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### Sutta Nipata V.4

# Mettagu-manava-puccha

# Mettagu's Questions

Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
For free distribution only.

Read an alternate translation by John D. Ireland

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.

### Notes

1. The term "acquisition" (upadhi), in its everyday sense, denotes the possessions, baggage, and other paraphernalia that a nomadic family might carry around with it in its wanderings. On the psychological level, it denotes anything for which one might have a sense of "I" or "mine" and which, consequently, one would carry around as a kind of mental baggage. [Go back]

2. Nd.II gives six different valid interpretations for "above, below, across, in between":

- above = the future; below = the past; across and in between = the present
- above = the deva world; below = hell; across and in between = the human world
- above = skillfulness; below = unskillfulness; across and in between = indeterminate mental qualities
- above = the property of formlessness; below = the property of sensuality; across and in between = the property of form
- above = feelings of pleasure; below = feelings of pain; across and in between = feelings of neither pleasure nor pain
- above = the body from the feet on up; below = the body from the crown of the head on down; across and in between = the middle of the body

[Go back]

3. Becoming and non-becoming (or dis-becoming) are the two most subtle objects of craving that lead on to continued existence -- and suffering -- in the round of birth & death. [Go back]

Revised: Wed 16 May 2001