would then execute him for murderous crimes. Surely, the teacher thought, this was a foolproof plan.
Yet, so outrageous was this demand that Ahimsaka naturally protested, “Master, how can I do that? My family are harmless and nonviolent.”
“Well,” said the teacher, cunningly, “If the sciences does not receive their due ceremonial homage, they will prove useless to you.”
Trapped in this way, Ahimsaka resigned himself, bowed to his teacher, and left.
Now no one can say for certain what, exactly, had motivated Ahimsaka to succumb to his teacher’s macabre demand. But that Ahimsaka failed to mount a stronger protest may be telling.
Of course, the primary duty of the student to his guru is to offer unquestioning obedience, and this obligation harkened back to the higher principles Ahimsaka’s family raised him with. However, a stronger possibility still was that karma from Ahimsaka’s past life must have manifest at this point from a latent and hidden disposition for dangerous adventure and brutality. For indeed, in previous lives, Ahimsaka had been a yakkha, a powerful and cruel spirit who relished killing to satisfy his appetite to eat human flesh. And his teacher’s words had evoked his dark past, leaving Ahimsaka’s good upbringing to be overrun (obscured?) by more prominent traits of supernatural physical strength, though bereft of any compassion. A thirst for killing consumed Ahimsaka once again.
So given this latent and re-emergent nature, Ahimsaka overlooked the fact that he could have easily met his teacher’s challenge by collecting 1,000 fingers from corpses thrown into open burial grounds known as “charnels.” Nonetheless, Ahimsaka took up weaponry, including a large sword, and returned to his home state of Kosala where he took to a residence high upon a cliff, among the wilds of the Jalini Forest. There he was given to violence and sorcery. He could strategically watch for travelers passing by on the road below from this perch. Upon sighting them, he quickly clambered down the cliff, slew them with his sword, and took only one finger from each victim. Each finger he was careful to hang in a tree where birds and other creatures ate the flesh, after which the dry, bleached bones fell to the ground. These, Ahimsaka strung together into a lei or garland that he wore around his neck. That’s how he became known as “Angulimāla”, “He who wears the finger garland.”
It wasn’t long before all those living around the forest were terrified, dreading the bandit whom no one had been able to subdue because of his vicious power and inhuman cruelty. Angulimāla reveled in the resurgence of a dark life full of bloodthirsty murders.
Soon, not even firewood gatherers dared go into the forest. And Angulimāla found himself traversing the small villages on the outskirts of Kosala, attacking passersby and cutting off their fingers to make his necklace grow. No one was able to combat his raw strength. Any surviving villagers fled to the capital of Savatti, camping outside the royal palace walls and weeping of lost loved ones. That is how the the king came to know of the slaughter in their villages. Not wasting another moment, the king decided on firm, swift action, proclaiming that his royal army would set out to capture Angulimāla.
But such was the transformation of Angulimāla that no one knew his true identity. Even his long beard and matted hair was covered in dried blood, which gave off a stench of rancid meat and the smell of death. He looked every bit the feral, fearsome killer that he was. He had even fully collected 999 of the thousand fingers with which to gift his teacher. The mild-mannered Ahimsaka was, of course, nowhere to be seen.
News of the mayhem and terror circulating in parts of the kingdom at last reached Ahimsaka’s parents. Indeed, his mother, Mantani, felt this marauder could be no one else than her own son. He never had never returned from Taxila University and she had feared he may have fallen into those evil ways predicted by his horoscope.
So Mantani pled with her husband, the Brahmin Bhaggava, saying: “That fearful bandit — it is our son! Now soldiers have set out to capture him. Please, dear, go find him, and plead with him to change his life, and bring him home! Otherwise the king will have him killed.”
But the Brahmin said, “I have no use for such a son. The king may do with him what he likes.”
However, a mother’s heart is soft, and Mantani’s love was undeterred as she set out herself for the forest, alone but hoping to find Angulimāla’s hideout. Her only wish was that she could warn him in time and save him, if only he would renounce his evil life and return with her.
For his part, Angulimāla was somewhat tiring of his criminal life, but having already gathered 999 fingers, Angulimāla desperately needed just a single finger more to complete the mandate of 1,000 set by his teacher. So as he saw a a woman approaching, almost instinctively, he clambering down the mountainside in full pursuit of her.
