V Mahakassapa's First Meeting with the Buddha | Sutta Exploration | Ajahn Dhammasiha | Dhammagiri | SN 16.11

Ajahn Dhammasiha presents the story of Ven Mahākassapa's first encounter with the Buddha.

[Saṃyutta Nikāya / Connected Discourses, 16. 'Kassapasamyutta', #11] 

While walking along the road from Rājagaha to Nālanda, Ven Mahakassapa sees the Buddha sitting under a tree close to the road. Although he has never seen him before, and doesn't know about his teaching, he still recognizes him immediately as his spiritual teacher. He walks up to the Buddha, prostrates himself at his feet, and declares himself as his disciple.

The Buddha accepts him, and straight away ordained him as a Bhikkhu by means of an exhortation.

It's fascinating that we still have this original first teaching to one of the greatest disciples available today!

It's also intruiging how simple and down to earth the Buddha's instructions are. Which shows that even the meditation instructions to individuals of highest spiritual abilities and pāramī are not necessarily complicated or abstruse.

This great disciple initially received only the three following instructions from the Buddha:

1. Train yourself to set up a keen sense of shame and conscience to senior, middle and junior monks.
   
   


2. Train yourself, whenever you listen to the Dhamma connected with the wholesome, that you listen with full attention, with eager ears, keen to compprehend the meaning, completely inclining your mind to it as a matter of vital concern.
   
   


3. Train yourself to never slacken in deveoping mindfulness of the body connected with joy ('sātasahagatā').

Ajahn Dhammasiha points out that even the foremost disciple of the ascetic practices ('dhūtanga') is here explicitly instructed to develop joy as an essential ingrediant in his meditation.

A short time later, the Buddha even exchanges his old, threadbare, hempen robe with Ven Mahākassapa's much nicer patchwork robe. No other disciple received that favour. In accepting the Buddha's robe, Ven Mahākassapa symbolically accepted the maintenance of the ascetic 'dhūtanga' practices. 

Finally, wearing the Buddha's robe is a powerful symbol for the crucial role Ven Mahākassapa assumed after the Buddha's Parinibbāna, when he organised the first council and oversaw the collection and preservation of the Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas.

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