Snp 5.2 - Sn 5:2 Tissa-metteyya’s Questions
Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
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5:2 Tissa-metteyya’s Questions

  Who
here in the world
is contented?
  Who
has no agitations?
  What thinker
knowing both sides,
doesn’t adhere in between?
  Whom
do you call a great person?
  Who here
has gone past
the seamstress?—
          craving.

The Buddha:
  He who
in the midst of sensualities,
follows the holy life,
always mindful, craving-free;
  the monk who is
—through fathoming things—
  unbound:
He has no agitations. He,
the thinker
knowing both sides,
doesn’t adhere in between.1 He
I call a great person. He
here has gone past
the seamstress: craving.2

vv. 1040–1042

Notes

1. AN 6:61 reports a discussion among several elder monks as to what is meant in this poem by “both sides” and “in between.” Six of the elders express the following separate opinions:

a) Contact is the first side, the origination of contact the second side, and the cessation of contact is in between.

b) The past is the first side, the future the second, and the present is in between.

c) Pleasant feeling is the first side, painful feeling the second, and neither-pleasant-nor-painful feeling is in between.

d) Name (mental phenomena) is the first side, form (physical phenomena) the second, and consciousness is in between.

e) The six internal sense media (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, intellect) are the first side, the six external sense media (sights, sounds, aromas, flavors, tactile sensations, ideas) the second side, and consciousness is in between.

f) Self-identity is the first side, the origination of self-identity the second, and the cessation of self-identity is in between.

The issue is then taken to the Buddha, who states that all six interpretations are well-spoken, but the interpretation he had in mind when speaking the poem was the first.

On the cessation of contact, see SN 35:117.

2. The image of craving as a seamstress also appears in Thag 14:2.