44 CHAPTER TWOothers are expected in the future.) Thus, no one works out personal salvation
unaided. The Dhammapada (v.276) states: "You yourself must make an effort.
Tathagatas, for their part, are simply revealers:'
The sixty missionaries were soon so successful that many converts traveled
long distances to receive ordination. The Buddha noted the hardship this en-
tailed and so granted his monks permission to confer ordination themselves
wherever they went. This made the Sangha self-propagating and enabled it to
spread far beyond the area within which the Buddha or any other single leader
could have exercised personal control. Even during his lifetime, the Buddha
entrusted his Sangha with management of its own affairs, serving as lawmaker
when his disciples consulted him on problems but otherwise not imposing his
authority. By the time of his decease, the Sangha was consolidated as a repub-
lican society, a loose federation bound together by a common code, a com-
mon oral tradition, and the constant coming and going of itinerant monks.
The Buddha spent the first three-month rainy season after his Awakening
at Sarnath, near Benares, as the heavy rains made travel impractical. This mon-
soon retreat, generally observed by sramal).aS at the time, became a Buddhist
institution that has been observed to the present day, particularly in Theravada
countries. Mter the rains, the Buddha returned to Uruvela, where he had ear-
lier practiced austerities. The Vinaya relates that there he encountered and
converted three brothers of the Kasyapa clan, leaders of a sect of fire-worship-
ping ascetics, together with their one thousand disciples.
This tale demonstrates how Buddhism grew not only through individual
conversions but also by incorporating whole sects. It also illustrates the role
that the six superknowledges (see Section 1.3.5) played not only in the discov-
ery of the Dharma But also in its propagation. Although the Buddha forbade
his disciples from demonstrating their powers before the laity, there were oc-
casions when he himself found it necessary to exhibit his powers in order to
put his audience in the proper frame of mind to listen to and benefit from his
teachings. The ascetics and yogis of pre-Buddhist India had an extensive lore
concerning miraculous (or psychic) powers (in Sanskrit, rddhi, Pali, iddhi), and
many regarded these powers as the sine qua non of a spiritually advanced
teacher. The eldest Kasyapa apparently held to this opinion, so the Buddha
used a display of powers to subdue his pride: He tamed the poisonous niiga
(serpent) living in Kasyapa's ritual implements house; he vanished from one
spot and appeared instantly in another; he prevented Kasyapa and his disciples
from chopping wood for their fires, but then caused the wood to be instanta-
neously chopped when they called him on the issue.
Finally, Kasyapa saw the Buddha part the waters of a flooding river to walk
in the dust of the riverbed; when he asked the Buddha to enter his boat, the
latter did so by first levitating into the air. Even then Kasyapa remained con-
vinced of his own spiritual superiority, so the Buddha, reading his mind, con-
fronted him, saying that he was not even on the Path to the state he believed
himself to have achieved. This shocked Kasyapa so profoundly that he asked
for ordination into the Buddhist Sangha. His followers quickly followed suit.