Dasakanipāta 118

Numbered Discourses 10.118

12. The Ceremony of Descent

The Near Shore

1 “Mendicants, I will teach you the near shore and the far shore. Listen and apply your mind well, I will speak.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

2 “And what, mendicants, is the near shore? What is the far shore? Wrong view is the near shore, and right view is the far shore. … Wrong freedom is the near shore, and right freedom is the far shore. This is the near shore, and this is the far shore.

3 Few are those among humans

who cross to the far shore.

The rest just run

around on the near shore.

4 When the teaching is well explained,

the people who practice accordingly

will cross over

Death’s dominion so hard to pass.

5 Rid of dark qualities,

an astute person would develop the bright.

Having left home for homelessness

in seclusion, where joy is hard,

6 they’d long for satisfaction there.

Forsaking sensual pleasures, owning nothing,

an astute person would cleanse themselves

of mental corruptions.

7 And those whose minds are rightly developed

in the awakening factors;

letting go of attachments,

they delight in not grasping.

With defilements ended, brilliant,

they are quenched in this world.”