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Akankheyya-sutta (Of Yearnings)
[33] Thus have I heard. Once when the Lord was staying at Savatthi in Jeta's grove, in Anathapindika's pleasaunce, he addressed the Almsmen as follows: —
Let your lives conform to the codes of Virtue and of Obligations; let your lives be restrained by the restraint of the Obligations and ordered on the plane of right behaviour; be scrupulous in observing the precepts of conduct, seeing peril in small offendings.
Should an Almsman yearn to be dear to his fellows in the higher life and beloved by them, revered and famed among them, — let him fulfil the whole code of virtue, calm his heart within him, cultivating the Ecstasies, fostering Insight, and perfecting himself in inward detachment. Let him do this too, if his yearning is either that he may be given robes, food, lodging and medicaments; — or that the donors of such gifts to him may reap a rich reward and blessing therefrom; — or that such of his own kith and kin departed in the faith who keep him in mind, may reap a rich reward and blessing therefrom; — or that he may overcome, and not be overcome by, discontent and sensuality, and fear and dread; — or that, without toil and travail, he may have fruition of the Four Ecstasies with their illumination and the satisfaction they bring here and now; — or that he may enter on and abide in physical experience of those excellent Deliverances1 which transcend visible form and are formless; [34] — or that, by destroying the (first) three Bonds, he may enter on conversion's first stage, secure thenceforth against rebirth in any state of woe and assured of ultimate Enlightenment; — or that, by destroying the three Bonds and reducing to small dimensions passion, hate and delusion, he may enter on conversion's second stage and have to return but once more to this world in order to make an end of Ill; — or that, by destroying all five Bonds which bind him to this lower world, he may be translated elsewhere (to the higher Brahma world), there to pass utterly away without any return thence; — or that it may be his to enjoy in turn each and every form of psychic power, — from being one to become manifold, from being manifold to become one, to be visible or invisible, to pass at will through wall or fence or hill as if through air; to pass in and out of the solid earth as if it were water, to walk on the water's unbroken surface as if it were the solid earth, to glide in state through the air like a bird on the wing, to touch and to handle the moon and sun in their power and might, and to extend the sovereignty of his body right up to the Brahma world; — or that, with the Ear Celestial which is pure and far surpasses the ear of men, he may hear both heavenly and human sounds, sounds near and sounds afar; — or that he may comprehend with his own heart the hearts of other creatures and of other men so as to know them for just what they are, — filled with passion or free from passion, hating or free from hate, filled with delusion or free therefrom, focussed or wandering, large-minded or small-minded, inferior or superior, stedfast [35] or unstedfast, Delivered or lacking Deliverance; — or that he may recall to mind his divers existences in the past, — a single birth, then two... [and so on] ... a hundred thousand births, many an aeon of disintegration of the world, many an aeon of its redintegration, and again many an aeon both of its disintegration and of its redintegration, — remembering, in every detail and feature, that in this or that former existence such and such was his name, his sept, his class, his diet, his joys and sorrows, and his term of life, ere, passing thence, he came by such and such subsequent existence, wherein such and such was his name and so forth, right up to the time when he passed to his present life here; — or that with the Eye Celestial, which is pure and far surpasses the human eye, he may see creatures in the act of passing hence and re-appearing elsewhere, — creatures high and low, fair or foul to view, in bliss or woe, all faring according to their past (etc, as in Sutta No. 4); — or that, by eradicating the Cankers, he may — here and now, of and by himself — comprehend, realize, enter on, and abide in, the Deliverance of heart and mind which knows no Cankers.
[36] It was to this intent that I have said: — 'Let your lives conform to the codes of Virtue and of Obligations; let your lives be restrained by the restraint of the Obligations and ordered on the plane of right behaviour; be scrupulous in observing the precepts of conduct, seeing peril in small offendings.'
Thus spoke the Lord. Glad at heart, those Almsmen rejoiced in what the Lord had said.
Footnotes
1. See Dialogues II, 119.
*Majjhima Nikaya 6, translated by Lord CHALMERS
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