Arahant Bhikkhuni Nanda
(Nanda - The Buddha's Half-sister)
When she was born, Nandā was lovingly welcomed by her parents—the father of the Buddha and his second wife, Mahāpajāpati Gotamī. Her name means joy, contentment, pleasure, and this name was given when parents were especially joyful about the arrival of a baby. Nandā was extremely well bred, graceful, and beautiful. To distinguish her from others by the same name, she was later called Rūpā-Nandā or sometimes Sundarī-Nandā, both meaning “beautiful Nandā.”
In due course many members of her family—the royal house of the Sakyans—left the household for the homeless life, influenced by the amazing fact that one of their clan had become the fully enlightened Buddha. Among them was her brother Nanda, her cousins, and finally her mother, together with many other Sakyan ladies. Thereupon Nandā too took this step. She did not do so, however, out of confidence in the Teacher and the Teaching, but out of love for her relatives and from a wish to conform to them.
One can easily imagine the love and respect accorded the graceful half-sister of the Buddha, and how touched the people were by the sight of the lovely royal daughter, so near in family ties to the Blessed One, wandering among them in the garb of a nun. But it soon became obvious that this was not a proper basis for a nun’s life. Nandā’s thoughts were mainly directed toward her own beauty and her popularity with the people, traits which were resultants of former good kamma. These resultants now became dangers to her, since she forgot to reinforce them with sincere efforts at self-purification. She felt that she was not living up to the high ideals the people envisioned for her, and that she was far from the goal for which so many noble- born men and women had gone forth into the homeless life. Certain that the Blessed One would censure her, for a long time, instead of correcting her ways, she made every effort to evade him.
One day the Buddha requested all the nuns to come to him, one by one, to receive instructions. Nandā, however, did not comply. The Master had her called specially, and then she appeared before him, showing by her demeanor that she was ashamed and anxious. The Buddha addressed her and appealed to all her positive qualities so that she listened to him willingly and took delight in his words. Although the Blessed One knew that the talk had uplifted her, had made her joyful and ready to accept his teachings, he did not immediately explain to her the Four Noble Truths, as he often did on other such occasions. He knew that she was not yet ripe enough to penetrate the four truths, and thus he resorted to an expedient device to hasten her maturation.
Because Nandā was so enthralled with her own physical beauty, the Buddha used his psychic powers to conjure up the vision of an even more beautiful woman, who then aged visibly and relentlessly before her very eyes. Thereby Nandā could see, compressed within a few moments, what otherwise one can only notice in people through decades—and what often, because of proximity and habit, one does not even fully comprehend: the fading away of youth and beauty, the advance of decay, the proximity of death. The vision affected Nandā deeply; she was shaken to the centre of her being.
After having given her this graphic lesson in impermanence, the Buddha could explain the Dhamma to her in such a way that she penetrated the four truths completely, and thereby attained the knowledge of future liberation—stream-entry. As a meditation subject the Buddha assigned to her the contemplation of the impermanence and foulness of the body. She persevered for a tong time with this practice, “unwearying by day and night,” as she exhorts herself in her verses:
Nandā, behold this body, Ailing, impure, and putrid,
Develop the meditation on the foul, Make the mind unified, well composed:
“As is this, so was that, As is that, so this will be,
Putrid, exhaling a foul odour,
A thing in which fools find delight.”
Inspecting it as it is, Unwearyingly by day and night,
With my own wisdom I pierced right through And then I saw for myself
As I dwelt ever heedful
Dissecting it with methodical thought, I saw this body as it really is
Both inside and outside too.
Then I become disenchanted with the body, My inward attachment faded away.
Being diligent and detached at heart, I live at peace, fully quenched.
(Thī 82–86)
Because Nandā had been so infatuated with her physical beauty, it was necessary for her to apply the austere meditation on bodily unattractiveness as a countermeasure before she could find equanimity— the balance between opposites. Having overcome her attachment to the body, Nandā had touched the true beauty of the Deathless, and nothing could ever again disturb the cool peace of her heart.
Later the Buddha praised his half-sister as the foremost among nuns who practiced meditation. This meant that she had not only followed the analytical way of insight, but had also experienced the jhānas, the attainments of tranquillity. Enjoying this pure felicity, she no longer needed any lower enjoyments and soon found indestructible peace. Although she had gone into homelessness because of attachment to her relatives, she became totally free, a true spiritual heir of the Master she venerated.
(From the book: GREAT DISCIPLES OF THE BUDDHA – NYANAPONIKA THERA AND HELMUTH HECKER , Edited with an Introduction by BHIKKHU BODHI)