Itivuttaka | This was said by the Buddha

The Group of Ones

• Iti 1  —  Abandon greed, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 2  —  Abandon aversion, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 3  —  Abandon delusion, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 4  —  Abandon anger, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 5  —  Abandon contempt, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 6  —  Abandon conceit, and you’re guaranteed non-return.
• Iti 7  —  When the mind, cleansed of passion for the All, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to stress.
• Iti 8  —  When the mind, cleansed of passion for conceit, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to stress.
• Iti 9  —  When the mind, cleansed of passion for greed, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to stress.
• Iti 10—13  —  When the mind, cleansed of passion for aversion… delusion… anger… contempt, abandons it, you are capable of putting an end to stress.
• Iti 14  —  Hindered by the hindrance of ignorance, people go wandering and transmigrating on for a long, long time.
• Iti 15  —  Fettered with the fetter of craving, beings go wandering and transmigrating on for a long, long time.
• Iti 16  —  Appropriate attention as the prime internal factor to help those in training.
• Iti 17  —  Friendship with admirable people as the prime external factor to help those in training.
• Iti 18  —  Schism in the Sangha leads to the detriment and unhappiness of many beings, both human and divine.
• Iti 19  —  Concord in the Sangha leads to the welfare and happiness of many beings, both human and divine.
• Iti 20  —  Corrupt-mindedness leads to rebirth in the planes of deprivation.
• Iti 21  —  Clear-mindedness leads to rebirth in a heavenly world.
• Iti 22  —  “Acts of merit” is a synonym for what is blissful, desirable, pleasing, endearing, charming. The Buddha recalls the results he himself has experienced from doing meritorious deeds.
• Iti 23  —  Heedfulness with regard to skillful qualities keeps both kinds of benefit secure: benefit in this live and benefit in lives to come.
• Iti 24  —  In this course of transmigrating, one person would leave behind a heap of bones as large as a mountain—if there were someone to collect the bones and the collection were not destroyed.
• Iti 25  —  A person who tells a deliberate lie is capable of any evil deed.
• Iti 26  —  If you knew, as the Buddha did, the results of giving and sharing, you wouldn’t eat without having shared.
• Iti 27  —  Goodwill far outshines all other ways of making merit.

The Group of Twos

• Iti 28  —  Not guarding the doors of the sense faculties and knowing no moderation in food leads to suffering in this life and the next.
• Iti 29  —  Guarding the doors of the sense faculties and knowing moderation in food leads to ease in this life and the next.
• Iti 30  —  Two things that cause remorse.
• Iti 31  —  Two things that cause lack of remorse.
• Iti 32  —  A person of evil habits and evil views is as if in hell in this lifetime.
• Iti 33  —  A person of auspicious habits and auspicious views is as if in heaven in this lifetime.
• Iti 34  —  To lack ardency and compunction makes you incapable of unbinding.
• Iti 35  —  The holy life is lived for the purpose of restraint and abandoning.
• Iti 36  —  The holy life is lived for the purpose of direct knowledge and full comprehension.
• Iti 37  —  A sense of urgency and appropriate exertion bring ease here-and-now, and lead to the ending of the effluents.
• Iti 38  —  Two thoughts that often occur to the Buddha as he delights in non-ill will and seclusion.
• Iti 39  —  Two Dhamma sequences: see evil as evil, and become released from it.
• Iti 40  —  Ignorance leads to lack of shame and compunction.
• Iti 41  —  The rewards of noble discernment.
• Iti 42  —  Shame and compunction safeguard the world.
• Iti 43  —  The existence of an unfabricated dimension allows for the escape from fabrication.
• Iti 44  —  Two unbinding properties: with fuel remaining and with no fuel remaining.
• Iti 45  —  Live enjoying aloofness, delighting in aloofness, inwardly committed to awareness-tranquility, not neglecting jhāna, endowed with clear-seeing insight, and frequenting empty buildings.
• Iti 46  —  Live with the trainings as your reward, with discernment uppermost, with release the essence, and with mindfulness the governing principle.
• Iti 47  —  Be wakeful, mindful, alert, centered, sensitive, clear, and calm. And there you should, at the appropriate times, see clearly into skillful mental qualities.
• Iti 48  —  Two types of behavior that lead to hell.
• Iti 49  —  How those with vision differ from those who adhere to craving for becoming and those who slip past into craving for non-becoming.

