Anthology of Discourses 4.4

Eight on the Pure

“I see someone pure, perfectly healthy;

it is vision that grants a person purity.”

Recalling this notion of the ultimate,

they believe in the notion that there is one who observes purity.

If a person were granted purity through what is seen,

or if by a notion they could give up suffering,

then one with attachments is purified by another:

their view betrays them as one who asserts thus.

The brahmin speaks not of purity from another

in terms of what has been seen, heard, or thought; or by precepts or vows.

They are unsullied in the midst of good and evil,

letting go what was picked up, without creating anything new here.

Having let go the last they lay hold of the next;

following impulse, they don’t pass the chain.

They grab on and let loose like a monkey

grabbing and releasing a branch.

Having undertaken their own vows, a personage

visits various teachers, being attached to perception.

One who knows, having comprehended the truth through the knowledges,

does not visit various teachers, being of vast wisdom.

They are remote from all things

seen, heard, or thought.

Seeing them living openly,

how could anyone in this world judge them?

They don’t make things up or promote them,

or speak of the uttermost purity.

After untying the tight knot of grasping

they long for nothing in the world.

The brahmin has stepped over the perimeter;

knowing and seeing, they adopt nothing.

Neither in love with passion nor besotted by dispassion,

there is nothing here they adopt as the ultimate.