Now this was the twentieth year of the Buddha’s teaching career. And as he surveyed the world with the insight of compassion, he looked for those with wisdom or who were in need of help. And as karma would have it, in that same moment, the Buddha became aware of Angulimāla. Yet, given his keen faculty of remembering former existences, the Buddha knew he was no stranger to Angulimāla. In fact, in many a previous life the two had met before. In one such lifetime, Angulimāla had even been the very uncle to the Buddha.
On these prior occasions, the Buddha had subdued the bodily strength of Angulimāla’s previous incarnations by using his sheer strength of mind. Now, their paths had crossed again, and the Buddha saw the grave danger in which Angulimāla had placed himself. He saw Angulimāla running after his mother, intended her to be his final kill. But the Buddha also clearly saw that Angulimāla had a buddha-nature — the seed of consciousness and cognition required to become enlightened; or to put it another way, he had — as do all conscious, feeling beings, from insects to humans — the intrinsic goodness and potential to see the “suchness” of things and the realization of the true nature of everything.
Here, the Angulimāla Sutta, the Buddhist scripture that recounts this remarkable tale, says that the Buddha made haste over the thirty miles to Jalini Forest. He was indeed hoping to arrive in time to save both Angulimāla and his mother. But as the Buddha got closer to the forest, he passed by cowherds, shepherds, and plowmen who, upon seeing him taking the road in the direction where Angulimāla was, warned him: “Do not go that road, good monk. For on that road is the bloody-handed bandit, Angulimāla. Given as he is to harm and violence, he will be merciless to all living beings.”
Others, too, cautioned the Buddha, pointing out that entire villages and towns had been laid to waste by Angulimāla: “He kills mercilessly at every opportunity, and he strings his victims’ fingers as a ghastly lei,” some reported. Still others informed the Buddha that erstwhile bands of men had traversed this very road in groups of ten, twenty, thirty, and even forty men seeking vengeance. But even they had fallen into Angulimāla’s murderous clutches.
Yet that deterred the Buddha not the least, while still more villagers warned him. Nevertheless, the Buddha disregarded their pleas, too, as he advanced, in silence, deep into the forest.
So calloused and desperate was Angulimāla now that he might still have killed his mother. Notwithstanding, as he closed in on the woman, he finally realized that she was his very own mother. And for just a moment he recalled that to kill one’s own mother is one of five heinous offenses that surely and irrevocably lead to immediate rebirth in the lowest of hells. And that was just how close Angulimāla had veered toward hell’s rim.
Precisely then the Buddha appeared on the road, standing between Angulimāla and his exhausted mother. She bent over, tired from traversing such a distance powered only by sheer love alone.
Now, Angulimāla looked over the Buddha. He was perfectly calm and serene. And Angulimāla thought, ”Why then should I kill my mother for the sake of one finger when there is someone else? Let her live, while I make my final victim this ascetic monk and his finger.”
Little did Angulimāla know, however, that it was also an offense similar to matricide to kill a sacred monk. And so, the Sutta says, Angulimāla took up his sword and shield, his bow and quiver, and thrashing among the foliage, he tried as best he could to follow the Buddha through the forest.
To the surprise and shock of Angulimāla, however, the Buddha strode ahead with supernatural force, outpacing even the strength and superhuman speed of the bandit. Angulimāla could, in no way, catch the monk.
Pausing, Angulimāla thought to himself, “Before, I could easily catch up with even a galloping elephant and seize it; I could easily catch up with even a galloping horse and seize it; I could easily catch up with even a galloping chariot and seize it; In fact, so quick was I once that I caught up with even a galloping deer and seized it. But yet, nimble as I am, I cannot catch up with this monk though he walks a normal pace.” Too tired to run any further, Angulimāla shouted, “Stop, monk! Stop, monk!”
“This monk,” Angulimāla thought, perplexed, “He speaks truth. But though this monk is walking, he says ‘I have stopped, Angulimāla; do you stop too?’” Strange he thought. “What do you mean by that, monk?” Angulimāla queried the Blessed One. “While you are walking, monk, you tell me you have stopped. But now, when I have stopped, you say I have not stopped. I ask you now, what is the meaning of this? How is it you have stopped and I have not?”
The Buddha answered, “Angulimāla, I have stopped forever, foreswearing violence to every living being. But you have no restraint towards things that breathe. So that is why I have stopped and you have not.”
