The Parable of the Poisoned Arrow (MN 63)
The parable of the poisoned arrow is the Buddha’s famous answer to a man who demanded metaphysical certainties before he would practise. A person shot with a poisoned arrow, the Buddha said, who refuses to let it be removed until he knows exactly who fired it and how — would die first.
The wound is urgent; the speculation can wait forever.
The story
In the Cūḷamālukya Sutta, a monk named Mālunkyaputta grows frustrated. The Buddha, he notices, has never settled the great questions: Is the cosmos eternal, or not? Is it finite, or infinite? Is the soul the same as the body, or different? Does an awakened being exist after death — or not, or both, or neither? Mālunkyaputta resolves to confront him: answer these, or I will leave the holy life.
The Buddha does not take the bait. His first move is not the parable at all, but a question about the bargain Mālunkyaputta imagines he is owed.
“What, Māluṅkyaputta, did I ever say to you: ‘Come, Māluṅkyaputta, lead the spiritual life under me, and I will declare these things to you’?” “No, sir.” … In that case, you futile man, who are you and what do you disavow?
Futile man — Sujato’s rendering of moghapurisa — is the sharpest thing the Buddha says here. No such promise was ever made, so the ultimatum is built on nothing. Only then does he offer the image, and the length of it is the point. The wounded man does not ask one idle question; he asks for a complete dossier.
Suppose a man was struck by an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends and colleagues, relatives and kin would get a surgeon to treat him. But the man would say: ‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the man who wounded me was an aristocrat, a brahmin, a peasant, or a menial.’ He’d say: ‘I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know the following things about the man who wounded me: his name and clan; whether he’s tall, short, or medium; whether his skin is black, brown, or dingy; and whether he comes from such-and-such village, town, or city. I won’t extract this arrow as long as I don’t know whether the bow that wounded me was straight or recurved; whether the bow-string is made of swallow-wort fibre, sunn hemp fibre, sinew, sanseveria fibre, or spurge fibre; whether the shaft is made from a bush or a plantation tree; whether the shaft was fitted with feathers from a vulture, a heron, a hawk, a peacock, or a stork; whether the shaft was bound with sinews of a cow, a buffalo, a black lion, or an ape; and whether the arrowhead was spiked, razor-tipped, barbed, made of iron or a calf’s tooth, or lancet-shaped.’ That man would still not have learned these things, and meanwhile they’d die.
Every item on that list is a reasonable question. A surgeon might even want one or two of the answers. But not one of them stops the poison, and the man asking has run out of time before he reaches the end of his own sentence. To insist on the answers is to die with the arrow in you.
The parable did not survive only in Pali. SuttaCentral lists three Chinese parallels to MN 63, all of them full parallels: MĀ 221, in the Madhyama Āgama; T 94, a separately transmitted discourse; and a passage in the treatise T 1509. The first two carry the same Chinese title, 箭喻 — literally arrow-simile. A story that reaches us through both the Pali and the Chinese collections is about as well attested as early Buddhist material gets.
The ten questions the Buddha left undeclared
Mālunkyaputta’s demand is not vague, and the discourse does not leave it vague. After the parable the Buddha names the points himself, so that nobody can be in doubt about what he has and has not said.
I have not declared the following: ‘the cosmos is eternal,’ ‘the cosmos is not eternal,’ ‘the cosmos is finite,’ ‘the world is infinite,’ ‘the soul and the body are one and the same,’ ‘the soul is one thing, the body another,’ ‘a realized one still exists after death,’ ‘a realized one no longer exists after death,’ ‘a realized one both still exists and no longer exists after death,’ ‘a realized one neither still exists nor no longer exists after death.’
Ten points, in four groups:
- The cosmos in time — eternal, or not eternal (two).
- The cosmos in extent — finite, or infinite (two).
- The soul and the body — one and the same thing, or two (two).
- A realized one after death — still exists, no longer exists, both, or neither (four).
The Pali word for them is abyākata, “undeclared”, and it sits in the discourse itself: abyākatañca me abyākatato dhāretha — “you should remember what I have not declared as undeclared” (MN 63:7.1, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). You will also see it spelled avyākata; in English they are usually called the Buddha’s unanswered questions.
The same set recurs elsewhere. The wanderer Vacchagotta puts the identical ten to the Buddha at the start of the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta (MN 72) and is told each time, “That’s not my view, Vaccha”; that discourse then calls them “these ten questions” in so many words (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). Ten is the count these two discourses give.
