Khuddaka Nikaya - Sutta Nipata - Guhatthaka Sutta

Sn 4.2
Guhatthaka Sutta
The Cave of the Body
Translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro BhikkhuPTS: Sn 772-779



Source: Transcribed from a file provided by the translator.



Copyright © 1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
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Staying attached to the cave,
covered heavily over,1
a person sunk in confusion
is far from seclusion —
for sensual pleasures
sensual desires2
in the world
are not lightly let go.

Those chained by desire,
bound by becoming's allure,
aren't easily released
for there's no liberation by others.
Intent, in front or behind,3
on hunger for sensual pleasures
here or before —
greedy
for sensual pleasures,
busy, deluded, ungenerous,
entrenched in the out-of-tune way,4
they — impelled into pain — lament:
"What will we be
when we pass on from here?"

So a person should train
right here & now.
Whatever you know
as out-of-tune in the world,
don't, for its sake, act out-of-tune,
for that life, the enlightened say,
is short.

I see them,
in the world, floundering around,
people immersed in craving
for states of becoming.
Base people moan in the mouth of death,
their craving, for states of becoming & not-,5
unallayed.

See them,
floundering in their sense of mine,
like fish in the puddles
of a dried-up stream —
and, seeing this,
live with no mine,
not forming attachment
for states of becoming.
Subdue desire
for both sides,6
comprehending7 sensory contact,
with no greed.

Doing nothing for which
he himself
would rebuke himself,
the enlightened person doesn't adhere
to what's seen,
to what's heard.
Comprehending perception,
he'd cross over the flood —
the sage not stuck
on possessions.
Then, with arrow removed,
living heedfully, he longs for neither —
this world,
the next.



Notes
1. Nd.I: "Covered heavily over" with defilements and unskillful mental
qualities.
2. "Sensual desires/sensual pleasures": two possible meanings of kama. According
to Nd.I, both meanings are intended here.
3. Nd.I: "In front" means experienced in the past (as does "before" two lines
down); "behind" means to-be-experienced in the future.
4. Nd.I: "The out-of-tune way" means the ten types of unskillful action (see AN
10.176).
5. States of not-becoming are oblivious states of becoming that people can get
themselves into through a desire for annihilation, either after death or as a
goal of their religious striving (see Iti 49). As with all states of becoming,
these states are impermanent and stressful.
6. According to Nd.I, "both sides" here has several possible meanings: sensory
contact and the origination of sensory contact; past and future; name and form;
internal and external sense media; self-identity and the origination of
self-identity. It also might mean states of becoming and not-becoming, mentioned
in the previous verse and below, in Sn 4.5.
7. Nd.I: Comprehending sensory contact has three aspects: being able to identify
and distinguish types of sensory contact; contemplating the true nature of
sensory contact (e.g., inconstant, stressful, and not-self); and abandoning
attachment to sensory contact. The same three aspects would apply to
comprehending perception, as mentioned in the following verse.
See also: AN 4.184.