This sutta is the one I refer to in the title of my upcoming RSA talk. In it, a fellow named "Dandapani" approaches the Buddha. Dandapani greets the Buddha, then asks, "What sort of doctrine do you teach?":
"What is the contemplative's doctrine? What does he proclaim?"
You would think the Buddha would be happy to answer. The Buddha has found the way out of suffering. At other times in the sutthas, he answers similar questions. "I teach only suffering and the end of suffering." The Four Noble Truths in a nutshell.
But he doesn't answer Dandapani in this way. He can tell Dandapani is all ready for a fight. You know, a nice intellectual debate, like we do at conferences. Hearing this story, we're clued into his intentions by way of his name. "Dandapani" means stick in hand. I've heard commentators suggest this refers to his station in life: he carries a walking stick in a kind of dandy-ish way. But "Danda" also refers elsewhere in the Pali Canon to the potential for violence: we carry around figurative sticks, ready to hit others with our words.
And so the Buddha deflects the stick. He answers:
The sort of doctrine, friend, where one does not keep quarreling with anyone in the cosmos with its devas, Maras, & Brahmas, with its contemplatives & priests, its royalty & commonfolk; the sort [of doctrine] where perceptions no longer obsess the brahman who remains dissociated from sensual pleasures, free from perplexity, his uncertainty cut away, devoid of craving for becoming & non-. Such is my doctrine, such is what I proclaim.
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