When Angulimāla heard these words, a second and greater change of heart came over him. He felt as if the stream of his nobler and purer urges, previously suppressed, had now broken through the dam of his hardened cruelty that had been built up through habituation in all these last years of his life. Almost miraculously, his former good deeds and purity resurfaced. Indeed, Angulimāla was deeply moved by the appearance and the words of the Buddha. He knew with a certainty that the Buddha had come to the Jalani Forest solely on his behalf. Consequently, Angulimāla knelt immediately and bowed his head, pledging to change on the instant.
At this point the Sutta records Angulimāla saying: ”Oh, at long last a sage so revered by me, this very monk, has now appeared in the great forest and teaches me the Dharma, the Truth. I will, indeed and forever, renounce all evil.”
Upon that vow, the serial murderer took his sword and weapons and flung them into the pit of a gaping chasm, after which he supplicated at the Buddha’s feet. While worshipping the Buddha’s feet, Angulimāla asked the Enlightened One for the ordination of “Going-forth,” which is when a layperson renounces all worldly desires and vows to join the community of monks.
The Teacher addressed Angulimāla with these words “Come bhikkhu, the new monk.”
And that — being introduced to the Dharma by the Buddha — is how Angulimāla became a Buddhist monk and was instructed in the conduct of a monk. While Angulimāla’s ordination name, “Ahimsaka, the Harmless One”, was the same as his birth name, Angulimāla nonetheless chose to keep his most notorious name as a precautionary reminder to himself of another nature.
Not long afterwards the Buddha, with Angulimāla at his side and flanked by many other monks, set out for the Jetavana monastery in Savatthi, which, of course, was Angulimāla’s home territory.
The villagers of Savatthi, however, did not yet know about Angulimala’s great transformation. And so they complained to the King Pasenadi that he had hesitated too long to send out the army detachment to capture Angulimāla. Late as it was, the king himself organized a large group of his best soldiers and set out for the Jalini forest, Angulimāla’s previous, treacherous haunt.
On the way, the army passed by the monastery where the Buddha had just arrived. Having been a devoted follower of the Buddha for many years, King Pasenadi stopped in to pay his respects to the Enlightened One.
The Buddha, seeing the soldiers in battle gear, asked King Pasenadi whether he had been attacked by a neighboring king and so might be retaliating with war?
There was no war, the king said. Nor was he trying to overthrow another kingdom. No, he was tracking down a single man, the murderous and dreaded Angulimāla. “But,” the king continued, “I doubt we will ever be a match for his strength and evilness. We may never be able to put him down.”
Then the Buddha said: “But, great King, if you were to see Angulimāla with shaven head and beard, clothed in the saffron-colored robe, gone forth from the home life into homelessness; and that he was abstaining from killing any living being, from taking that which is not given him, and from false speech, and, eating only one time of day; that he was living the life of purity in virtue and noble conduct — if you saw him thus, how would you treat him?”
“Venerable Sir,” said the king, “We should pay homage to him, invite him to accept the four requirements of a monk, and should arrange for his protection. But, how could such a vile person of evil character have such virtue and restraint?”
Then the Master extended his right arm and said: “Here, great King. This is Angulimāla.”
A serene, shaven monk clad in orange robe walked towards the king.
The king was now greatly alarmed and fearful. His hair stood on end. He lost all composure, so frightened was he of Angulimāla’s reputation. In fact, he backed away in terror. But the Buddha said: “Do not be afraid, great King. There is nothing for you to fear.”
It had moved the king deeply that the Buddha had been able to turn this cruel serial killer into a gentle member of his monastic order. And slowly, the king regained his composure. He approached the now venerable Angulimāla, then asked him for the name of the clans his father and mother belonged to. He asked for this genealogy because he thought it unbefitting to address the monk by a name that was derived from his heinous deeds. Upon hearing that Angulimāla’s father was a Gagga and his mother a Mantani, he surprised himself, recalling that this “Angulimāla” was not unknown to him: he now recollected him as the son of his Royal Chaplain, and he also remembered the strange circumstances on the night of his birth.
