He doesn’t regret
what life has been,
doesn’t grieve
at death,
if–enlightened1–
he has seen that state.
He doesn’t grieve
in the midst of grief.
For one who has crushed
craving for becoming–
the monk of peaceful mind–
birth & the wandering on
are totally ended.
He has no further becoming.2
Notes
1. Enlightened (dhīra): Throughout this translation I have rendered buddha as “awakened,” and dhīra as “enlightened.” As Jan Gonda points out in his book, The Vision of the Vedic Poets, the word dhīra was used in Vedic and Buddhist poetry to mean a person who has the heightened powers of mental vision needed to perceive the “light” of the underlying principles of the cosmos, together with the expertise to implement those principles in the affairs of life and to reveal them to others. A person enlightened in this sense may also be awakened, but is not necessarily so.
2. This last verse is identical with a verse in Sn 3:12 (verse 746 in the PTS edition).
Origin URL: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud4_9.html