Section outline
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Lesson 3.2.10 Anattalakkhaṇasuttaṃ – Characteristics of Not Self
The Anattalakkhaṇasutta is the second discourse with which the Buddha instructed the pañcavaggiyā bhikkhū while they all continued to dwell in the vicinity of the deer park of Isipatana. Nothing is handed down about what the Buddha instructed the five bhikkhus between the teaching of the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta and the Anattalakkhaṇasutta but all of them seem to have been established in the fruit of Sotāpanna by then. With this preparation, the Buddha then saw the time had ripened to teach this very sutta. Because of their already developed state of Sotāpanna, and the Buddha’s preceding teaching of the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta, they were properly prepared that everything to be comprehended needed to be realised thoroughly through experience. That is why the teaching of anattā through this very discourse turned all of them into Arahants, thus gratifying the world with six fully Enlightened Ones and completely setting in motion the wheel of Dhamma.