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Rebecca Fox Stoddard
February 2026
A study reflection on sabbaññū and tevijja — questions that came up in today's course discussion
I have been studying with Dr. Aleix Ruiz-Falqués through Yogic Studies, and one of the things I appreciate most about his courses in particular is how often a single question opens into something much bigger.
In today's lecture, a discussion about the distinction between omniscience and all-knowing sent me straight to the primary texts. What I found was more layered than I expected, and I'm sharing it here as a study reflection — not as a settled answer, but as a set of questions I’m still exploring.
The starting point
The question seems simple enough: Did the Buddha claim to be all-knowing? The answer turns out to be more layered than a yes or no.
In MN 71, Vacchagotta asks the Buddha directly whether he is sabbaññū (all-knowing) and sabbadassāvī (all-seeing), with knowledge present "constantly and continuously" — while walking, standing, sleeping, and waking. The Buddha's answer is no. He says that anyone who describes him that way is misrepresenting him.
What he does claim instead are the tevijja — the three knowledges:
- Recollection of past lives
- The divine eye (dibbacakkhu), seeing beings' rebirths according to their kamma
- Knowledge of the destruction of the āsavās (the taints or fermentations)
These are profound attainments. But they are specific. They are not a claim to know everything simultaneously.
[MN 71:5.1, Bhikkhu Sujato] Vacchagotta reports what he has heard: "The ascetic Gotama claims to be all-knowing and all-seeing, to know and see everything without exception, thus: 'Knowledge and vision are constantly and continually present to me, while walking, standing, sleeping, and waking.' I trust that those who say this repeat what the Buddha has said, and do not misrepresent him with an untruth?"
[MN 71:5.2, Bhikkhu Sujato] The Buddha's reply: "Vaccha, those who say this do not repeat what I have said. They misrepresent me with what is false and untrue."
[MN 71:5.5, Bhikkhu Sujato] The Buddha's positive counter-claim: "'The ascetic Gotama has the three knowledges.' Answering like this you would repeat what I have said, and not misrepresent me with an untruth... For, Vaccha, whenever I want, I recollect my many kinds of past lives... And whenever I want, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, I see sentient beings passing away and being reborn... And I have realized the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life."
Where the formula comes from
In AN 4.24, the Buddha makes a statement — that he knows whatever has been seen, heard, thought, known, attained, sought, and explored by the mind in the world with its gods, Māras, and divinities. That sounds comprehensive.
[AN 4.24:2.1, Bhikkhu Sujato] "In this world — with its gods, Māras, and divinities, this population with its ascetics and brahmins, its gods and humans — whatever is seen, heard, thought, known, attained, sought, and explored by the mind: that I know."
Yaṁ, bhikkhave, sadevakassa lokassa samārakassa sabrahmakassa sassamaṇabrāhmaṇiyā pajāya sadevamanussāya diṭṭhaṁ sutaṁ mutaṁ viññātaṁ pattaṁ pariyesitaṁ anuvicaritaṁ manasā, tamahaṁ jānāmi.
The formula that keeps appearing across this discussion — "Knowledge and vision are constantly and continually present to me, while walking, standing, sleeping, and waking" — is worth tracking carefully. In MN 14, this phrase is actually spoken by the Jain ascetics describing their leader Mahāvīra (Nigaṇṭha Nātaputta), not the Buddha. It is the omniscience claim of the Jain tradition.
[MN 14:17.2–17.3, Bhikkhu Sujato] The Jain formula as applied to Mahāvīra: "Knowledge and vision are constantly and continually present to me, while walking, standing, sleeping, and waking."
carato ca me tiṭṭhato ca suttassa ca jāgarassa ca satataṁ samitaṁ ñāṇadassanaṁ paccupaṭṭhitan. Sujato's footnote on that passage then cross-references MN 71, noting that the Buddha denied possessing this kind of omniscience — and that what he claims instead are the tevijja.
As we saw in MN 71, Vacchagotta cited this same formula and attributed it to the Buddha — apparently having encountered it being attributed to him. The Buddha explicitly denied it.
So the formula travels: it is a Jain claim about Mahāvīra, it gets mistakenly applied to the Buddha, and the Buddha corrects the record. The Buddha knows the "all" — but the "all" in the Pali context is the six sense bases (SN 35.28). That is a technical definition, not a colloquial one.
[SN 35.28, Bhikkhu Sujato] "Mendicants, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning? The eye is burning. Sights are burning. Eye consciousness is burning... The mind is burning. Ideas are burning. Mind consciousness is burning... Burning with the fires of greed, hate, and delusion."
