SA 162 (SA162)

Related Discourses 35

64-66.

Thus have I heard:

One time, the Buddha stayed at Anāthapiṇḍada Park in Jeta Grove in Śrāvastī.

It was then that the Bhagavān addressed the monks,

“What is it that exists, that arises, that ties, that’s an attachment, and that’s viewed as self and causes sentient beings to create such views and such statements?

‘Acting and instructing [others] to act, cutting and instructing [others] to cut, boiling and instructing [others] to boil, and killing and instructing [others] to kill;

harming sentient beings, stealing other’s property, committing sexual misconduct, knowingly speaking falsehoods, and drinking alcohol;

penetrating walls, cutting chains, and stealing;

even going down the roads to harm villages, harm cities, and harm the populace with a wheel of the sharpest blades that slices, dices, and chops them up into a great pile of flesh, they form such a theory:

“That is not a cause or condition for evil, and it doesn’t bring evil.

[If someone were] to kill and injure [people] south of the Gaṅgā River and make a great congregation to the north of the Gaṅgā River, those wouldn’t be causes or conditions for good and evil, nor would they bring good and evil.

Doing things like bestowing gifts, training, maintaining [scriptures], performing blessings, and cooperating doesn’t create merits, either.”’”

The monks said to the Buddha,

“The Bhagavān is the Dharma root, the Dharma eye, and the Dharma refuge …”

It’s thus explained in detail and in the sequence of the three sutras (35.7-9) above.