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SN 22.22PTS SN 3.251 min read

The Burden of Responsibility

Bhārasutta

The aggregates are the burden, a person carries that burden, craving takes up the burden, and letting go puts down the burden.

Translated by Bhikkhu Sujato · Pāli: Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka · Public domain (CC0) via SuttaCentral

  • 0.1Saṁyutta Nikāya 22.22Linked Discourses 22.22
  • 0.23. Bhāravagga3. The Burden

0.3BhārasuttaThe Burden of Responsibility

1.1Sāvatthiyaṁ … tatra kho …At Sāvatthī.1

1.2“bhārañca vo, bhikkhave, desessāmi bhārahārañca bhārādānañca bhāranikkhepanañca.“Mendicants, I will teach you the burden, the bearer of the burden, the taking up of the burden, and the putting down of the burden.21.3Taṁ suṇātha.Listen …

1.4Katamo ca, bhikkhave, bhāro?And what is the burden?1.5Pañcupādānakkhandhā tissa vacanīyaṁ.The five grasping aggregates, it should be said.31.6Katame pañca?What five?1.7Rūpupādānakkhandho, vedanupādānakkhandho, saññupādānakkhandho, saṅkhārupādānakkhandho, viññāṇupādānakkhandho;The grasping aggregates of form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness.1.8ayaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, bhāro.This is called the burden.4

2.1Katamo ca, bhikkhave, bhārahāro?And who is the bearer of the burden?52.2Puggalo tissa vacanīyaṁ.The individual, it should be said;62.3Yvāyaṁ āyasmā evaṁnāmo evaṅgotto;the venerable of such name and such clan.72.4ayaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, bhārahāro.This is called the bearer of the burden.8

3.1PTS 3.26Katamañca, bhikkhave, bhārādānaṁ?And what is the taking up of the burden?3.2Yāyaṁ taṇhā ponobhavikā nandīrāgasahagatā tatratatrābhinandinī, seyyathidaṁ—It’s the craving that leads to future lives, mixed up with relishing and greed, taking pleasure there wherever it alights. That is,3.3kāmataṇhā, bhavataṇhā, vibhavataṇhā.craving for sensual pleasures, craving for continued existence, and craving for nonexistence.3.4Idaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, bhārādānaṁ.This is called the taking up of the burden.

4.1Katamañca, bhikkhave, bhāranikkhepanaṁ?And what is the putting down of the burden?4.2Yo tassāyeva taṇhāya asesavirāganirodho cāgo paṭinissaggo mutti anālayo.It’s the fading away and cessation of that very same craving no residue left behind; giving it away, letting it go, releasing it, and not clinging to it.4.3Idaṁ vuccati, bhikkhave, bhāranikkhepanan”ti.This is called the putting down of the burden.”

5.1Idamavoca bhagavā.That is what the Buddha said.5.2Idaṁ vatvāna sugato athāparaṁ etadavoca satthā:Then the Holy One, the Teacher, went on to say:

6.1“Bhārā have pañcakkhandhā,“The five aggregates are indeed burdens,6.2bhārahāro ca puggalo;and the individual is the bearer of the burden.6.3Bhārādānaṁ dukhaṁ loke,Taking up the burden is suffering in the world,6.4bhāranikkhepanaṁ sukhaṁ.and putting the burden down is happiness.

7.1Nikkhipitvā garuṁ bhāraṁ,When the heavy burden is put down7.2aññaṁ bhāraṁ anādiya;without taking up another,7.3Samūlaṁ taṇhamabbuyha,one who has plucked out craving, root and all,7.4nicchāto parinibbuto”ti.is hungerless, quenched.”

7.5Paṭhamaṁ.

Translator’s notes

  1. This discourse is much-quoted in later texts of both Pali and Sanskrit Buddhism, especially in discussing what the Buddha meant by “individual” (puggala). One school of Buddhism, the Pudgalavādins, argued that the “individual” was ultimately real but not defined, being neither identical with nor separate from the aggregates. This position was rejected by other schools, including the Theravada (Kv 1.1). The text itself, however, is about spiritual responsibility, not the nature of personal identity.

