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Appendix Two

Mnemonic Questions

In the culture of the Buddha’s time, writing was used for calculating, accounting, and other business and government transactions, but not for recording spiritual teachings. Perhaps it was considered too lowly for this purpose or too unreliable: Scribal errors could easily creep into a teaching and not be recognized as such. A great deal of effort was thus put into finding mnemonic devices to help students memorize large bodies of spiritual teachings—in particular, the traditions of the Vedas. At the same time, groups of students were taught to memorize together as a way of compensating for the vagaries of each individual memory. Thus by the Buddha’s time, Indian culture had developed a sophisticated tradition for training people to develop the mental skills needed to maintain spiritual teachings accurately from one generation to the next.

Working within this culture, the Buddha presented his teachings so that they would be easy both to memorize and to understand. His use of questions was geared to help accomplish both of these aims. In this book, we have focused on questions framed primarily for the sake of understanding, and secondarily for memorization, but the Buddha also employed questions in which these priorities were reversed: either as a way of introducing basic topics for new students to memorize, or as a mnemonic aid for those who had already come to understand the teachings but needed help in trying to remember them. Strictly speaking, these questions all fall under the category of categorical questions, but because of their special purpose and the special issues surrounding them, I am treating them separately in this appendix.

The primary mnemonic device in these questions is the use of numbers. In this, these questions are obviously connected to a common opening question-format in the Buddha’s discourses: “Nandaka, a disciple of the noble ones endowed with four qualities is a stream-winner… Which four?” “Monks, there are these five faculties. Which five?” These numerical introductions clearly serve a mnemonic function, but the discourses they introduce differ from purely mnemonic ones in that the factors in their lists of four, five, etc., are organically related.

In the mnemonic discourses, however, the relationship among the factors is purely numerical, with one factor bearing little if any relationship to its neighbors aside from the fact that they share the same number of sub-factors or fall into a numerical sequence. For this reason, these discourses do not follow the Buddha’s instructions in §8, that a Dhamma teacher should speak explaining the sequence, but perhaps these discourses were not considered Dhamma talks. As DN 33 suggests, they may have been designed for the monks to chant together, as a way of providing successive generations with short compendia of the major teachings.

On the shorter end of the spectrum, these mnemonic discourses consist of brief riddles—or riddles implicit in cryptic statements:

On the longer end of the spectrum, mnemonic discourses are arranged around architectonic questionnaires that organize large bodies of disparate materials in a numerical way. The prime examples here are DN 33 & 34, both of which are attributed to Ven. Sāriputta.

The questions framing mnemonic discourses fall into two broad categories: those that do not provide a framework for understanding the answer, and those that do. DN 33, for example, falls into the first category, in that the basic framework of its organizing questions is purely numerical.

Each of these questions—in which x ranges from one to ten—is then followed by a list of lists, with little if anything in the framework of the discourse to indicate how the individual lists are to be used in the practice.

However, in DN 34 the framework questions call for a rudimentary understanding of the lists given in response, in that they are organized not only by number but also by function.

Here again, in each set of questions, x ranges from one through ten. And even though the answers in each set of x are related only by number, the fact that the lists are sorted by function gives more coherence to the discourse and makes it more useful in practice.

This distinction between mnemonic questions that are purely numerical and those that provide a context in addition to number occurs in other discourses as well. Perhaps the most interesting examples of this distinction occur in the three discourses that discuss in detail a set of ten questions that apparently served as a sort of catechism in the early Buddhist Saṅgha.

The simplest statement of this catechism is Khp 4, The Novice’s Questions:

In this version of the catechism, the questions are purely numerical, functioning simply to test one’s memory of basic Buddhist terms, without providing a framework for understanding what those terms mean and how to use them in practice. Apparently this version of the catechism would be employed in a situation where the teacher could then provide this understanding, drawing on other discourses to explain the answers. For example, to explain the nine abodes of beings, the teacher could quote from DN 15:

To explain the ten qualities of the arahant, the teacher could quote from AN 10:112:

Thus the questions of the Novice’s Questions require a teaching context before they can provide understanding. On their own, they simply provide aids in memorizing basic Buddhist vocabulary.

SN 41:8 contains what is apparently a reference to the ten Novice’s Questions. In that discourse, Citta the householder—after a brief but fruitless conversation with Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta—states that Nigaṇṭha Nāṭaputta and his following would be fit to engage with him in discussion only when they learn the meaning of these ten questions. However, Citta’s reference to the questions provides no context for understanding their answers. In fact, he doesn’t even state what the questions or answers are.

