Summary of Nyanaponika & Hellmuth Hecker's Great Disciples of the Buddha

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Buddhist universe is made up of three primary realms, with several subsidiary planes. The grossest tier is the sense-desire realm, which consists of eleven planes: the hells, the animal kingdom, the sphere of ghosts, the human realm, the sphere of titans, and the six sensuous heavens.

#2 The distinction between the two types of disciples is based on their relationship to the goal of Buddhism. The class of ordinary disciples, who are still technically worldlings or commoners, are those who have gone for refuge to the Three Jewels and are devoted to the practice of the Dhamma. However, they have not yet reached the plane where liberation is irreversible.

#3 The first stage of awakening is called stream-entry, because it is with this attainment that the disciple can properly be said to have entered the stream of the Dhamma. It is won with the first arising of the vision of the Dhamma and is marked by the eradication of the coarsest three fetters: personality view, the view of a substantial self within the empirical person, doubt in the Buddha and his Teaching, and wrong grasp of rules and vows.

#4 The path of arahantship is attained by the elimination of the five subtle fetters that remain unbroken in the non-returner: desire for existence in the form and formless realms, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. When the path of arahantship arises fully comprehending the Four Noble Truths, ignorance collapses, and all the other residual defilements follow suit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822526006

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Insights on Nyanaponika & Hellmuth Hecker's Great Disciples of the Buddha

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Buddhist universe is made up of three primary realms, with several subsidiary planes. The grossest tier is the sense-desire realm, which consists of eleven planes: the hells, the animal kingdom, the sphere of ghosts, the human realm, the sphere of titans, and the six sensuous heavens.

#2

The distinction between the two types of disciples is based on their relationship to the goal of Buddhism. The class of ordinary disciples, who are still technically worldlings or commoners, are those who have gone for refuge to the Three Jewels and are devoted to the practice of the Dhamma. However, they have not yet reached the plane where liberation is irreversible.

#3

The first stage of awakening is called stream-entry, because it is with this attainment that the disciple can properly be said to have entered the stream of the Dhamma. It is won with the first arising of the vision of the Dhamma and is marked by the eradication of the coarsest three fetters: personality view, the view of a substantial self within the empirical person, doubt in the Buddha and his Teaching, and wrong grasp of rules and vows.

#4

The path of arahantship is attained by the elimination of the five subtle fetters that remain unbroken in the non-returner: desire for existence in the form and formless realms, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. When the path of arahantship arises fully comprehending the Four Noble Truths, ignorance collapses, and all the other residual defilements follow suit.

#5

Buddhism believes that history develops in cycles of growth and decline, within the wider cycles of the cosmic process. A Buddha is a being who rediscovers and proclaims the lost path to Nibbāna, which allows countless other beings to learn the Dhamma and follow the path to the goal.

#6

Among the monks, there is one who is foremost among those with a gentle voice, and one who is foremost among those who compose spontaneous verse. Among the nuns, there is a chief patroness, a foremost preacher, and a foremost master of the discipline.

#7

The pāramī are the ten sublime virtues required of all aspirants to great discipleship. They are giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity.

#8

The suddenness with which the great disciples attain realization is not a defiance of the normal laws of spiritual growth, but the culmination of a long, slow process of preparation that began in their past lives.

#9

The life of the Buddha’s disciples is a source of inspiration and edification for those who are devoted to the spiritual ideals of early Buddhism. The proper way to approach this book is as an exercise in contemplation rather than as an enterprise of objective scholarship.

#10

The disciples we will explore in the pages that follow were chosen based on their spiritual stature and prominence within the Buddhist tradition. However, we had to balance this criterion by another factor that severely limited our choices: the availability of relevant source material.

#11

The editors were able to collect enough material to write biographies of 24 disciples, including six chapters on Elder monks: Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna, the two chief disciples, who shared most fully the Buddha’s burden of establishing the Dispensation through the forty-five years of his ministry.

#12

The chapter on the women disciples is followed by a portrait of a bhikkhu who does not rank among the eighty great disciples but whose life story is still of almost mythical stature. This is the monk Angulimāla.

#13

The Sutta Piṭaka, the foundational stone of Theravada Buddhism, is a collection of four major collections: the Dīgha Nikāya, the Majjhima Nikāya, the Saṁyutta Nikāya, and the Aṅguttara Nikāya. Within these collections, we find four works that are relevant to the lives of the great disciples.

#14

The Jātaka collection, which contains 547 birth stories about the Bodhisatta, the future Buddha Gotama, during his past existences, was used to foster the imagination and draw fable and fantasy into the service of the Dhamma.

#15

There are four biographical commentaries on the Dhammapada: the Theragāthā, the Therīgāthā, the Paramatthadīpanī, and the Dhammapada Commentary. They all relate the incidents that prompted the Buddha to speak a certain verse, and they often take us back in time beyond the immediate background incident to the whole complex web of circumstances that culminated in the verse.

#16

The biographies in this book were constructed piecemeal from the bricks and beams of the textual heritage. They were based on the Pāli Canon, but they did not structure their narratives according to a principle of continuous flow. They preferred to treat events in a