Buddhist sutras begin with the words, “This is what I heard.” We are to understand that this is Ananda who is speaking and that the sutra that follows is what he heard, and what he recited from memory at the First Buddhist Council shortly after the death of the Buddha. If this is true, or even close to being true, it is a truly remarkable accomplishment, as the Buddha taught for some forty-five years, during which he preached a great many sermons. Apparently there was no writing in India at that time, and it was not until some centuries after the Buddha’s death that Buddhist texts could be recorded in written form. Thus it may be that the vast bulk of Buddhist sutras were memorized by Ananda.

A cousin of Shakyamuni and a brother of the infamous Devadatta, Ananda joined the Sangha when he was about twenty, along with six other high-caste young men. At first, the request by Ananda and his brother to be allowed to join the Buddha’s following was refused. So they became disciples of another religious teacher. But later, when they approached Shakyamuni a second time, permission was granted for them to join the group and become Buddhist monks. Some twenty years later, Ananda was surprised by his selection to be Shakyamuni’s personal attendant – a position he kept for about twenty-five years.

According to legend, Ananda was not able to achieve nirvana, the awakening of an arhat, during the Buddha’s lifetime. Right up to the night before the Council at which he would recite the Buddha’s teachings, he was unable to reach that highly sought stage. But late that night, before the dawn, as he was in the process of lying down to sleep, he suddenly experienced nirvana, thus becoming eligible to participate in the Council along with all of the other arhats.

Like Shakyamuni, Ananda was a Shakya noble. There are many stories about his kindness, especially toward women, and about his attractiveness to women. It was he, more than any other, who persuaded Shakyamuni to admit women into the Sangha, in particular Shakyamuni’s aunt and stepmother Mahaprajapati, thus creating the first Buddhist community for nuns.

There are a great many stories of people going to Ananda for advice or counsel, often on matters of doctrine, not only monks and nuns but also a variety of brahmans and householders. In addition to accounts of Ananda preaching both to monks and to lay men and women, there are also stories of Ananda being appointed to speak for the Buddha, either in place of the Buddha or to complete a sermon the Buddha had started.

Though highly suspect, it is written that Ananda lived to be a hundred and twenty years old. At the beginning of the fifth century, the Chinese monk Fa-hsien traveled to India, reporting extensively on what he saw and heard. At Vaishali, where it is said that the Buddha gave his last sermon, Fa-hsien found two stupas on opposite sides of the river, each containing half of the remains of Ananda. This was said to be a consequence of Ananda’s body being cremated on a raft in the middle of the Ganges River. Nuns worshiped at the stupas of Ananda, since it was through his help that the community of nuns had been established.

One Pali text says that Ananda was “a dispeller of gloom in the darkness.” This could easily remind us an important verse from the end of Chapter 21 of the Lotus Sutra. About anyone who can teach the truth, it says:

Just as the light of the sun and the moon
Can dispel darkness,
Such a person, working in the world,
Can dispel the gloom of living beings.