Citta’s reference to the questions is not only cryptic, but—if he really is referring to the Novice’s Questions—a little misleading. He seems to indicate that each set contains an ever-increasing number of questions, synopses, and answers, whereas in fact each set contains only a single question, etc., about topics that have increasing numbers in their answers.

The fact that he is referring to these questions is supported by AN 10:27 and AN 10:28, which provide two alternative ways of explaining Citta’s reference by following a form similar to that of the Novice’s Questions. Their major difference from the Novice’s Questions is that their framing questions actually provide a context for understanding the meaning and purpose of the answers. Scholars have noted that the answers to the questions in these two discourses are the same in some cases and not in others; and that the answers in both contain similarities and differences with those in the Novice’s Questions. What they have failed to note is that, in the cases where the answers differ, it’s because the questions do.

Neither discourse explicitly explains Citta’s threefold analysis—question, synopsis, and answer—but they both show it in the way they organize each set. This organization can be illustrated by one of the sets they have in common, the first:

That much is the question.

That is the synopsis.

That is the answer—although it might be better to say that the synopsis is part of the answer as well.

In AN 10:27, the Buddha is the speaker giving the explanation, and in every case the question takes the same form:

The synopses in the answers are these:

Of these sets, only the fourth and the eighth are not explained in this book. The fourth set is explained in SN 12:64:

The eighth set is explained in AN 8:6:

The ten unskillful action-paths are the same as the ten unskillful types of action listed in §28.

From the perspective of the discussion in Chapter Three, what’s noteworthy about the questions in this version of the catechism is that their framework calls for answers that fall under the duties to be followed with regard to the first and second noble truths. In other words, these are all things to be comprehended to the point of dispassion, after which they can be abandoned. As for the answers, they are all expressed in terms of different levels of appropriate attention. One, four, and seven through ten are expressed in terms of mundane right view, dealing with beings, skillful and unskillful actions, the factors that can motivate unskillful action (eight), and the results—in this life and the next—to which the various levels of skill can lead (seven through ten). Two, three, five, and six are expressed in terms of the factors of dependent co-arising.

In AN 10:28, a group of householders in Kajaṅgalā ask a bhikkhunī identified only as “the Kajaṅgalā bhikkhunī” about the catechism, and she—stating that she has never had the chance to hear this teaching directly from the Buddha—gives an explanation of her own. She frames the questions for the numbers one, two, three, and nine in exactly the same way as the Buddha does in AN 10:27:

Her answers to these questions are thus the same as his. However, for the numbers four, five, six, seven, eight, and ten, she frames the questions differently:

In terms of the four noble truths, this framework calls for answers that fit under the truth of the path—as something to be developed—and these are the answers the Kajaṅgalā bhikkhkunī provides:

Of these answers, only the sixth set is not explained in this book. DN 33 explains it as follows:

As for the five faculties, they are listed in the footnote to §112.

After learning the Kajaṅgalā bhikkhkunī’s explanation of the catechism, the householders of Kajaṅgalā go to the Buddha and report what she said. The Buddha praises her discernment, and states that he would have given the same explanation as she.

Thus in all three versions of the catechism, the answers are given in terms that derive from appropriate attention. And despite their differences, the answers are all “right.” Their differences can be attributed to the fact that some of the individual questions are framed in different ways, with the special difference being that in Khp 4, the questions are purely numerical, providing no framework for understanding, whereas in AN 10:27 and AN 10:28, the questions do provide such a framework, at least in rudimentary terms. And it can be argued that that element of understanding could also function as a memory aid, in that something you understand is easier to memorize than something you don’t.

All three versions of the catechism are obviously useful for passing information on to future generations, in that they present some of the Buddha’s most central teachings in a short, easy to memorize form. But that is not their only function. Given that mindfulness—the ability to keep something in mind—is a crucial factor of the path, these versions of the catechism are also useful as teachings to be kept in mind while practicing. This point is supported by the fact that many of the answers to the catechism, in its various versions, are included as topics of contemplation in The Greater Establishing of Mindfulness Discourse (DN 22—§33): the three types of feeling, the four noble truths, the four establishings of mindfulness, the five clinging-aggregates, the six internal sense media, the seven factors for awakening, and the noble eightfold path.