So now, the king offered his full support of the noble “Gagga Mantaniputta”, or “Brahmin son of Mantani,” a name the king addressed the monk by so that all of his associations with the past should be forgotten. King Pasendi promised to provide all the monk’s requisites: robes, food, shelter, and medicine. But Angulimāla had already vowed to strictly observe dhutanga, the three ascetic observances: he would live in the forest, subsist only on food gathered during daily alms, and would clothe himself with three robes thrown away as garbage. Hence he replied, “I have enough, great King. My triple robe is complete.”
Amazed at the transformation, King Pasenadi turned again to the Buddha and exclaimed, “It is wonderful, Venerable Sir! It is marvelous how the Blessed One subdues the untamed, pacifies the unpeaceful, and calms the restless. Him whom we could not control with punishments and weapons, the Blessed One has conquered without punishment and weapon.”
But it happened that as soon as Angulimāla had taken up going on the daily alms round, as monks customarily did to sustain themselves, people ran in dread from him and locked their doors. It was this way on the outskirts of Savatthi, where Angulimāla had first gone, and it was the same response in the city, where Angulimāla had hoped he would not be so conspicuous. And so Angulimāla could not get even a spoonful of food or a ladle of gruel during his alms rounds.
Beyond that, the villagers resented seeing Angulimāla in monks’ robes and said, “How can these monks ordain a notorious criminal! What future criminal wouldn’t want to use such a ploy to escape their punishment?”
The monks who heard this clamoring relayed it to the Buddha. The Buddha well knew that, though he himself was able to perceive innate potential for good in a criminal, others might not have that capacity. Accepting former criminals as monks, the Buddha realized, might cause problems to the monastic order if misused as a safe harbor or cover by unrepentant criminals who merely hoped to escape arrest and punishment. And so then the Buddha proclaimed a rule: “Notorious criminals should not be ordained as monks. He who does ordain such a monk commits an offense of wrong-doing.”
This new rule may have softened the attitudes of a small number of villagers, resulting in a few who began to actually give alms to Angulimāla on his rounds. But the vast majority remained ever hostile to Angulimāla, and soon he realized the futility of making the rounds for alms within his hometown. Yet he pressed on with his duties as a monk.
While Angulimāla continued to adhere to and practice the Buddha’s teachings, he met with great difficulty focusing his mind on meditation, though he tried day and night. He was plagued with lucid visions of his former victims his mind’s eye. He recalled the jungle where he had slain so many people. Angulimāla was haunted by their cries of pain and torment and their pleading for their lives. He heard vividly their plaintive voices imploring him, “Let me live, my Lord! I am a poor man and have many children!” And he saw, once more, the frantic movements of their flailing arms and legs when caught in the throes of death.
Faced with such horrific memories, Angulimāla found it impossible to still his thoughts or calm his mind. A deep remorse gripped him. He got up from his seat and left, gripped by a terror of his own making.
One day, when collecting alms, Angulimāla met up with a young woman in intense and painful labour who was having a most difficult birth with a deformed child. But at that moment Angulimāla had an epiphany of compassion arise within him as he thought, “How much beings suffer! How much they do suffer!”
On his return to the monastery, he asked the Buddha what he could do to help the woman?
The Buddha then replied in a stanza of Truth, the part of the Dharma now known as the Angulimāla Sutta: “In that case, Angulimāla, go into Savatthi and say to that woman: ‘Sister, since I was born with a noble birth, I don’t remember having ever purposely deprived a living being of their life. By this Act of Truth may you and the infant be safe and well!’”
In a quandary, Angulimāla responded, “Venerable Sir, by saying that, would I not be speaking a falsehood? For many living beings have been purposely deprived of life by me.”
But based upon his purified karma, Angulimāla believed the Truth, which then had a miraculous effect, as Angulimāla followed the Buddha’s instructions.
Angulimāla then had it announced to the woman that he would be coming. People there put up a curtain in the woman’s room, and on the other side of the curtain a chair was placed on which the monk was to sit.
Angulimāla then arrived at the woman’s house. He averred, as the Buddha had told him to, and repeated the Act of Truth that since his noble birth he had never purposely deprived a living being of their life. “By this truth may you and the infant be safe!” he prayed.
Miraculously, the woman ceased to suffer, and there was soon a safe delivery for mother and child. Thus he who had destroyed so many lives was able to give life and well-being to others.
Angulimāla was deeply moved himself by this. He also saw that the cycle of samsara, the suffering of this present world, was infinitely more cruel, being a never-ending process of dying and being reborn, only to die again.
