[Mettagu:]
I ask you, O Blessed One. Please tell me. I regard you as
knowledgeable, with your self developed. From what have the many
forms of stress & suffering arisen in the world?
[The Buddha:]
If you ask me the coming-into-being of stress & suffering, I
will tell it to you as one who discerns. From acquisition [1] as cause the many forms of
stress & suffering come into being in the world. Whoever,
unknowing, makes acquisitions — the fool — comes to stress &
suffering again & again. So one who's discerning, focused on
the birth of stress & suffering, their coming-into-being,
should make no acquisitions.
[Mettagu:]
What we asked, you've expounded. Now we ask something else.
Please tell us. How do the prudent cross over the flood of birth
& aging, lamentation & sorrow? Please, sage, declare this
to me as this Dhamma has been known by you.
[The Buddha:]
I will teach you the Dhamma — in the here & now, not quoted
words — knowing which, living mindfully, you'll cross over beyond
entanglement in the world.
[Mettagu:]
And I relish, Great Seer, that Dhamma supreme, knowing which,
living mindfully, I'll cross over beyond entanglement in the
world.
[The Buddha:]
Whatever you're alert to, above, below, across, in
between:[2] dispelling any delight,
any laying claim to those things, consciousness should not take a
stance in becoming. The monk who dwells thus — mindful, heedful —
letting go of his sense of mine, knowing right here would
abandon birth & aging, lamentation & sorrow, stress &
suffering.
[Mettagu:]
I relish, Gotama, the Great Seer's words well-expounded, without
acquisition, for yes, O Blessed One, you've abandoned stress &
suffering as this Dhamma has been known by you. And they, too,
would abandon stress & suffering those whom you, sage, would
admonish unceasingly. Having met you, I bow down to you, Great One.
Perhaps you will admonish me unceasingly.
[The Buddha:]
Whoever you recognize as a knowledgeable brahman, possessing
nothing, unentangled in sensuality & becoming yes, he has
crossed over the flood. Having crossed to the far shore, he is
without harshness or doubt. And any one who has realized, who is
knowledgeable here, having unentangled the bond to becoming and
non-, [3] free of craving,
untroubled, undesiring — he, I tell you, has crossed over birth
& aging.
