Itivuttaka 41

This was said by the Blessed One, said by the Arahant, so I have heard: “Monks, those beings are truly deprived who are deprived of noble discernment. They live in stress in the present life–troubled, distressed, & feverish–and at the break-up of the body, after death, a bad destination can be expected.

“Those beings are not deprived who are not deprived of noble discernment. They live in ease in the present life–untroubled, undistressed, & not feverish–and at the break-up of the body, after death, a good destination can be expected.

Look at the world

–including its heavenly beings:

deprived of discernment,

making an abode in name-&-form,

it conceives that ‘This is the truth.’

The best discernment in the world

is what leads

to penetration,

for it rightly discerns

the total ending of birth & becoming.

Human & heavenly beings

hold them dear:

those who are

self-awakened,

mindful,

bearing their last bodies

with joyful discernment.