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Thag 14:1 Revata’s Farewell
Since I went forth
from home into homelessness,
I haven’t known
an ignoble, aversive resolve.
“May these beings
be destroyed,
be slaughtered,
fall into pain”—
I’ve not known this resolve
in this long, long time.
But I have known goodwill,
unlimited,
fully developed,
nurtured step after step,
as taught by the One
Awake:
to all, a friend;
to all, a comrade;
for all beings, sympathetic.1
And I develop a mind of goodwill,
delighting in non-malevolence
—always.
Unvanquished, unshaken,
I gladden the mind.
I develop the sublime abiding,
not frequented by
the lowly.
Attaining no-thinking,
the disciple of the Rightly
Self-awakened One
is endowed with noble silence2
straightaway.
As a mountain of rock
is unmoving,
firmly established,
so a monk,
with the ending of delusion,
like a mountain,
doesn’t quake.
To a person without blemish,
in constant quest of what’s pure,
a hair-tip of evil
seems a storm cloud.
As a frontier fortress is guarded
within & without,
you should safeguard yourselves.
Don’t let the moment
pass you by.
I don’t delight in death,
don’t delight in living.
I await my time
like a worker his wage.
I don’t delight in death,
don’t delight in living.
I await my time,
mindful, alert.
The Teacher has been served by me;
the Awakened One’s bidding,
done;
the heavy load, laid down;
the guide to becoming, uprooted.
And the goal for which I went forth
from home life into homelessness
I’ve reached:
the end
of all fetters.
Attain consummation
through heedfulness:
That is my message.
So then, I’m about to
unbind.
I’m released
everywhere.3
Notes
1. On the development of goodwill as an unlimited attitude, see MN 21 and SN 42:8.
2. Noble silence = the second jhāna.
3. AN 3:77 and AN 3:78 use the analogy of a field to describe becoming, in which kamma is the field, craving the moisture, and consciousness the seed. The logic of the analogy suggests that if consciousness is not watered by craving, and does not land in any place (see SN 12:64), it is like a seed without moisture or a field. Therefore it will not sprout into further becoming. Poems in the Canon often describe the arahant as being “everywhere released” (sabbattha vimutto—see Dhp 348) or “everywhere independent” (sabbattha anissito—see Sn 4:6), referring indirectly to this analogy. Translators, lacking a sense of the underlying image of the idiom, have tended to render it in more prosaic terms: “completely released in every respect,” “not dependent on anything,” “released from everything.” However, in light of the field analogy, the idiom means precisely what it says: The arahant is released from every possible “where,” whether fabricated or not—every possible spot for renewed becoming.