So It Was Said

Abandon greed, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

Abandon aversion, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

Abandon delusion, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

Abandon anger, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

Abandon contempt, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

Abandon conceit, and you’re guaranteed non-return.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for the All, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for conceit, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for greed, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for aversion, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for delusion, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for anger, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

When the mind, cleansed of passion for contempt, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to suffering.

Hindered by the hindrance of ignorance, people go wandering and transmigrating on for a long, long time.

Fettered with the fetter of craving, beings go wandering and transmigrating on for a long, long time.

Appropriate attention as the prime internal factor to help those in training.

Friendship with admirable people as the prime external factor to help those in training.

Schism in the Sangha leads to the detriment and unhappiness of many beings, both human and divine.

Concord in the Sangha leads to the welfare and happiness of many beings, both human and divine.

Corrupt-mindedness leads to rebirth in the planes of deprivation.

Clear-mindedness leads to rebirth in a heavenly world.

“Acts of merit” is a synonym for what is blissful, desirable, pleasing, endearing, charming. The Buddha recalls the results he himself has experienced from doing meritorious deeds.

Heedfulness with regard to skillful qualities keeps both kinds of benefit secure: benefit in this life and benefit in lives to come.

In this course of transmigrating, one person would leave behind a heap of bones as large as a mountain—if there were someone to collect the bones and the collection were not destroyed.

A person who tells a deliberate lie is capable of any evil deed.

If you knew, as the Buddha did, the results of giving and sharing, you wouldn’t eat without having shared.

Goodwill far outshines all other ways of making merit.

Not guarding the doors of the sense faculties and knowing no moderation in food leads to suffering in this life and the next.

Guarding the doors of the sense faculties and knowing moderation in food leads to ease in this life and the next.

Two things that cause remorse.

Two things that cause lack of remorse.

A person of evil habits and evil views goes to hell.

A person of auspicious habits and auspicious views goes to heaven.

To lack ardency and compunction makes you incapable of unbinding.

The holy life is lived for the purpose of restraint and abandoning.

The holy life is lived for the purpose of direct knowledge and full comprehension.

A sense of urgency and appropriate exertion bring ease here-and-now, and lead to the ending of the defilements.

Two thoughts that often occur to the Buddha as he delights in non-ill will and seclusion.

Two Dhamma sequences: see evil as evil, and become released from it.

Ignorance leads to lack of conscience and prudence.

The rewards of noble discernment.

Conscience and prudence safeguard the world.

The existence of an unfabricated dimension allows for the escape from conditions.

Two unbinding properties: with fuel remaining and with no fuel remaining.

Live enjoying aloofness, delighting in aloofness, inwardly committed to awareness-tranquility, not neglecting jhāna, endowed with clear-seeing insight, and frequenting empty buildings.

Live with the trainings as your reward, with discernment uppermost, with release the essence, and with mindfulness the governing principle.

Be wakeful, mindful, alert, centered, sensitive, clear, and calm. And there you should, at the appropriate times, see clearly into skillful mental qualities.

Two types of behavior that lead to hell.

How those with vision differ from those who adhere to craving for rebirth and those who slip past into craving to be annihilated.

Three roots of what is unskillful.

Three properties: form, formlessness, cessation.

Three feelings.

How the three types of feeling should be viewed.

Three searches: for sensuality, for rebirth, for a holy life.

Three searches: for sensuality, for rebirth, for a holy life.

Three defilements.

Three defilements.

Three cravings.

Three qualities that lead beyond Māra’s domain.

Three grounds for meritorious activity.

Three eyes: the eye of flesh, the divine eye, and the eye of discernment.

The noble attainments described in terms of three faculties.

Three time periods and the importance of comprehending signs.

Three kinds of misconduct.

Three kinds of good conduct.

Three kinds of cleanliness: bodily, verbal, and mental.

Three forms of sagacity: bodily, verbal, and mental.

One whose passion, aversion, and delusion are abandoned is freed from Māra’s power.

To abandon passion, aversion, and delusion is like crossing over the dangers of the ocean.

The Buddha reports having seen, for himself, beings reborn in planes of deprivation in line with their wrong views and evil actions.

The Buddha reports having seen, for himself, beings reborn in good destinations in line with their right views and good actions.

Three properties for escape: from sensuality, from form, and from whatever is fabricated and dependently co-arisen.

Formless phenomena are more peaceful than forms; cessation, more peaceful than formless phenomena.

Three types of sons and daughters (when compared to their parents): of heightened birth, of similar birth, and of lowered birth.

Three types of people: one like a cloud without rain, one who rains locally, and one who rains everywhere.

Aspiring to three forms of bliss, wise people should guard their virtue.

This body falls apart; consciousness is subject to fading; all acquisitions are inconstant, sufferingful, subject to change.

Like attracts like. It’s in accordance with their properties—either low or admirable—that beings come together and associate with one another.

Three things lead to the falling away of a monk in training.

Three kinds of unskillful thinking.

The dangers of letting your mind be overcome by the fact that you either receive offerings or don’t receive offerings.

Three occasions on which devas give voice to joy over the behavior of human beings.

Five omens that appear when a deva is about to pass away, and the encouragement that other devas give at that time.

Three people who appear for the benefit of the world.

The rewards of focusing on the foulness of the body, of establishing mindfulness of breathing to the fore, and of focusing on the inconstancy of all conditions.

Practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma.

Three kinds of unskillful thinking; three kinds of skillful thinking.

Three inside stains.

Conquered by three forms of false Dhamma, Devadatta was incurably doomed to deprivation.

Three supreme objects of confidence: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha.

Why reasonable people take up the life of alms-going, and the dangers that lie in wait if they do not train their minds.

To see the Dhamma is to see the Buddha and to be close to him, even when physically far away.

The three fires: of passion, aversion, and delusion.

On having consciousness neither externally scattered and diffused, nor internally positioned.

Three ways in which devas obtain sensual pleasures.

The yoke of sensuality and the yoke of rebirth.

Admirable virtue, admirable qualities, and admirable discernment defined.

Two kinds of gifts, sharing, and assistance: in material things and in Dhamma.

The three knowledges that characterize a brahman in the Buddha’s sense of the word.

The Buddha as doctor; the monks as his heirs in Dhamma, not in material things.

The four basic requisites are easy to gain and blameless. To be content with them is a factor of the contemplative life.

For one knowing and seeing the four noble truths, there is the ending of suffering.

To see the four noble truths is to count as a true contemplative.

The rewards of associating with those who genuinely count as admirable friends.

Where a monk’s craving takes birth.

Mother and father as the Brahmās and first teachers of their children.

The reciprocal ways in which monks and lay supporters benefit one another.

Monks who are and who are not the Buddha’s true followers.

An extended metaphor for the dangers of “going with the flow.”

What it means to have ardency and compunction.

When one is consummate in virtue, what more is to be done?

The qualities that entitle the Buddha to be called Tathāgata.