Home › Magazine › Spring 2005 › This Fathom-Long Carcass
Filed in Theravada

This Fathom-Long Carcass

In this oft-quoted sutta, the Buddha speaks to the deva Rohitassa, who has run day and night, in vain, to reach the end of the world. Pali scholar Andrew Olendzki explains.

Andrew Olendzki

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Thus have I heard:
The end of the world can never
Be reached by walking. However,
Without having reached the world’s end
There is no release from suffering.

I declare that it is in this fathom—
long carcass, with its perceptions
and thoughts, that there is the world, the
origin of the world, the cessation of the
world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.

(Anguttara Nikaya 4:45)

This radical statement, attributed to the Buddha in the Pali canon, constitutes no less than a Copernican revolution in thought, with far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the human condition. It redefines “the world” in a way that flies in the face of both the scientific and the religious traditions of the West, but is remarkably well suited to the postmodern views emerging along the cutting edges of the new cognitive and neurological sciences.

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