Hearing that there was a hero --
    desiring no sensuality,
    having crossed over the flood --
I've come with a question:
    Tell me the state of peace,
    O One with quick eyes. O Blessed One,
        tell me
        as it actually is.
For the Blessed One lives
    having surpassed sensuality,
    as the radiant sun, in its radiance,
        the earth.
Limited my discernment,
    O One whose discernment's profound.
Teach me to know the Dhamma,
    the abandoning here
        of birth
        & aging.

Subdue greed for sensual pleasures,
    & see renunciation as rest.
Let there be nothing grasped
    or rejected by you.
Burn up what's before,
and have nothing for after.
If you don't grasp
at what's in between, [1]
    you will go about, calm.
One completely devoid of greed
for name & form, brahmin,
has
no effluents
    by which he would go
    under Mara's sway.

Note

1. According to Nd.II, "before" stands for defilements related to the past, "after" for defilements related to the future, and "in between" for the five aggregates -- form, feeling, perception, thought-fabrications, sensory consciousness -- in the present. [Go back]