Linked Discourses 5.9

1. Nuns

With Selā

At Sāvatthī.

Then the nun Selā robed up in the morning …

and sat at the root of a tree for the day’s meditation.

Then Māra the Wicked, wanting to make the nun Selā feel fear, terror, and goosebumps …

addressed her in verse:

“Who created this puppet?

Where is its maker?

Where has the puppet arisen?

And where does it cease?”

Then the nun Selā thought,

“Who’s speaking this verse, a human or a non-human?”

Then she thought,

“This is Māra the Wicked, wanting to make me feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, wanting to make me fall away from immersion!”

Then Selā, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, replied to him in verse:

“This puppet isn’t self-made,

nor is this gloom made by another.

It comes to be because of a cause,

and ceases when the cause breaks up.

It’s like a seed that’s sown

in a field; it grows

relying on both the soil’s nutrients

as well as moisture.

In the same way the aggregates and elements

and these six sense fields

come to be because of a cause,

and cease when the cause breaks up.”

Then Māra the Wicked, thinking, “The nun Selā knows me!” miserable and sad, vanished right there.