{"collection":"Buddhism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/bud/snp/snp5-6.htm","path":"bud/snp/snp5-6.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/bud/snp/snp5-6.htm","text":"Alone, Sakyan, & with nothing to rely on,\nI can't venture across\nthe great flood.\nTell me, All-around Eye,\nthe support to rely on\nfor crossing over this flood.\nMindfully focused on nothingness, [1]\nrelying on 'There isn't,'\nyou should cross over the flood.\nAbandoning sensual pleasures,\nabstaining from conversations,\nkeep watch for the ending of\ncraving, night & day.\nOne free from passion\nfor all sensual pleasures\nrelying on nothingness, letting go of all else,\nreleased in the highest emancipation of perception:\nDoes he stay there unaffected?\nOne free from passion\nfor all sensual pleasures\nrelying on nothingness, letting go of all else,\nreleased in the highest emancipation of perception:\nHe stays there unaffected.\nIf he stays there, O All-around Eye,\nunaffected for many years,\nright there\nwould he be cooled & released?\nWould his consciousness be like that?\nAs a flame overthrown by the force of the wind\ngoes to an end\nthat cannot be classified,[2]\nso the sage free from naming activity\ngoes to an end\nthat cannot be classified.\nHe who has reached the end:\nDoes he not exist,\nor is he for eternity\nfree from dis-ease?\nPlease, sage, declare this to me\nas this phenomenon has been known by you.\nOne who has reached the end\nhas no criterion [3]\nby which anyone would say that --\nfor him it doesn't exist.\nWhen all phenomena are done away with,\nall means of speaking\nare done away with as well.\n1. \"Nothingness\" here denotes the sphere of nothingness, one of the four levels of mental absorption on formless themes. One attains this level, after surmounting the sphere of the infinitude of consciousness, by focusing on the perception, \"There is nothing.\" M.26 tells us that Alara Kalama, the Buddha's first teacher when the latter was still a Bodhisatta, had attained this level of mental absorption and had thought that it was the highest possible attainment. The Bodhisatta left him upon realizing that it was not true liberation from stress and suffering. Nevertheless, the sphere of nothingness can be used as a basis for the insight leading to that liberation. On this point, see Sn.V.14 and A.IX.36. [Go back]\n2. For a discussion of this passage in light of early Buddhist theories of fire, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, Chapter 1. [Go back]\n3. For a discussion of the meaning of \"criterion\" in this passage, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, Chapter 1. [Go back]","title":"Sn V.6: Upasiva-manava-puccha","type":"page"}