Dangers (AN6.23)

Numbered Discourses 6.23

3. Unsurpassable

Dangers

“‘Danger’, mendicants, is a term for sensual pleasures.

‘Suffering’,

‘disease’,

‘boil’,

‘chain’,

and ‘bog’ are terms for sensual pleasures.

And why is ‘danger’ a term for sensual pleasures?

Someone who is besotted by sensual greed and shackled by lustful desire is not freed from dangers in this life or in lives to come. That is why ‘danger’ is a term for sensual pleasures.

And why are ‘suffering’,

‘disease’,

‘boil’,

‘chain’,

and ‘bog’ terms for sensual pleasures?

Someone who is besotted by sensual greed and shackled by lustful desire is not freed from suffering, disease, boils, chains, or bogs in this life or in lives to come. That is why these are terms for sensual pleasures.

Danger, suffering, disease, boils,

and chains and bogs both.

These describe the sensual pleasures

to which ordinary people are attached.

Seeing the danger in grasping,

the origin of birth and death,

the unattached are freed

with the ending of birth and death.

Happy, they’ve come to a safe place,

quenched in this very life.

They’ve gone beyond all enmities and fears,

and risen above all suffering.”