The Simile of the Saw: Reading a Difficult Buddhist Teaching

A Buddhist teaching asks its listeners to maintain goodwill even if attackers cut them with a saw. Read by itself, that sentence can be alarming. Is patience supposed to mean accepting any injury? What leads a discourse on training to such an extreme image?

The saw appears near the end of a sustained examination of anger and goodwill. Reading what comes before it helps identify the training being proposed. The account below follows the Chinese Madhyama Agama 193, whose sequence includes a household story, different kinds of speech, and several comparisons before the saw.

A gentle reputation meets a difficult morning

The discourse begins with a monk whose relationships have become a source of angry disputes. When others criticize the nuns with whom he associates, he becomes hostile; the nuns react similarly to criticism of him. The Buddha calls him to account and addresses the commitments involved in leaving household life. The immediate setting is monastic training.

Later, the discourse asks whether agreeable conduct depends on favorable conditions. A person may seem easy to instruct while receiving the provisions they want. Someone may appear patient because nobody has yet spoken unpleasantly to them. What happens when those supports disappear?

The household story gives the question a sharp form. A wealthy woman has an excellent reputation for gentleness. Her enslaved servant deliberately gets up later, testing whether that reputation reflects the woman's disposition or the smooth running of her household. The woman's anger grows until she strikes the servant, injuring her head. The servant then shows the injury to the neighbors.

The story exposes how conditional the woman's celebrated patience was. Her conduct while being served well had concealed what emerged when her wishes were frustrated. The injury belongs to the criticism of her behavior; the passage offers no reason to praise it or blame the injured servant for the woman's violence.

Five differences in what people say

The teaching then distinguishes speech along five lines: its timing, truthfulness, harshness or gentleness, hostility or goodwill, and meaningfulness or lack of benefit. These distinctions matter because criticism can be true and badly timed, gentle in sound yet hostile in intention, or unpleasant while containing something worth hearing.

The hearer is asked to train across these differences, keeping the mind from turning hostile and the mouth from producing abusive words. The other person's poor speech does not settle what one's own next words have to be. A listener still has conduct to examine.

Goodwill in this passage also has an expansive form. Beginning with the difficult person, the practitioner extends it through the directions and throughout the world. The text names compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity as well. Its horizon is wider than winning a disagreement or appearing calm in front of other people.

Earth, a river, and the space a painter cannot mark

Before the saw, several images enlarge that horizon. Someone digs at the earth, insults it, and attempts to turn it into something other than earth. The effort cannot exhaust its vastness. Another person tries to boil the Ganges with a burning bundle of grass. The great body of water exceeds that small fire.

A painter next proposes to paint shapes in empty space. There is no surface there on which the proposed marks can be established. The comparison asks the monks to cultivate a mind with that breadth, free from enmity. Each image is followed by renewed attention to what happens when others speak.

These are comparisons for cultivation. The passage repeatedly returns to learning and developing the mind; it does not simply declare that everyone already responds like an immense river. The images give the instruction something to work with: a hostile remark need not fill the entire field of attention.

What the saw makes uncompromising

The sequence moves from speech to physical assault, then to the saw. Even in this extreme situation, the monks are asked to maintain goodwill toward the attackers and extend it without limit. The demand is deliberately severe. Diluting it into a suggestion to relax would miss how far the text carries its rejection of hatred.

Its ending also makes the religious purpose explicit. Repeatedly remembering the teaching is connected with the growth of wholesome qualities and with liberation, including final knowledge or non-returning. The discourse is concerned with a path out of bondage, beyond the immediate comfort of a pleasant interaction.

At the same time, its instruction about the practitioner's mind does not give an attacker permission to injure someone. Nor does it describe how a person facing danger can obtain protection. Those are questions the image itself cannot answer. A person can seek help while the work of understanding anger remains unfinished. For that separate practical discussion, see compassion and boundaries.

A way to return to the text

For a first rereading, stay with the household story before moving to the final image. What allowed a reputation for gentleness to develop? What changed when the servant stopped making life convenient? The questions turn attention toward the conditions under which one's own agreeable conduct holds.

Then read the five distinctions in speech. Think of an ordinary conversation in which the content and the delivery differed: a useful correction spoken sharply, perhaps, or a flattering remark intended to obtain something. Separating those features can make the next response more considered. This is an everyday application of the passage, without pretending that a minor irritation equals its extreme final test.

Finally, notice how often the discourse expands goodwill beyond one person. The guide to the four immeasurables explains that larger field of practice. The saw remains a difficult image. Its place in the whole discourse shows what it intensifies: the sustained effort to keep another person's hostility from determining the reach of one's own goodwill.