{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/snp/snp5-4.htm","path":"bud/snp/snp5-4.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/snp/snp5-4.htm","text":"I ask you, O Blessed One.\nPlease tell me.\nI regard you as knowledgeable,\nwith your self developed.\nFrom what have the many\nforms of stress & suffering\narisen in the world?\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you ask me\nthe coming-into-being\nof stress & suffering,\nI will tell it to you\nas one who discerns.\nFrom acquisition [1] as cause\nthe many forms of stress & suffering\ncome into being in the world.\nWhoever, unknowing, makes acquisitions\n-- the fool --\ncomes to stress & suffering\nagain\n& again.\nSo one who's discerning,\nfocused on the birth\nof stress & suffering,\ntheir coming-into-being,\nshould make no acquisitions.\nWhat we asked, you've expounded.\nNow we ask something else.\nPlease tell us.\nHow do the prudent\ncross over the flood of\nbirth & aging,\nlamentation & sorrow?\nPlease, sage, declare this to me\nas this Dhamma has\nbeen known by you.\nI will teach you the Dhamma\n-- in the here & now,\nnot quoted words --\nknowing which, living mindfully,\nyou'll cross over beyond\nentanglement in the world.\nAnd I relish, Great Seer,\nthat Dhamma supreme,\nknowing which, living mindfully,\nI'll cross over beyond\nentanglement in the world.\nWhatever you're alert to,\nabove, below,\nacross, in between: [2]\ndispelling any delight,\nany laying claim\nto those things,\nconsciousness should not take a stance\nin becoming.\nThe monk who dwells thus\n-- mindful, heedful --\nletting go of his sense of mine,\nknowing right here would abandon\nbirth & aging,\nlamentation & sorrow,\nstress & suffering.\nI relish, Gotama, the Great Seer's words\nwell-expounded, without acquisition,\nfor yes, O Blessed One,\nyou've abandoned stress & suffering\nas this Dhamma has\nbeen known by you.\nAnd they, too, would abandon stress & suffering\nthose whom you, sage,\nwould admonish unceasingly.\nHaving met you, I bow down to you,\nGreat One.\nPerhaps you will admonish me\nunceasingly.\nWhoever you recognize\nas a knowledgeable brahmin,\npossessing nothing,\nunentangled\nin sensuality & becoming\nyes, he has crossed over the flood.\nHaving crossed to the far shore,\nhe is without\nharshness or doubt.\nAnd any one who has realized,\nwho is knowledgeable here,\nhaving unentangled the bond\nto becoming and non-, [3]\nfree of craving,\nuntroubled,\nundesiring -- he,\nI tell you, has crossed over birth\n& aging.\n1. The term \"acquisition\" (upadhi), in its everyday sense, denotes the possessions, baggage, and other paraphernalia that a nomadic family might carry around with it in its wanderings. On the psychological level, it denotes anything for which one might have a sense of \"I\" or \"mine\" and which, consequently, one would carry around as a kind of mental baggage. [Go back]\n2. Nd.II gives six different valid interpretations for \"above, below, across, in between\":\n3. Becoming and non-becoming (or dis-becoming) are the two most subtle objects of craving that lead on to continued existence -- and suffering -- in the round of birth & death. [Go back]","title":"Sn V.4: Mettagu-manava-puccha","type":"page"}