Ud 4.9 - Ud 4:9 Upasena Vaṅgantaputta | Upasena Vaṅgantaputta Sutta
Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
Source: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/Ud/ud4_9.html
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Copyright: Copyright 2014 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Revised edition 2017
License notice: Copyright 2014 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Revised edition 2017 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities. Questions about this book may be addressed to Metta Forest Monastery Valley Center, CA 92082-1409 U.S.A. Additional resources More Dhamma talks, books and translations by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu are available to download in digital audio and various ebook formats at dhammatalks.org. Printed copy A paperback copy of this book is available free of charge. To request one, write to: Book Request, Metta Forest Monastery, PO Box 1409, Valley Center, CA 92082 USA.
Attribution: From Handful of Leaves, Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu; https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/SuttaPitaka_251113.epub. Copyright 2014 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Revised edition 2017 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported. To see a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. “Commercial” shall mean any sale, whether for commercial or non-profit purposes or entities. Questions about this book may be addressed to Metta Forest Monastery Valley Center, CA 92082-1409 U.S.A. Additional resources More Dhamma talks, books and translations by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu are available to download in digital audio and various ebook formats at dhammatalks.org. Printed copy A paperback copy of this book is available free of charge. To request one, write to: Book Request, Metta Forest Monastery, PO Box 1409, Valley Center, CA 92082 USA.
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Completeness: ABBREVIATED. Every source-unit character is preserved, including introductions, notes and verse structure. Thanissaro's collection-level note explicitly states that repetitions were cut: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/about.html. This is evidence about the translation method, not an assertion that every individual unit contains an omission; no repetitions reconstructed.

Ud 4:9 Upasena Vaṅgantaputta (Upasena Vaṅgantaputta Sutta )

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha at the Bamboo Forest, the Squirrels’ Sanctuary. And on that occasion, when Ven. Upasena Vaṅgantaputta was alone in seclusion, this line of thinking appeared to his awareness: “What a gain, what a true gain it is for me that my teacher is the Blessed One, worthy and fully self-awakened; that I have gone forth from home to the homeless life in a well-taught Dhamma & Vinaya; that my companions in the holy life are virtuous and endowed with admirable qualities; that I have achieved culmination in terms of the precepts; that my mind is unified and well-concentrated; that I am an arahant, with effluents ended; that I have great power & great might. Fortunate has been my life; fortunate will be my death.”

Then the Blessed One, comprehending with his awareness the line of thinking that had appeared to Ven. Upasena Vaṅgantaputta’s awareness, on that occasion exclaimed:

He doesn’t regret
    what life has been,
doesn’t grieve
    at death,
if–enlightened1–
    he has seen that state.
He doesn’t grieve
in the midst of grief.

For one who has crushed
craving for becoming–
the monk of peaceful mind–
birth & the wandering on
    are totally ended.
He has no further becoming.2

Notes

1. Enlightened (dhīra): Throughout this translation I have rendered buddha as “awakened,” and dhīra as “enlightened.” As Jan Gonda points out in his book, The Vision of the Vedic Poets, the word dhīra was used in Vedic and Buddhist poetry to mean a person who has the heightened powers of mental vision needed to perceive the “light” of the underlying principles of the cosmos, together with the expertise to implement those principles in the affairs of life and to reveal them to others. A person enlightened in this sense may also be awakened, but is not necessarily so.

2. This last verse is identical with a verse in Sn 3:12 (verse 746 in the PTS edition).