The Parable of the Raft

Tradition Buddhism Source Majjhima Nikāya 22, Alagaddūpama Sutta, trans. Lord Chalmers, Further Dialogues of the Buddha vol. I (1926) Era c. 500 BCE

The Teaching

By the parable of the raft I will teach how to abandon and not to retain. … It is like a man who after travelling a long way finds the floods out, with danger and peril on the hither side and with security and safety on the further side, but with no ferry or suspension-bridge; and to him comes the thought to win his way across the floods to safety from the perils which encompass him by collecting grass and sticks and branches and boughs wherewith to fashion a raft on which to paddle himself safely across with his hands and feet; and to him, when he has done all this and has paddled himself safely across, the thought comes that the raft had been so useful that he might do well to take it along with him packed on his head or shoulders. Think you he would be doing the right thing with the raft?

No, sir.

… In this wise I have taught you by the parable of the raft how to abandon and not to retain. If you understand this parable of the raft, you have to discard good things, and à fortiori bad things.

— Majjhima Nikāya 22

Commentary

You build the raft from whatever is lying on the bank: grass, sticks, branches. You cross on it. On the far side, it would be foolish to carry it on your head for the rest of the journey out of gratitude. In the Buddha’s answer, the right thing to do with a good raft is to pull it up on the beach or let it float away.

What makes the parable strange is its last line: discard good things. It doesn’t stop at bad habits and wrong views. The teaching itself is the raft. A method is for crossing, and holding on to it once you’ve crossed becomes another kind of attachment, perhaps the most respectable kind.

Zhuangzi, on the other side of the Himalayas and with no known contact, reached for a fish trap instead of a raft (The Fish Trap). Once you have the fish, you can forget the trap. Two teachers who never met both decided that the highest compliment to a teaching is to put it down when its work is done.