It is the fourth group that keeps people up at night, and the texts do not leave it at silence. Pressed by Vacchagotta on what becomes of a liberated person, the Buddha answers with a fire that has gone out: ask which direction it went, and the question does not apply (see what nirvana actually means, and rebirth and what is reborn).
What the parable of the poisoned arrow means
The poison arrow is our condition: we are, all of us, already wounded by suffering — by aging, sickness, loss, and the restlessness of a craving mind. The metaphysical questions are the archer’s biography: fascinating, perhaps, but answering them removes no arrow and saves no life.
The Buddha’s point is not that such questions are forbidden, or that he secretly knew the answers and withheld them. It is that they are not conducive to liberation. As he tells Mālunkyaputta, whether or not the cosmos is eternal, “there is still birth, there is aging, there is death, there are sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair” — and that is what his teaching is for. He set the speculations aside, he says, because they “are not connected with the goal… do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, awakening.”
What he did teach
Having declined the speculations, the Buddha states what he does declare, and the contrast is the whole lesson: “This is suffering; this is the origin of suffering; this is the cessation of suffering; this is the path leading to its cessation” — the Four Noble Truths. These he teaches because they actually pull the arrow out.
Does the poisoned arrow make Buddhism anti-metaphysical?
This is the use the parable is most often put to: proof that the Buddha had no interest in truth for its own sake, only in what works. His stated reason will not quite carry that. The ten points are set aside as not connected with the goal — not as false, not as meaningless, and not as forbidden to ask. What the answers might be is left wide open.
Mark Siderits, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the Buddha, sets out the pragmatist reading as a serious position — the Buddha as someone who uses reason only so far as it helps end suffering — and notes that this simile is its classic evidence. He then gives the reasons it is contested. Caring intensely about the end of suffering is compatible with using reason on questions that have no obvious practical payoff, and on at least one occasion the Buddha does exactly that. When Vacchagotta is left confused by the refusal, the Buddha does not change the subject; he argues, by way of the extinguished fire, that such questions “rest on a false presupposition” — they assume a person who might persist or perish. That is a diagnosis arrived at by reasoning, not a refusal to reason.
Nor did the tradition after him treat the silence as a ban on philosophy. The Personalists (Pudgalavādins) held that the person is neither identical with nor distinct from the psychophysical elements, and accepted that nothing could then be said about the relation between the two; most Buddhist philosophers rejected that, arguing that a person of whom neither could be said is a mere conceptual fiction (Siderits, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Those are the undeclared points — argued over inside the tradition within a century or two of the Buddha’s death (Siderits).
So the honest summary is the one the sutta makes and no more: these questions do not lead to the end of suffering, and the Buddha would not spend a life on them. Whether they are unanswerable, badly formed, or simply beside the point, MN 63 does not say — and the traditions that followed did not agree. (For what this does and does not make Buddhism, see is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? and Buddhism and atheism.)
What happened to Mālunkyaputta
He stayed. The discourse ends without drama — “Satisfied, Venerable Māluṅkyaputta approved what the Buddha said.” (MN 63:10.7, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). The monk who arrived with an ultimatum left without one.
Two later discourses pick him up again, an old man by then. In the Māluṅkyaputta Sutta (SN 35.95) he asks for the teaching in brief and is gently teased for it: “when even an old man like you, elderly and senior, advanced in years, having reached the final stage of life, asks for brief advice?” (SN 35.95, trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). He presses anyway, and is given the instruction that in the seen there will be “merely the seen” — the same compressed teaching the Buddha gave Bāhiya. He goes off to live alone, and the discourse closes: “And Venerable Māluṅkyaputta became one of the perfected.” AN 4.257 records the same ending after a different teaching, on the four things that give rise to craving in a mendicant.
Bhikkhu Sujato notes in his translation that MN 63 and MN 64 depict Mālunkyaputta “as somewhat of a fool”, that he nevertheless persisted, and that two sets of verses under his name survive in the Theragāthā (Thag 16.5 and Thag 6.5). It makes a quiet epilogue to the parable: the man who would not practise until the cosmos had been explained to him finished the path without ever being told.
Why the poisoned arrow still matters
The poisoned arrow is one of the most quietly radical things in Buddhism. It reorients the whole project away from believing the right cosmology and toward being freed from suffering now. It is why Buddhism can sit so lightly with open questions that other systems treat as make-or-break, and why it has been called a path of practice rather than a creed (see is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? and how it relates to science).
