The Tale of the Mass Suicide of Monks. Fact or Fiction?
(Asokan pillar, at Vaishali, Bihar, India)
The story of the mass suicide of monks is one of the most perplexing in the Pāli canon. It relates how muItiple suicides occur among monks after the Buddha recommends to them a meditation on the unattractiveness of the body. Although one might expect it to be very noteworthy event in the life of the Buddha, none of the three biographies I possess mentions it (Armstrong, 2002; Dhammika, 2023; Nakamura, 2000). So, what are we to make of this story? Could it have actually happened, or is the tale, especially as recorded in one of the versions, too absurd to be true. And if the story is fictional or represents an embellishment of a authentic account why and how did the existing accounts develop?
In considering these questions I will draw liberally on an excellent paper by Anālayo (2014) in which he compares accounts in Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan texts of various Buddhist schools. I am going to concentrate on the Pāli texts but I think it can be said that the parallel texts in the various languages do not differ substantially from one another.
The shorter narrative is to be found in the Vesālī Sutta, one of a collection of suttas on the mindfulness of breathing in the Saṃyutta Nikāya (SN) of the Sutta Piṭaka (SN 54.9 at SN V 320-322).
The essence of the narrative is as follows:
After teaching monks a meditation on the unattractiveness or lack of beauty of the body, the Buddha goes on a solitary retreat for two weeks, during which no one is to approach him except for the bringer of almsfood. The monks commit themselves to the meditation and became so disgusted with their bodies that they seek a means to kill themselves. We are told in the sutta that each day ten, twenty, or thirty mendicants take their own lives. When, after a fortnight, the Buddha returns he asks why the monk community appears to be diminished in size and Ānanda tells him what has happened. He asks the Buddha to teach an alternative means to gain Enlightenment. The Buddha proceeds to teach to the remaining monks the mindfulness of breathing practice.
In the Vinaya version (Vin III 68,19) the story is longer.[1] According to this account, having practised the meditation on unattractiveness,
“Just as a young woman or man—someone fond of adornments, with freshly washed hair—would be ashamed, humiliated, and disgusted if the carcass of a snake, dog, or man was hung around her neck, just so those monks were troubled by their own bodies.”
The monks take their own lives or take the lives of one another, and approach a certain Migalaṇḍika[2] and ask him to kill them, offering as an inducement their bowls and robes. Migalaṇḍika proceeds to kill a number of monks after which he takes his blood-stained knife to the river Vaggumudā.
While washing his knife, he begins to question what he has done, in particular considering the demerit he may have accumulated by killing good monks. But a Māra deity praises him for his actions and advises him that he is fortunate and has “made much merit by helping across those who hadn’t yet crossed.”
Migalaṇḍika then goes around asking the remaining monks who has not yet crossed and who he can help across. The monks who still have worldly attachments become terrified and “on a single day, Migalaṇḍika kills one monk, two monks, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty. fifty, even sixty monks.” The Vinaya account then continues as for the discourse version except that the Vinaya tale provides more detail on the mindfulness of breathing practice and the Buddha goes on to rebuke the remaining monks for what had happened and offers a training rule to be recited as follows:
“If a monk intentionally kills a human being or seeks an instrument of death for them, he too is expelled and excluded from the community.”
The disparity between these two versions is notable — especially as both accounts, the SN discourse and the parallel Vinaya text, belong to the same Theravāda canon. The principal differences concern the extent to which the mindfulness of breathing practice is described and the role of the character, Migalaṇḍika.
The contexts of the two texts within the canon and their primary purposes may be relevant. The SN discourse occurs among collected sayings on mindfulness of breathing and so a shortened narrative in respect of this practice would suffice, as other suttas in the collection provide more detailed accounts. In such a collection of discourses on this meditation practice it would however be relevant to emphasise the function of mindfulness of breathing as an antidote to excessive disgust with the body, but the details of how the monks killed themselves would not be relevant. In the Vinaya account however the issue is killing and assisting suicide, so that it would be more important to include the part played by Migalaṇḍika.
The SN discourse states that the monks satthahārakam pariyesanti. This has been translated to imply they were looking for someone to kill them — which would imply in this shorter text knowledge of the Migalaṇḍika episode. A more likely translation however is they were looking not for a killer, but for a means to kill themselves — in which case the discourse would lack any possible reference to Migalaṇḍika’s actions.
One might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that the SN discourse preserves an earlier version of the tale and that the Vinaya account is a later version that incorporated the role of Migalaṇḍika. Anālayo (2014, p. 17) suggests however, that as both these Theravāda versions state that the Buddha went on retreat, which is apparently not recorded in any of the other versions (in other languages and of other Buddhist schools), these two Theravāda versions did not develop independently of one another. This would then make it more likely that the absence of the Migalaṇḍika episode in the SN discourse was deliberate, and that it was omitted perhaps as it was not so relevant to the teaching purpose of the discourse as part of a collection of texts on mindfulness of breathing practice.
