Uddaka Rāmaputta untranslated

Uddaka Rāmaputta. One of the teachers under whom Gotama, after leaving the world and before he became the Buddha, received instruction (Ja.i.66, 81). Uddaka taught him the doctrine which had been realised and proclaimed by his father Rāma, which was the attainment of the state of “neither-perception-nor-non-perception” (corresponding to the fourth Arūpajjhāna). When Gotama had mastered this, Uddaka made him more than his own equal by setting him over the whole company of his disciples as their teacher. But Gotama, finding this doctrine unsatisfactory, abandoned it (MN.i.165ff., 240ff.; Dhp­a.i.70-1).

The Buddha evidently had a high regard for Uddaka Rāmaputta, for after the Awakening, when looking for someone to whom the Dhamma might be preached, and who was capable of realising its import at once, his thoughts turned to Uddaka, but Uddaka was already dead (Vin.i.7).

In the Vassakārasutta of the Aṅguttaranikāya (ii.180) it is mentioned that King Eḷeyya, together with his bodyguard, Yamaka, Moggalla and others, were followers of Rāmaputta and that they held him in great esteem.

In the Saṁyuttanikāya (iv.83f) the Buddha says that Uddaka claimed to be “versed in lore and to have conquered everything, digging out the root of suffering,” though he had no justification for such a claim.

Again, in the Pāsādikasutta (DN.iii.126-7), the Buddha tells Cunda that when Uddaka said “seeing, he seeth not,” he had in mind a man who saw the blade of a sharpened razor but not its edge – a low, pagan thing to speak about.

In the Sanskrit books Uddaka Rāmaputta is called Udraka. Mvu.ii.119-20; Divy.392; Lalitavistara 306f.