So he can be poetically considered all-knowing — in the sense that he understands the totality of experience as defined by the six senses — without that being a claim to know all facts, at all times, simultaneously.
How the later tradition handled this
The Milindapañha — a Pali text in which the Greek king Milinda poses hard questions to the monk Nāgasena — picks up the MN 90 statement that no ascetic or brahmin will ever know all and see all simultaneously, and flips the implication.
[MN 90:8.5, Bhikkhu Sujato] "There is no ascetic or brahmin who will ever know all and see all simultaneously: that is not possible."
Natthi so samaṇo vā brāhmaṇo vā yo sakideva sabbaṁ ñassati, sabbaṁ dakkhiti, netaṁ ṭhānaṁ vijjatī. The Buddha can know all things, Nāgasena argues — just not all at once. The Buddha could direct his attention to anything and know it; the constraint is simultaneity, not scope. (Mil 5.1.2:1.2)
This is a meaningful distinction. It moves omniscience from a standing state to a potentiality — something the Buddha can access, rather than something perpetually active.
What the scholars say
Bhikkhu Bodhi's lectures on the Majjhima Nikāya address this distinction directly. The relevant discussion is in his lecture on MN 71, available through the Open Buddhist University's MP3 archive, around the 5-minute mark. He works through the textual tension carefully.
Piya Tan at the Minding Centre also takes up MN 71 and the omniscience question in a detailed study paper available here. His treatment is worth reading alongside the sutta itself.
Two Pali terms worth sitting with
The dictionary definitions add another layer to this puzzle. From the Pali lexicon:
- sabbaññū 2: masc. "omniscient one; who is all knowing; who understands everything; epithet of the Buddha"
- sabbadassāvī: adj. "all seeing; who perceives everything" [sabba + dassāvī]
- tevijja 2: adj. "possessing the three knowledges" [ti + vijjā + *a]
This is where it gets confusing. The dictionary defines sabbaññū as an epithet of the Buddha — yet the Buddha in MN 71 explicitly says that anyone describing him as sabbaññū in the sense of constant, continuous omniscience is misrepresenting him.
So the term is both a standard epithet for the Buddha and a claim he denies, depending on how it is being used.
Sabbadassāvī follows the same pattern — "all seeing; who perceives everything" — again both an attribute and apparently a qualification that matters.
Tevijja — the three knowledges — is the Buddha's own positive formulation of what he attained. These are not hedged or modest claims. They are specific, verifiable in principle, and grounded in the practice of sammā samādhi (right concentration). They are what he says he has. That leaves me with real questions. Is sabbaññū as an epithet just a poetic way of pointing to the tevijja? Or does it describe something beyond them? And if the Buddha himself denied being sabbaññū in the sense of constant omniscience — why does the dictionary define it as his epithet? Is that definition a later development? A devotional layer added by the tradition? I am curious.
Where this leaves me
I came in thinking the answer would be a simple correction — the Buddha didn't claim omniscience. What I found is more interesting. He denied a particular kind of omniscience (constant, simultaneous, perpetually active), while the tradition has consistently read the tevijja and the "all-knowing" language as pointing toward something of enormous scope.
The Milindapañha resolution — that the Buddha can know anything he attends to — is not in the Nikāyas directly, but it is a coherent reading of what is there. It threads the needle between the MN 71 denial and the AN 4.24 claim.
This is the kind of question that rewards sitting with the primary texts rather than settling for a quick summary. I have more questions now than when I started.
Questions for Further Exploration
- Is the Milindapañha resolution — omniscience as potentiality rather than standing state — supported anywhere in the Nikāyas themselves, or is it genuinely a post-canonical development?
- How does the Abhidhamma tradition handle the simultaneity question? Does it formalize Nāgasena's answer?
- The "all" in "all-knowing" appears to have a technical definition (six senses, SN 35.28). When later texts use sabbaññū more expansively, is there a documented point at which the term shifts meaning?
- The tevijja framework locates the Buddha's attainment in specific domains of knowledge. How do other early Buddhist schools (Sarvāstivāda, for instance) characterize this — do they accept the same three, or expand them?
- Ven. Sujato's note mentions Theragāthā passages where the Buddha is poetically described as all-knowing. What is the literary function of that language — devotional hyperbole, or is there a doctrinal claim being made?
img: By Marek Gawęcki - This image has been extracted from another file, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100993310