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The Digha Nikaya (dīghanikāya; "Collection of Long Discourses") is a Buddhist scripture, the first of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka of (Theravada) Buddhism. Some of the most commonly referenced suttas from the Digha Nikaya include the Maha-parinibbana Sutta (DN 16), which described the final days and death of the Buddha, the Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31) in which the Buddha discusses ethics and practices for lay followers, and the Samaññaphala (DN 2), Brahmajala Sutta (DN 1) which describes and compares the point of view of Buddha and other ascetics in India about the universe and time (past, present, and future); and the Poṭṭhapāda (DN 9) Suttas, which describe the benefits and practice of samatha meditation.

Structure and contents

The Digha Nikaya consists of 34 discourses, broken into three groups:

Silakkhandha-vagga—The Division Concerning Morality (suttas 1-13); named after a tract on monks' morality that occurs in each of its suttas (in theory; in practice it is not written out in full in all of them); in most of them it leads on to the jnanas (the main attainments of samatha meditation), the cultivation of psychic powers and becoming an arahant.

Maha-vagga—The Great Division (suttas 14-23)

Patika-vagga—The Patika Division (suttas 24-34)

Correspondence with the Dīrgha Āgama

The Digha Nikaya corresponds to the Dīrgha Āgama found in the Sutta Pitikas of various Sanskritic early Buddhists schools, fragments of which survive in Sanskrit. A complete version of the Dīrgha Āgama of the Dharmagupta school survives in Chinese translation by the name Cháng Ahánjīng (ch:長阿含經). It contains 30 sūtras in contrast to the 34 suttas of the Theravadin Dīgha Nikāya. In addition, portions of the Sarvāstivādin school's Dīrgha Āgama survive in Sanskrit and in Tibetan translation.

Courtesy -- wikipedia
- Digha Nikaya

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