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Udaka Rāmaputta

One of the teachers under whom Gotama, after leaving the world and before he became the Buddha, received instruction (J.i.66, 81). Uddaka taught him the doctrine that 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 formless Jhāna). 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. However, Gotama, finding this doctrine unsatisfactory, abandoned it (M.i.165 ff., 240 ff; DhA.i.70‑1).

The Buddha evidently had a high regard for Uddaka-Rāmaputta, for after the Enlightenment, when looking for someone to whom the Dhamma might be taught, 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 Vassakāra Sutta of the Aṅguttaranikāya (ii.180) it is mentioned that King Eleyya, together with his bodyguard, Yamaka, Moggalla and others, were followers of Rāmaputta and that they held him in great esteem.

In the Saṃyuttanikāya (iv.83 f) 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 Pāsādika Sutta (D.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. Mtu.ii.119‑20; Dvy.392; Lal.306 f.