    ↩ sn22.22:1.1

  2. Pali bhāra, like English “burden”, has the dual senses of “load” and “responsibility”. The opening phrase clearly indicates three of the four noble truths (the burden = suffering, picking up = origin, putting down = cessation), leaving the status of the “bearer of the burden” unclear. I propose that the sequence of the truths has been altered for rhetorical purposes, and the “bearer of the burden” is one who has undertaken the path. Compare AN 2.98–99, where the fool is the one who improperly “carries the burden” (i.e. “shoulders responsibility”), while the astute carry the burden properly.

    ↩ sn22.22:1.2

  3. Vedic skandha has no technical use, being simply the “trunk” of a tree (Rig Veda 1.32.5, Atharva Veda 10.7.38) or a person (plural = “shoulders”, Atharva Veda 6.25.2, 6.135.1, etc.). The Buddhist use shares more in common with the Jains, for whom the skandha was a type of matter (pudgala) consisting of two or more combined “atoms” (aṇu), namely a “molecule” (Tattvārthasūtra 5.5). Thus the aggregates themselves can be considered what “shoulders” the burden (like buffaloes, Arthaśāstra 2.29.8).

    ↩ sn22.22:1.5

  4. The aggregates are a “load” in the sense of being hard to bear and therefore suffering. But they are also a “responsibility”, like a wound that must be cared for if one is to heal (MN 105:19.1).

    ↩ sn22.22:1.8

  5. Bhārahāra is attested almost entirely in discussion of this discourse. However, we do find an unrelated idiomatic use in the commentary to AN 3.91, where it means “one who takes responsibility” (for looking after a monastery). Also, Śāṅkhāyana Āraṇyaka 14.2 speaks of a student who repeats the Veda without understanding, like a pillar that merely “bears the burden” (bhārahāra), thus also referring to a person who has undertaken a responsibility.

    ↩ sn22.22:2.1

  6. Puggala (Sanskrit pudgala) is a Buddhist and Jain term, being absent from pre-Buddhist texts and rare later. Abruptly, the Suttas then use it some 3000 times for descriptions of “individuals” and their characteristics, especially in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, and collected in the Abhidhamma book Puggalapaññatti. Pali is rich in terms for “person”, so why did puggala became so characteristic? The Jain meaning of pudgala is “particulate matter” (Tattvārthasūtra 5.5, Isibhāsiyam 1.31, Uttarādhyayanasūtra 28.12). They say “substantial reality” (astikāya = sakkāya) includes “matter” (pudgala), which is comprised of “atoms” (anu) and “molecules” (skandha). Pudgala is also used for an individual “article” (of gold) by Kauṭilya (Arthaśastra 2.14.7, 2.14.43). Further, we find the notion that beings are pudgalāśrayāḥ (“comprised of a composite mass”, Viṣṇu Purāṇa 5.30.13) related to a criticism of those who assert not-self, i.e. Buddhists. Rarely, later Sanskrit references the meaning “body”. Thus puggala approaches the same semantic field as khandha (“aggregate”) and kāya (“body”, from the root ci, “heap”), which gives us sakkāya (“substantial reality”, SN 22.105 and notes), all three of which are technical terms in Buddhism and Jainism but not Vedism. Our findings support Paul Tedesco’s proposed derivation from pṛthak (“Sanskrit pudgala—‘body, soul’”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 67, 1947, 172–7). Given that Pali puthu combines the senses of Sanskrit pṛthu (“expansive, manifold”) and pṛthak (“separate, individual”), the original sense was probably “composite individual” (cf. English “organism”). Perhaps the Buddha favored puggala because it avoided Vedic terminology, while at the same time suggesting a connection with the khandha doctrine that the “individual” comprised a “mass” of components.

    ↩ sn22.22:2.2

  7. The commentary says this refers to any person from the time of birth. However, the same phrase is used at SN 22.106:1.16 and SN 23.4:2.13, both cases referring to the arahant specifically, which is why they are referred to as “venerable”. Thus the one who “bears the burden” is not someone who is reborn and has to suffer the aggregates, but someone who has full accepted the responsibility of spiritual practice in regard to the aggregates.

    ↩ sn22.22:2.3

  8. To sum up, I argue that the “bearer of the burden” is the one who “undertakes responsibility” for practicing the path on four grounds: (1) the pattern of the teaching (four noble truths); (2) idiomatic meaning; (3) similarity to AN 2.98–99; and (4) the fact that the “venerable” phrase elsewhere refers to an arahant.

    ↩ sn22.22:2.4