Numbered Discourses 8.56

1. Gotamī

Danger

“Mendicants, ‘danger’ is a term for sensual pleasures.

‘Suffering’,

‘disease’,

‘boil’,

‘dart’,

‘chain’,

‘bog’,

and ‘womb’ 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’,

‘dart’,

‘chain’,

‘bog’,

and ‘womb’ terms for sensual pleasures?

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

Danger, suffering, and disease,

boil, dart, and chain,

and bogs and wombs both.

These describe the sensual pleasures

to which ordinary people are attached.

Swamped by things that seem pleasant,

you go to another womb.

But when a mendicant is keen,

and doesn’t forget awareness,

in this way that sort transcend

this grueling swamp.

They watch this population flounder,

fallen into rebirth and old age.”