Now the Buddha did not generally engage in “raising the dead” or in “spiritual healing,” or encourage his disciples to perform such miracles of faith. He knew that those so revived would still die one day. His was a greater compassion of showing to sentient beings the true state of Deathlessness and the way to acquire it.
But why had the Buddha made an exception in the case of Angulimāla, and instructed him to use the power of the Act of Truth for the purpose of healing?
Here is a reflection by the teachers of old:
There may be those who ask: Why did the Blessed One make a monk do a physician’s work? — To that we answer: That is not what the Buddha did. An Act of Truth is not a medical function; it is done after reflecting on one’s own virtue. The Blessed One knew that Angulimāla had wearied of collecting alms-food, because people were frightened when seeing him, and ran away. To help him in that situation, he let Angulimāla do an Act of Truth.
Seeing that Angulimāla’s Act of Truth engendered genuine compassion and brought health and safety to the mother and her child, the people lost their fear of Angulimāla. The people were then generous with their alms, and Angulimāla was then fit to go about his work as a monk.
And so, the Buddha had made an exception by asking Angulimāla to perform that Act of Truth about his noble birth, expecting that Angulimāla would, at last, take his birth as something extraordinary, and thus strengthen his insight that would lead to his Enlightenment.
And in return for that great help that the Buddha had extended to him, Angulimāla showed his overflowing gratitude to his Master in the best way possible: by perfectly accomplishing the task the Buddha had charged him with — the very attainment of arahatta, that final freedom of perfection and holiness or, in other words, sainthood.
It is said in the Sutta: “Dwelling alone, withdrawn, but diligent and self-controlled, the venerable Angulimāla, by realization here and now, entered upon and abided in that supreme goal of the holy life for the sake of which noble sons rightly go forth from the home life into homelessness. He knew directly that ‘Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out. What was to be done is done. There is no more of this to come.’”
And by that diligent practice Mantaniputta, the former murderer-turned-venerable Angulimāla, became one of the eighty eminent arahants who were worthy of the highest attainments of Enlightenment.
By now, many of the people of Savatthi had witnessed Angulimāla’s inner transformation, and acknowledged him now by his most befitting name, “Ahimsaka,” the Harmless One.
Of course, many whose family members he had killed never forgave him. And there were still those who could not forget how humiliated they had been in their weakness up against Angulimāla, the bandit and killer and sorcerer with superior prowess. Driven by that resentment, these few sought to mete out a final act of revenge against the now venerable Angulimāla.
So together the townsmen, mean as they were at a safe distance from Angulimāla as he went on his final round seeking alms, cast sticks and hurled stones at him. Angulimāla was struck hard, but with blood running from his fractured head onto his torn patchwork of a robe, he scooped up his broken bowl and hobbled back to the Buddha.
Seeing Angulimāla coming his way, the Buddha met him and said, “Bear it, Brahmin. Bear it, Brahmin! You have experienced here and now the ripening of karma, whose ripening you might have otherwise experienced in hell over many a year, many a century, or many a millennium even.”
And being a saintly arahant, Angulimāla’s mind and heart were firm and unflinching. Yet his body — product of former cravings, the symbol and fruit of his previous karma wrought by brutal attacks — recouped the consequences of his former, evil deeds and received these blows. But not his mind: it had already achieved liberation, and remained in invulnerable equipoise. He, as an arahant now, was also in no need of either consolation or encouragement.
The Buddha’s words had reminded Angulimāla of the karmic law of sowing and reaping. For, if past karmas must work themselves out, even in the case of an arhant, and if arhantship represents the final rebirth of an emancipated being, and if even a murderer can become an arhant, then it also follows that an arhant may be severely afflicted by all of the unresolved karmas of his past births. This may have the appearance of being the very opposite of an arhant — an anti-arhant, in fact. It appears that Angulimāla was an arhant of just this type.
Thereafter Angulimāla lived an austere, solitary life in forests, caves, glades, and mountains, reaping the contentedness of having, in the end, made the right choice in his life. Angulimāla’s “noble birth” — his second and spiritual rebirth as a follower of the Buddha and ordained monk — finally had culminated in his attainment of Enlightened sainthood.
Copyright © 2022 Shaun Campbell. This page was last edited on 22 August 2022.