It is also a teaching for ordinary life. How often do we refuse to act on our suffering — to grieve, to change, to begin — until we have settled some unanswerable why? Why did this happen to me? What is the meaning of it all? The poisoned arrow gently turns us back to the wound in front of us: tend that first. The answers, if they come, can come later. (For the truths the Buddha did teach, see the Four Noble Truths; for the sister-parable on our reaction to pain, the second arrow. For more, return to Buddhist parables.)
Frequently asked questions
What is the parable of the poisoned arrow?
A teaching from the Buddha (Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta, MN 63). The monk Malunkyaputta demands answers to grand metaphysical questions, such as whether the cosmos is eternal or an awakened being exists after death, or he will quit. The Buddha replies that this is like a man shot with a poisoned arrow who refuses treatment until he knows who shot him, his caste and name, and the kind of bow; he would die first.
Why didn't the Buddha answer the metaphysical questions?
Not because he was evasive, but because answering them does not relieve suffering. In MN 63 he says these speculations are 'not connected with the goal… do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, awakening.' Whether or not the cosmos is eternal, you still grow old, get sick, and die — and that urgent wound is what his teaching treats. He set the speculations aside to keep attention on what actually frees us.
What are the questions the Buddha left undeclared?
Traditionally ten (sometimes given as fourteen 'unanswered questions'): whether the cosmos is eternal or not; whether it is finite or infinite; whether the soul (life-force) is the same as or different from the body; and whether a Tathagata (an awakened one) exists after death, does not exist, both, or neither. The Buddha set all of these aside as not conducive to liberation.
What did the Buddha say he does teach?
He says plainly: 'What I have declared is: This is suffering; this is the origin of suffering; this is the cessation of suffering; this is the path leading to the cessation of suffering' — the Four Noble Truths. He declares these because, unlike the speculations, they lead to disenchantment, dispassion, peace, and awakening. The arrow in the wound, not the archer's biography, is the point.
What happened to Malunkyaputta after this?
He stayed. Two later discourses show him old and still in the order, asking the Buddha for a teaching in brief. In SN 35.95 and AN 4.257 he receives one, goes off to practise alone, and becomes an arahant. The monk who threatened to quit over the ten questions finished the path without ever getting an answer to them.
Does the poisoned arrow mean Buddhism rejects philosophy?
No. The Buddha sets the ten points aside as not connected with the goal, which is narrower than calling them false, meaningless or forbidden. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes he elsewhere argues such questions rest on a false presupposition, and later Buddhist schools debated these very points at length.
Sources
- Cūḷamālukya Sutta (MN 63), 'The Shorter Instructions to Mālunkya' — Mālunkyaputta threatens to leave the holy life unless the Buddha answers ten speculative questions (whether the cosmos is eternal, finite, whether the soul is the body, whether the Tathāgata exists after death, etc.); the Buddha replies with the simile of a man shot with a poisoned arrow who will not let it be removed until he knows the archer's caste, name, height, and the make of the bow and arrow — 'all this would still not be known to that man, and meanwhile he would die.' Access to Insight (trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu); SuttaCentral (trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi)
- Cūḷamālukya Sutta (MN 63), 'The Shorter Discourse With Māluṅkyaputta' — the full arrow speech, the Buddha's reply that no such bargain was ever made, and his own closing list of the ten undeclared points; the Pali reads abyākata. Sujato's note to the discourse records Māluṅkyaputta's later life and his verses at Thag 16.5 and Thag 6.5. SuttaCentral (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato, CC0)
- Māluṅkyaputta Sutta (SN 35.95) — the aged Māluṅkyaputta asks for a teaching in brief, practises alone, and 'became one of the perfected'; SuttaCentral (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato, CC0)
- With Māluṅkyaputta (AN 4.257) — the second account of the same monk's awakening, after a teaching on the four things that give rise to craving; SuttaCentral (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato, CC0)
- 'Buddha' (entry), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Mark Siderits), section 5 'Attitude toward Reason' — the arrow simile as evidence for reading the Buddha as a pragmatist, why that reading is contested, the false-presupposition diagnosis, and the Pudgalavādin dispute
- Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta (MN 72), 'With Vacchagotta on Fire' — the wanderer puts the identical ten questions to the Buddha, who answers each 'That’s not my view, Vaccha', and the discourse calls them 'these ten questions'; the fire that goes out and the question that 'doesn’t apply'; SuttaCentral (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato, CC0)
- SuttaCentral parallels for MN 63 — three full Chinese parallels: MĀ 221 in the Madhyama Āgama and the separately transmitted T 94, both titled 箭喻, plus a passage in the treatise T 1509.15