With Indaka (SN10.1)

Linked Discourses 10.1

1. With Indaka

With Indaka

So I have heard.¹

At one time the Buddha was staying near Rājagaha on Mount Indra’s Peak, the haunt of the native spirit Indaka.²

Then the native spirit Indaka went up to the Buddha, and addressed him in verse:

“The Buddhas say that form is not the soul.³

Then how does this one obtain this body?⁴

From where do his bones and organs come?⁵

How does this one coalesce in the womb?”⁶

“First there’s the zygote;⁷

then there’s the blastocyst;⁸

from there arises the gastrula;⁹

which produces the embryonic mass.¹⁰

From that the limb buds appear,¹¹

the head hair, body hair, and nails.¹²

And whatever the mother eats—

the food and drink that she consumes—

nourishes them there,

the person in the mother’s womb.”¹³