There Are None (SN1.34)

Linked Discourses 1.34

4. The Host of a Hundred Felicities

There Are None

At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery.

Then, late at night, several glorious deities of the host of a hundred felicities, lighting up the entire Jeta’s Grove, went up to the Buddha, bowed, and stood to one side.

Standing to one side, one deity spoke this verse in the Buddha’s presence:

“Among mankind there are no sensual pleasures that are permanent.

Here there are sensuous things, bound to which,

drunk on which, there’s no coming back.

That person doesn’t return from Death’s dominion.”¹

“Gloom is born of desire; suffering is born of desire;²

when desire is removed, gloom is removed;

when gloom is removed, suffering is removed.”

“The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures.

Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure.

The world’s pretty things stay just as they are,

but the attentive remove desire for them.

Give up anger, get rid of conceit,

and get past all the fetters.

Sufferings don’t torment the one who has nothing,

not clinging to name and form.

They gave up judgment without falling into conceit;

craving for name and form was cut off right here.

They cut the ties, untroubled, with no need for hope.

Though gods and humans search for them

in this life or the next, they never find them,

not in heaven nor in any abode.”

“If neither gods nor humans see one freed in this way,”

said Venerable Mogharāja,³

“in this life or the next,

are those who revere that supreme man,

who lives for the good of mankind, also worthy of praise?”

“The mendicants who revere one freed in this way,”

said the Buddha,

“are also worthy of praise, Mogharāja.

Having understood the teaching and given up doubt,

those mendicants slip their chains.”