The Way Things Really Are.

By Buddhism Now on 27 December 2024 • ( 0 )

A translation of Book IV of the Sutta-nipata
By Lesley Fowler Lebkowicz and Tamara Ditrich with Primoz Pecenko

Translator’s Note

The Sutta-nipata is one of the earliest texts of the Pali cannon, coming from the same period as the Dhammapada, before the monastic tradition was strong. It was created by people as they practised and refers to “the wise one”, rather than to monks or nuns. In the present translation, “the wise one” is referred to as female and as male on a roughly equal number of occasions.

Some verses.

On Desire

You’re overjoyed if you get what you want.

If you don’t, you writhe, a hunter pierced by your own arrow, born of desire, engendering desire, desire driven.

But if you’re mindful you evade desire as easily as side-stepping a snake. You’re free of the world’s sticky traps.

Be mindful. Abandon desire. Bale out the boat and reach the further shore.

How Opinion and Thought Contaminate the Mind

Some people debate maliciously. Others honestly. But the wise are silent, stand back from arguments, keep the mind open.

How can you ever free the mind of its opinions if you let desire lead you and do exactly as you like? You’re bound by your own habits, can speak only what you know.

To overcome habitual points of view is hard. You investigate them all, abandon some and choose a special one.

The wise have no such view about what is or what is not. They know both thought and pride are meaningless. Nothing defines them.

Purity of Heart

If seeing or some intellectual process could rid you of pain the purifying agent would be outside you and you’d be left still eager to grasp. This view describes a grasping person not any pathto purity.

If you abandon one thing just to cling to another you’ll never free yourself. You’re like a monkey letting go of one branch, grasping another.

You immerse yourself in religious practices, favour certain ways of seeing things and go up and down. The wise one sees the way things are through insight, no longer swings from high to low.

You’re free. You’ve understood the way things are. There’s nothing you would grasp. You’ve gone beyond all limitations, have no taste for desire or its absence. There’s nothing left to do.

Before the Body’s Dissolution

The Buddha said, “Even before the body’s dissolution, if you’re free you’re untroubled about anything that’s past or still to come or happening right now. You have no preferences.

You don’t live the way of truth in order to get something and aren’t upset when you don’t. You’re free of desire, have no greed for pleasure.

Free of greed and selfishness, wise one, you don’t describe yourself as superior
equal or inferior. You’re free of ideas, free of any views.

Quarrels and Disputes

So where in the world do sense impressions come from? Why do we cling to things? What do we have to do to be free of selfishness and sense impressions?

What do we have to do for mind and body to disappear? For happiness and unhappiness to cease? Tell us please, we really want to know.

Mind and body cease to exist when you experience neither true nor false perception; when you’re neither without perception nor perceive something that’s not there. It’s perception that’s the source of every problem.

The Fast Way to Freedom

The great sage, Buddha, said, “Be wise. Side-step the traps that trick you into believing that ‘you are’. It’s a delusion. Whatever deep desires you may have, practise for their extinction. Be mindful all the time.

These are just a very small selection of wisdom from this wonderful text.

You can download this marvellous small ebook here.

Lots of thanks to BuddhaNet