But, how are we to reconcile the disastrous results of the monks attempting to engage in something the Buddha had recommended, with the traditional belief that the Buddha was a celebrated and skilful teacher?
Meditation on unattractiveness can no doubt be a useful practice to counter sensual craving in the right circumstances and after full instruction. So the question arises as to whether the meditation practice was recommended in this instance without sufficient instruction having been provided. It seems to me that the extent of instruction that the Buddha provided is uncertain as the sutta states that:
“the Buddha spoke to the monks in many ways [my italics] about unattractiveness—he spoke in praise of unattractiveness, of developing the mind in unattractiveness, and of the attainment of unattractiveness.”
Also, I believe it is unusual for a detailed description of meditational technique to be recorded in the Pāli canon, so that a lack of detail in the text does not necessarily indicate a lack of instruction was given.
But whether or not the practice was taught fully does not materially alter the inpression of unskilfulness and lack of foresight on the part of the Buddha in recommending a practice be carried out in his absence, which would lead to such tragic consequences.
The mass suicide of the monks becomes especially problematic if the Buddha is held to have been omniscient. The Buddha is however not recorded in the Nikāyas as having made such a claim — certainly not of omniscience that involves all factual knowledge of things in the past, present and future. What the Buddha might be considered to have possessed was penetrative insight into whatever is seen, heard and experienced — into the nature of all things. This would accord with the early Buddhist usage of the term, “all” referring to the senses and their objects i.e subjective experience. Later developments in Buddhist thought would however tend to deify the Buddha and attribute to him omniscience, in the sense of some all-encompassing factual knowledge of all information relating to the past, present and future (Anālayo, 2006, pp.9-11).
The number of monks killed differs in the different versions of the story. In the Theravāda Vinaya account, Migalaṇḍika having earlier killed a number of monks, killed up to sixty monks per day during a second killing spree. The precise total of casualties is unknown in this account but must be impressive. The large number may be interpreted as an attempt to dramatise the event, in the belief that this would increase the impact of the teaching. Such a strategy however would run the risk of stretching credibility with a consequent loss of didactic effectiveness.
As for the idea that one might help monks who have not yet crossed to cross over by assisting them in suicide, this would accord with beliefs in some ancient Indian ascetic traditions that suicide was an appropriate means to liberation in certain circumstances. There is, for instance, a Jain practice often referred to as sallekhanā, where the accomplished saint fasts to death.
Asceticism, including an attitude of disgust towards the body, would have been common among spiritual seekers at the time fo the Buddha. Indeed the Buddha’s first five disciples were reluctant to listen to him as he had relinquished his severe ascetic practice. It was avoidance of excessive asceticism and pursuit of a middle way that the Buddha taught to “the five” in the first discourse after his awakening. Beliefs in the value of asceticism continued however to be prevalent. We are told Devadatta caused the first schism in the early Buddhist tradition through his request that some ascetic practices be required for all monks.
In summary, the Vinaya account verges on the fantastic, so that one would expect loss of credibility to reduce the pedagogical impact of the story. The tale in the Vesālī Sutta, while more believable, is nevertheless a dramatic one of mass suicide of monks after hearing a talk by the Buddha on the unattractiveness of the body. In both accounts the Buddha appears in an extremely poor light, which make one wonder how the story ever came to be included among the discourses and in the Vinaya.
The unfavourable portrayal of the Buddha would tend to suggest that there is a kernel of truth to the story. Perhaps a monk or some monks did commit suicide after carrying out this particular practice and that someone assisted with their deaths. The story may then have been embellished for dramatic effect and pedagogical purpose: to teach mindfulness of breathing as a counter to excessive disgust towards the body and in training monk to set limits to asceticism. Ultimately however, we can only speculate about the origins of these two accounts.
References:
Anālayo (2006) The Buddha and Omniscience. The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies. 7: 1-20.
Anālayo (2014) The Mass Suicide of Monks in Discourse and Vinaya Literature with an Addendum by Richard Gombrich. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. 7: 11–55.
Armstrong, Karen (2002) Buddha. London, UK: Phoenix.
Dhammika, Sharavasti (2023) Footprints in the Dust: The Life of the Buddha from the Most Ancient Sources. Pariyatti Press. Kindle Edition.
Nakamura, Hajime (2000) Gotama Buddha. A Biography Based in the Most Reliable Texts. Volume One. Tokyo, Japan: Kosei Publishing Co.
[1] Theravāda Vinaya, Mahāvibhaṅga (The Great Analysis), Pārājikakaṇḍa (The chapter on offenses entailing expulsion), Tatiyapārājikasikkhāpada (The third training rule on expulsion). I have used a translation by Bhikkhu Brahmali on Sutta Central :
https://suttacentral.net/pli-tv-bu-vb-pj3/en/brahmali?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin
[2] said to be samaṇakuttaka: “who wears the dress of a Samaṇa” (PED); ‘the monastic lookalike’ in Brahmali’s translation