3.7.16. A hard thing (MIL3.7.16)

The Elder said: ‘A hard thing there is, O king, which the Blessed One has done.’

‘And what is that?’

‘The fixing of all those mental conditions which depend on one organ of sense, telling us that such is contact, and such sensation, and such idea, and such intention, and such thought.’

‘Give me an illustration.’

‘Suppose, O king, a man were to wade down into the sea, and taking some water in the palm of his hand, were to taste it with his tongue. Would he distinguish whether it were water from the Ganges, or from the Jumna, or from the Aciravatī, or from the Sarabhū, or from the Mahī?’

‘Impossible, Sir.’

‘More difficult than that, great king, is it to have distinguished between the mental conditions which follow on the exercise of any one of the organs of sense!’

‘Very good, Nāgasena!’

Here ends the Seventh Chapter.

The Questions of King Milinda, translated from the Pali by T.W. Rhys Davids.

Part 1 (to section 5.4.10) was originally published as Volume xxxv of “The Sacred Books of the East”, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1890.

Part 2 (from section 5.5.1) was originally published as Volume xxxvi of “The Sacred Books of the East”, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1894.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Bhikkhu Sujato based on the digital text of the Internet Sacred Text Archive. The work of the Sacred Text Archive to make this text publically available is gratefully acknowledged.

In preparing this edition minor editorial changes have been made. The structure has been adapted to agree with the Mahāsaṅgīti Pali text as found on SuttaCentral. In addition, the corrections proposed by the translator in the “Addenda et Corrigenda” of the original editions have for the most part been adopted.

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Prepared for SuttaCentral by Bhikkhu Sujato.