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# Theragatha

## Chapter IV -- The Fours

### (Selected suttas)

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IV.8 -- Rahula {vv. 295-298}
[Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans.]

> In both ways
> consummate,[1]
> I'm known as Rahula
> the Fortunate:
> because I'm the son of the Buddha,
> because I've the eye that sees Dhammas,
> because my fermentations are ended,
> because I've no further becoming.
> I'm deserving of offerings,
> a worthy one
> a three-knowledge man,[2]
> with sight
> of the Deathless.

> Those
> blinded by sensuality
> covered by the net,
> veiled by the veil of craving,
> bound by the Kinsman of the heedless,[3]
> are like fish in the mouth of a trap.

> Throwing that sensuality aside,
> cutting through Mara's bond,
> pulling out craving, root & all,
> cooled am I,
> Unbound.

> Notes:

> 1. This phrase can be taken in two ways: (a) consummate in that he has a pure lineage on both his mother's and his father's side; and (b) consummate in that he belongs both to a well-born lineage in the worldly sense and, by means of his meditative attainments, to the lineage of the noble ones. [Go back]

> 2. One with knowledge of past lives, knowledge of the passing away and rearising of living beings, and knowledge of the ending of mental fermentations. [Go back]

> 3. Mara. [Go back]

Revised: Fri 12 April 2002