Arahant Bhikkhuni Ambapali
A figure that recurs in the early stages of many religions is that of the famous courtesan or hetaera, whose conversion and inner transforma- tion demonstrates the invincible power of truth and goodness in its contest with the lower elements of human nature. Just as in the New Testament we find Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Egyptian in the wil- derness of Egypt, and Rabi’a in the early days of Sufism, so we have Ambapālī and Sirimā in the time of the Buddha. To look at their lives is a useful exercise, if only to help free us from prejudice and presumption and to remind us that the potential for wisdom and saintliness is merely concealed, and never obliterated, by a lifestyle that is outwardly wretched aid degrading.
Ambapālī’s life was unusual from the very beginning. One day the gardener of a Licchavi ruler in Vesālī found a baby girl lying under a mango tree and gave her the name Ambapālī from amba (mango) and pāli (line, bridge). As she grew up she became ever more beautiful and charming. Several of the Licchavi princes waited to marry, her, which led to much quarrelling and fighting, since each one wanted her for himself. Unable to solve the matter in this way, after lengthy discussions they finally decided that Ambapālī should belong to no one exclusively but to all in common. Thus she was forced to become a courtesan in the original sense of the word: a lady of pleasure at court, a position having little in common with that of an ordinary prostitute. Thanks to the goodness of her character, she exercised a calming and ennobling influence on the Licchavi princes, and she also spent large sums on charitable activities so that she became virtually an uncrowned queen in the aristocratic republic of the Licchavis.
Ambapālī’s fame spread and reached King Bimbisāra of Māgadha, who came to feel that his capital too should begraced by a similar attraction. This he found in a young woman named Sālavatī, who later became the mother of Jīvaka, the court physician. First, however, King Bimbisāra went to meet Ambapālī in person. Like everyone else, he was overcome by her beauty and enjoyed the pleasures she could offer, as a result of which she bore him a son.
In the course of his final journey the Buddha stopped at Vesālī and stayed at Ambapālī’s Mango Grove. Ambapālī came to pay her respects to him and the Buddha inspired her with a long discourse on the Dhamma, at the end of which she invited the Master and the order of monks to her home for the next day’s meal. As she was leaving hurriedly in her best chariot, the Licchavi princes, in their best chariots, drew up alongside her and asked why she was travelling in such a hurry. She answered that the Enlightened One and his monks would be coming to her home for their alms meal on the following day and she had to make sure everything was ready. The noblemen begged her to yield this privilege to them, offering her one hundred thousand gold coins for it, but she replied that she would not sell this meal for the whole of Vesālī and its treasures. So the Licchavis went to the Buddha and invited him to accept the next day’s meal from them. The Blessed One, however, refused since he had already accepted Ambapālī’s invitation. The Licchavis then snapped their fingers—an expression of frustration—and exclaimed,
“We have been defeated by that mango girl! We have been tricked by that mango girl!”
The next day, after the Buddha had finished his meal at Ambapālī’s home, Ambapālī drew up close to him and made a gift to the Order of her wonderful park, the Mango Grove, where the Buddha had already preached some sermons in the past.
Ambapālī’s son by King Bimbisāra became a monk, with the name Vimala-Kondañña, and achieved arahantship. Later, after listening to one of her son’s sermons, Ambapālī entered the order of nuns. She took her own body as a meditation subject, reflecting on its impermanence and vulnerability to pain, and by doing so she attained arahantship. In her verses of the Therīgāthā, spoken in her old age, she movingly compares her former beauty with her present withered state:
My hair was black, the colour of bees,
Each hair ending in a curl.
Now on account of old age
It has become like fibres of hemp:
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Covered with flowers my head was fragrant
Like a casket of delicate scent.
Now on account of old age
It smells like the fur of a dog.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Formerly my eyebrows were beautiful
Like crescents well painted by an artist’s hand.
Now on account of old age
They droop down lined by wrinkles.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Brilliant and beautiful like jewels,
My eyes were dark blue and long in shape.
Now, hit hard by old age,
Their beauty has utterly vanished.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Formerly my teeth looked beautiful,
The colour of plantain buds.
Now on account of old age
They are broken and yellow.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Formerly my two breasts were beautiful,
Swollen, round, compact, and high.
Now they just hang down and sag
Like a pair of empty water bags.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Formerly my body was beautiful,
Like a well-polished sheet of gold.
Now it is all covered with wrinkles.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Formerly both my feet looked beautiful,
Like (shoes) full of cotton-wool.
Now, because of old age
They are cracked and wrinkled all over.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
Such is this body, now decrepit,
The abode of many kinds of suffering.
It is nothing but an aged house
From which the plaster has fallen off.
Not otherwise is the word
Of the Speaker of Truth.
(Thī 252–70; selections)
This contemplation, assiduously practiced, gave Ambapālī a progressively deeper insight into the nature of existence. She gained the recollection of previous lives and saw the meanderings she had undergone in her journey through saṃsāra: at times she had been a prostitute, at other times a nun. She saw too that despite the degradation to which she had sometimes plunged, she had repeatedly been capable of acts of unusual generosity, which brought their own rewards in her successive births. Often she had been beautiful, but always her physical beauty had faded, crushed by aging and death. Now in her last life she had finally attained, through the utter extinction of delusion, the imperishable beauty of final deliverance. In the following verses Ambapālī bears testimony to her elevation to the status of a “true daughter of the Buddha”:
Attended by millions of creatures
I went forth in the Conqueror’s Teaching.
I have attained the unshakable state,
I am a true daughter of the Buddha.
I am a master of spiritual powers
And of the purified ear-element. I am,
O great sage, a master of knowledge
Encompassing the minds of others.
I know my previous abodes,
The divine eye is purified,
All my cankers have been destroyed,
Now there is no more re-becoming.
(Ap II, 4:9, vv. 213–15)
(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)