Mahākhandhaka — The Great Chapter

In the week after full awakening, the Blessed One sits at the foot of the Bodhi tree and, through the three watches of the night, attends to dependent co-arising in forward and reverse order.

After the week at the Bodhi tree, the Blessed One sits for seven days at the goatherd’s banyan. A brahmin asks what makes one a sage, and the Blessed One answers with an inspired utterance.

A serpent king coils around the Blessed One through a week of unseasonal rain. When the sky clears, the Blessed One utters a verse on the happiness of seclusion, harmlessness, and the relinquishment of the conceit “I am.”

At the Rājāyatana tree, the merchants Tapussa and Bhallika offer the Blessed One his first meal after awakening and become the first lay disciples, going for refuge to the Buddha and the Dhamma.

At the goatherd’s banyan, the Blessed One’s mind inclines not to teach. Brahmā Sahampati asks three times, and out of compassion the Blessed One surveys the world and consents to teach the Dhamma.

The Blessed One decides to teach the group of five, meets Upaka on the road, and at Isipatana convinces them to listen. Their ordination follows the first two discourses, until there are six arahants in the world.

Yasa, a merchant’s son in Vārāṇasī, leaves his sleeping musicians and goes forth. His father becomes the first lay disciple with the threefold refuge, and his mother and former wife the first female lay disciples. Friends follow, until there are sixty-one arahants.

The Blessed One sends the sixty arahants out to teach, no two by the same road, and says he will go to Uruvelā. Māra claims he is still bound. The Blessed One answers that he is freed from every snare.

Bhikkhus are tiring as they bring candidates from every region for the Blessed One to ordain. He allows them to give the going forth and full ordination themselves, by three goings for refuge.

After the rains, the Blessed One tells the bhikkhus that unsurpassed liberation is reached by radical attention and right striving. Māra claims he is still bound. A close parallel is SN 4.4.

Thirty friends searching a grove for a runaway courtesan meet the Blessed One, who asks whether it is better to search for a woman or to search for themselves. They go forth.

At Uruvelā the Blessed One stays in the fire hall of the matted-hair ascetic Uruvelakassapa, masters a serpent king, and shows wonder after wonder until Kassapa and his brothers, with their thousand followers, go forth.

With a thousand bhikkhus, all former matted-hair ascetics, the Blessed One goes from Uruvelā to Gayā’s Head. The fire sermon spoken there is SN 35.28. While it is spoken, the thousand are liberated.

King Seniya Bimbisāra of Magadha, with a hundred and twenty thousand brahmin householders, meets the Blessed One at the Sapling Grove. He offers the Bamboo Grove, and the Blessed One allows a park.

Sāriputta hears from Assaji the verse on phenomena that arise from a cause, and the dustless Dhamma eye arises. He tells Moggallāna. They leave Sañcaya with two hundred and fifty wanderers and receive the going forth.