Aṇguttara-Nikāya
III. Tika Nipāta
IV. Devadūta Vagga
Sutta 32
Ānanda Suttaṃ
To Ven. Ānanda
Translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Sourced from the edition at dhammatalks.org
Provenance, terms and conditons
[1][pts][bodh][upal][olds] Then Ven. Ānanda went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, bowed down to him and sat to one side.
As he was sitting there, he said to the Blessed One, "Lord, could it be that a monk would have a concentration-attainment of such a sort that, with regard to this conscious body, he would have no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession, that with regard to all external themes [topics of concentration] he would have no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession, and that he would enter and remain in the awareness-release and discernment-release in which there is no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession for one entering and remaining in it?"
"It could be, Ānanda, that a monk would have a concentration-attainment of a such a sort...."
"But how, lord, could a monk have a concentration-attainment of such a sort...?"
"There is the case, Ānanda, where a monk is percipient in this way:
'This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all fabrications; the relinquishment of all acquisitions; the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; unbinding.'
This is how a monk would have a concentration-attainment of a such a sort that, with regard to this conscious body, he would have no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession, that with regard to all external themes [topics of concentration] he would have no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession, and that he would enter and remain in the awareness-release and discernment-release in which there is no I-making or mine-making conceit-obsession for one entering and remaining in it.
"And it was in reference to this that I said, in Puṇṇaka's Questions in the Pārāyana [Sn 5:3]:
He who has fathomed
the high and low in the world,
for whom there is nothing
perturbing in the world —
evaporated,[1] undesiring,
untroubled, at peace —
he, I tell you, has crossed over birth
and aging.
[1] According to Nd II, this means that one's bodily, verbal, and mental misconduct has evaporated away, along with all one's defilements.
Of Related Interest:
