36.12. The Sky (1) (SN36.12)

“Bhikkhus, just as various winds blow in the sky: winds from the east, winds from the west, winds from the north, winds from the south, dusty winds and dustless winds, cold winds and hot winds, mild winds and strong winds; so too, various feelings arise in this body: pleasant feeling arises, painful feeling arises, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling arises.”

Just as many diverse winds
Blow back and forth across the sky,
Easterly winds and westerly winds,
Northerly winds and southerly winds,
Dusty winds and dustless winds,
Sometimes cold, sometimes hot,
Those that are strong and others mild—
Winds of many kinds that blow;

So in this very body here
Various kinds of feelings arise,
Pleasant ones and painful ones,
And those neither painful nor pleasant.

But when a bhikkhu who is ardent
Does not neglect clear comprehension,
Then that wise man fully understands
Feelings in their entirety.

Having fully understood feelings,
He is taintless in this very life.
Standing in Dhamma, with the body’s breakup,
The knowledge-master cannot be reckoned.

© Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha (Wisdom Publications, 2000)

This excerpt from The Connected Discourses of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Bodhi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Based on the work Connected Discourses of the Buddha at Wisdom Publications.

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