Self-assured (AN4.8)

Numbered Discourses 4.8

1. At Wares Village

Self-assured

“Mendicants, a Realized One possesses four kinds of self-assurance. With these he claims the bull’s place, roars his lion’s roar in the assemblies, and turns the divine wheel.

What four?

I see no reason for anyone—whether ascetic, brahmin, god, Māra, or the Divinity, or anyone else in the world—to legitimately scold me, saying: ‘You claim to be a fully awakened Buddha, but you don’t understand these things.’

Since I see no such reason, I live secure, fearless, and self-assured.

I see no reason for anyone—whether ascetic, brahmin, god, Māra, or the Divinity, or anyone else in the world—to legitimately scold me, saying: ‘You claim to have ended all defilements, but you still have these defilements.’

Since I see no such reason, I live secure, fearless, and self-assured.

I see no reason for anyone—whether ascetic, brahmin, god, Māra, or the Divinity, or anyone else in the world—to legitimately scold me, saying: ‘The acts that you say are obstructions are not really obstructions for the one who performs them.’

Since I see no such reason, I live secure, fearless, and self-assured.

I see no reason for anyone—whether ascetic, brahmin, god, Māra, or the Divinity, or anyone else in the world—to legitimately scold me, saying: ‘Regardless of your goal in teaching the Dhamma, it does not deliver one who applies it to the complete ending of suffering.’

Since I see no such reason, I live secure, fearless, and self-assured.

A Realized One possesses these four kinds of self-assurance. With these he claims the bull’s place, roars his lion’s roar in the assemblies, and turns the divine wheel.

The various grounds for criticism

that ascetics and brahmins rely on

vanish on reaching a Realized One,

self-assured, gone beyond grounds for criticism.

He rolls forth the Wheel of Dhamma as a consummate one,

complete, sympathetic for all living creatures.

Sentient beings revere him, first among gods and humans,

who has gone beyond rebirth.”