The Buddha's sister, Sundari Nanda

Hellmuth Hecker, Buddhist Women at the Time of the Buddha (translated from German by Sister Khema, 1994); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Jen Bradford (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Boys Only Club: The Buddha with relatives Rahula and Ananda, no sister Sundari Nanda, brother Nanda, or wife/baby mom Bimba/Yasodhara/Bhaddakacca in patriarchal Thai artist's rendering.

Sundari (Beautiful) Nanda, the Buddha's half-sister he grew up with, who became a nun

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Sundari Nanda, the Buddha's beautiful sister

I can renounce anything but my self.

When she was born, Sundari Nanda was lovingly welcomed by her parents — the father of the Buddha [King Suddhodana] and his second wife [Queen Pajapati, the younger sister of the Buddha's deceased biological mother, Queen Maya].

Her name Nanda means "joy, contentment, pleasure," and was given when parents were especially joyful about the arrival of a baby.

Nanda was extremely well-bred, full of grace and beauty.

To distinguish her from others [particularly her brother Nanda] by the same name, she was later called Rupa Nanda, "one of delightful form," and Sundari Nanda, "Beautiful Nanda."

In due course many members of her [Scythian/Shakyian/Indo-Saka] family — the royal house of the Sakyans — left the household life for the left-home life [of renunciation enlightenment and liberation from all suffering], influenced by the amazing fact that one of their clan [Prince Siddhartha Gautama known as the "Sage of the Scythians" or Shakyamuni] had become a supremely-enlightened teacher [samma-sam-buddha].

Among them was her brother Nanda, her [Scythian] cousins, and finally her mother [the world's first Buddhist nun, Maha Pajapati or "Great Pajapati"], together with many other Scythian/Sakyan ladies.

Thereupon Beautiful Nanda also took this step, but it is recorded that she did not do it out of confidence [saddha, faith, conviction] in the teacher [the Buddha] and the teachings [the Dharma], but out of love for her family and a feeling of belonging with them.

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One can only imagine the respect and exalted treatment accorded to the graceful sister or half-sister of the Buddha and how touched people were by the sight of the beautiful royal Scythain daughter [nearly as beautiful as the Buddha himself, and Brother Nanda, cousin Ananda, son Rahula, and wife variously called Bimba Devi, Princess Yasodhara, Rahula Mata, Bhadda Kacca, Bhadda Kaccana], so near in family ties to the Blessed One, wandering among them in the saffron ascetic garb of a wandering ascetic nun.

But it soon became obvious that this was not a good basis for a nun's life. Sundari Nanda's thoughts were mainly directed towards her own beauty and her popularity with people, traits which were karmic resultants [vipaka] of former good actions.

These resultant fruits [phala] now became dangers to her, since she forgot to reinforce them with new actions. She felt that she was not living up to the high ideals people envisioned for her. She felt she was far from the goal for which so many nobly-born members of the Scythian family clan had gone into the left-home life. She was sure that the Blessed One would censure her on account of this. Therefore, she managed to avoid and evade him for a long time.

One day the Buddha requested all the nuns to come to him, one by one, to receive a teaching, but Sundaria Nanda did not comply. The Teacher let her be called specially, and then she appeared before him, ashamed and anxious by her demeanor.

The Buddha addressed her and appealed to all her positive qualities so that she listened to him willingly and delighted in his words. When the Blessed One knew that the talk had uplifted her, had made her joyful and receptive to his teaching, he did not immediately explain ultimate reality to her, as is often mentioned in other accounts of the "gradual instruction," frequently resulting in noble attainment of awakening/enlightenment to his listener.

How Sundari Nanda became enlightened

The Buddha awakens his chief female disciple, foremost in wisdom, beautiful and vain Khema, in the same way as his sister, Sundari Nanda: psychic conjuring a vision of aging, sickness, and death.

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Because Sundari Nanda was so taken 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 Sundari Nanda could see, compressed within a few moments, what otherwise one can only notice in people through decades — and often because of proximity and habit one does not even fully comprehend: the fading away of youth and beauty, the decay, the appearance of wrinkles and gray hair.

The vision affected Nanda deeply; she was shaken to the center of her being.

After having shown her this graphic imagery, the Buddha explained the law of impermanence to her in such a way that she penetrated the truth of it completely, thereby attaining knowledge of future liberation: stream-entry, the first stage of enlightenment.

As a meditation subject the Buddha gave her the contemplation of the impermanence and the foulness of the body. She persevered for a long time with this practice "faithful and courageous day and night"(Thig 84) as she described in her verses in the "Verses of the Enlightened Nuns" (Therigatha):

Sick, impure, and foul as well,

[Sundari] Nanda, see this congeries

With the unlovely,* develop mind

Well-composed to singleness.

As is that, thus will this likewise be.

Exhaling foulness, evil smells,

A thing it is enjoyed** by fools.

Diligently considering it,

By day and night thus seeing it,

With my own wisdom having seen,

I turned away, dispassionate.

With my diligence, carefully

I examined the body

And saw this as it really is —

Both within and without.

Unlusting and dispassionate

Within this body then was I:

By diligence from fetters freed,

Peaceful was I and quite cool.

— Therigatha 82-86

• *The meditations on seeing the body as unattractive, either as parts, or after it is dead and beginning to bloat and decompose. See Bag of Bones (Wheel 271/272), BPS.lk.
• **This is a play on her own name, Nanda or Joy and "abhinanditam."

Because Sundari Nanda had been so infatuated with her physical appearance, it had been necessary for her to apply the extreme of meditations on bodily unattractiveness as a counter-measure to find equanimous balance between the two opposites. For beauty and ugliness are just two kinds of impermanence. Nothing can disturb the cool, peaceful heart ever again.

Later the Buddha raised his half-sister as being the foremost amongst nuns who practiced meditative absorption or jhana.* This meant that she not only followed the analytical way of insight (vipassana), but put emphasis on the experience of tranquility (samatha).

• *Jhana: total mental absorption in meditation [right mindfulness].

Enjoying this pure well-being, she no longer needed any lower [sensual] enjoyments and soon found indestructible peace [i.e., nirvana].

Although she had adopted the left-home life because of attachment to her relatives, she became totally free and equal to the Blessed One she venerated.

• Sources: A I, 24; Thig 82-86; AP II, No.25 (54 verses).
• NOTE: Wisdom Quarterly refers to Sundari Nanda as the Buddha's sister rather than half-sister, as she was the daughter of the same father and of the Buddha's biological mother's sister, which makes her closer, but English does not seem to have a fractional word for it. Moreover, they grew up together.