‘Enough now with teaching
what
only with difficulty
I reached.
This Dhamma is not easily realized
by those overcome
with aversion & passion.
What is abstruse, subtle,
deep,
hard to see,
going against the flow—
those delighting in passion,
cloaked in the mass of darkness,
won’t see.’
‘In the past
there appeared among the Magadhans
an impure Dhamma
devised by the stained.
Throw open the door to the deathless!
Let them hear the Dhamma
realized by the Stainless One!
Just as one standing on a rocky crag
might see people
all around below,
so, intelligent one, with all-around vision,
ascend the palace
fashioned of Dhamma.
Free from sorrow, behold the people
submerged in sorrow,
oppressed by birth & aging.
Rise up, hero, victor in battle!
O Teacher, wander without debt in the world.
Teach the Dhamma, O Blessed One:
There will be those who will understand.’
‘Open are the doors to the deathless.
Let those with ears show their conviction.
Perceiving trouble, O Brahmā,
I did not tell people
the refined,
sublime Dhamma.’
‘All-vanquishing,
all-knowing am I,
with regard to all things,
unadhering.
All-abandoning,
released in the ending of craving:
having fully known on my own,
to whom should I point as my teacher?5
I have no teacher,
and one like me can’t be found.
In the world with its devas,
I have no counterpart.
For I am an arahant in the world;
I, the unexcelled teacher.
I, alone, am rightly self-awakened.
Cooled am I, unbound.
To set rolling the wheel of Dhamma
I go to the city of Kāsi.
In a world become blind,
I beat the drum of the deathless.’
“‘Conquerors are those like me
who have reached effluents’ end.
I’ve conquered evil qualities,
and so, Upaka, I’m a conqueror.’
Notes
1. See Ud 2:2 and AN 10:69. Noble silence = the levels of jhāna beginning with the second.
2. The Burmese, Sri Lankan, and PTS editions of the Canon exclude gold and silver from the list of objects subject to illness, death, and sorrow, apparently on the grounds that they themselves do not grow ill, die, or feel sorrow. The Thai edition of the Canon includes gold and silver in the list of objects subject to illness, death, and sorrow in the sense that any happiness based on them is subject to change because of one’s own illness, death, and sorrow.
3. See MN 29, note 3.
4. The section from here to Brahmā Sahampati’s disappearance is recounted in the third person at SN 6:1.
5. This verse = Dhp 353.
6. For another use of the wild deer as a symbol for a free mind, see Ud 2:10.
7. As the Commentary points out, simply attaining the states of concentration from the first jhāna through the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception blinds Māra only temporarily. Only with the arising of discernment is Māra blinded for good. On Māra’s blindness, see Sn 5:15, AN 9:39, and SN 22:87 (the last chapter in The Mind Like Fire Unbound). For the meaning of “leaving no trace,” see Dhp 92–93, 179–180.
Origin URL: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN26.html