..续本文上一页Soreyya should offer alms to the Venerable Maha Kaccana, who was living close by, and then beg pardon from him for having given rise to such a lewd thought.
The friend then went to the elder and invited him to come to the lady”s house for alms on the following day. When the Venerable Maha Kaccana arrived, the friend brought Lady Soreyya into his presence, informed him of what had happened long ago, and asked him to pardon her for that transgression. As soon as the elder uttered the words "I pardon you," Lady Soreyya was transformed back into a man. Shaken out of all worldly complacency by this double metamorphosis, Soreyya determined that he could never again lead the household life. He took ordination as a bhikkhu under Maha Kaccana, and after a short time attained arahantship together with the supernormal powers.
Vassakara, the chief minister of Magadha under the parricide King Ajatasattu, was less fortunate, though his misfortune sprang entirely from his own pride and obstinacy and not from some force outside his control. The commentary to the Majjhima Nikaya reports that one day, when Vassakara saw the Venerable Maha Kaccana coming down from the mountain Vulture Peak, he exclaimed: "He looks just like a monkey!"[14] Such an exclamation seems strange, particularly as Maha Kaccana is described in the texts as being especially handsome and graceful in his physical presence. Whatever the reason for the remark, news of the incident spread and eventually reached the Buddha. The Blessed One said that if Vassakara should go to the elder and beg his pardon, all would be well; but if he does not ask pardon he would be reborn as a monkey in the Bamboo Grove in Rajagaha. This was reported back to Vassakara. As the chief minister of the kingdom, he must have been too proud to beg forgiveness from a mendicant monk. Thus, reflecting that whatever the Buddha says must turn out to be true, he resigned himself to his future fate and made preparations for his next existence by planting trees in the Bamboo Grove and setting up a guard to protect the wild life there. It is said that some time after his death a monkey was born in the Bamboo Grove who would draw near when one called out "Vassakara."
The circumstances of the Venerable Maha Kaccana”s death are not recorded in the texts, but at the end of the Madhura Sutta (discussed below) Maha Kaccana declares that the Buddha has attained Parinibbana, so it is evident from this that he himself outlived his Master.
5. The Elaborator of Brief Statements
The Buddha honored the Venerable Maha Kaccana by naming him his foremost disciple in the ability to provide detailed expositions of his own brief statements. Maha Kaccana earned this distinguished title principally because of eight suttas found in the Nikayas: three in the Majjhima, three in the Samyutta, and two in the Anguttara. Besides these, we find in the Nikayas several other discourses that the Venerable Maha Kaccana spoke without basing himself upon a brief utterance of the Buddha as his text. All these discourses, taken together, have a uniform and distinctive flavor, revealing the qualities of the mind from which they sprang. They are thorough, balanced, careful and cautious, substantial in content, meticulous in expression, incisive, well conceived, and well rounded. They are also, admittedly, a little dry — unemotional and unsentimental — but with no wastage of words they never fail to lead us straight to the heart of the Dhamma.
The discourses of Maha Kaccana are bare of the rhetorical devices utilized by other renowned exponents of the Dhamma: we find in them no similes, parables, or stories; their language is plain but impeccably precise. In this respect his sermons contrast with those of the Buddha, the Venerable Sariputta, and …
《Maha Kaccana - Master of Doctrinal Exposition》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…