The Group of Threes

• Iti 50  —  Three roots of what is unskillful.
• Iti 51  —  Three properties: form, formlessness, cessation.
• Iti 52  —  Three feelings.
• Iti 53  —  How the three types of feeling should be viewed.
• Iti 54  —  Three searches: for sensuality, for becoming, for a holy life.
• Iti 55  —  Three searches: for sensuality, for becoming, for a holy life.
• Iti 56  —  Three effluents.
• Iti 57  —  Three effluents.
• Iti 58  —  Three cravings.
• Iti 59  —  Three qualities that lead beyond Māra’s domain.
• Iti 60  —  Three grounds for meritorious activity.
• Iti 61  —  Three eyes: the eye of flesh, the divine eye, and the eye of discernment.
• Iti 62  —  The noble attainments described in terms of three faculties.
• Iti 63  —  Three time periods and the importance of comprehending signs.
• Iti 64  —  Three kinds of misconduct.
• Iti 65  —  Three kinds of good conduct.
• Iti 66  —  Three kinds of cleanliness: bodily, verbal, and mental.
• Iti 67  —  Three forms of sagacity: bodily, verbal, and mental.
• Iti 68  —  One whose passion, aversion, and delusion are abandoned is freed from Māra’s power.
• Iti 69  —  To abandon passion, aversion, and delusion is like crossing over the dangers of the ocean.
• Iti 70  —  The Buddha reports having seen, for himself, beings reborn in planes of deprivation in line with their wrong views and evil actions.
• Iti 71  —  The Buddha reports having seen, for himself, beings reborn in good destinations in line with their right views and good actions.
• Iti 72  —  Three properties for escape: from sensuality, from form, and from whatever is fabricated and dependently co-arisen.
• Iti 73  —  Formless phenomena are more peaceful than forms; cessation, more peaceful than formless phenomena.
• Iti 74  —  Three types of sons and daughters (when compared to their parents): of heightened birth, of similar birth, and of lowered birth.
• Iti 75  —  Three types of people: one like a cloud without rain, one who rains locally, and one who rains everywhere.
• Iti 76  —  Aspiring to three forms of bliss, wise people should guard their virtue.
• Iti 77  —  This body falls apart; consciousness is subject to fading; all acquisitions are inconstant, stressful, subject to change.
• Iti 78  —  Like attracts like. It’s in accordance with their properties—either low or admirable—that beings come together and associate with one another.
• Iti 79  —  Three things lead to the falling away of a monk in training.
• Iti 80  —  Three kinds of unskillful thinking.
• Iti 81  —  The dangers of letting your mind be overcome by the fact that you either receive offerings or don’t receive offerings.
• Iti 82  —  Three occasions on which devas give voice to joy over the behavior of human beings.
• Iti 83  —  Five omens that appear when a deva is about to pass away, and the encouragement that other devas give at that time.
• Iti 84  —  Three people who appear for the benefit of the world.
• Iti 85  —  The rewards of focusing on the foulness of the body, of establishing mindfulness of breathing to the fore, and of focusing on the inconstancy of all fabrications.
• Iti 86  —  Practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma.
• Iti 87  —  Three kinds of unskillful thinking; three kinds of skillful thinking.
• Iti 88  —  Three inside stains.
• Iti 89  —  Conquered by three forms of false Dhamma, Devadatta was incurably doomed to deprivation.
• Iti 90  —  Three supreme objects of confidence: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha.
• Iti 91  —  Why reasonable people take up the life of alms-going, and the dangers that lie in wait if they do not train their minds.
• Iti 92  —  To see the Dhamma is to see the Buddha and to be close to him, even when physically far away.
• Iti 93  —  The three fires: of passion, aversion, and delusion.
• Iti 94  —  On having consciousness neither externally scattered and diffused, nor internally positioned.
• Iti 95  —  Three ways in which devas obtain sensual pleasures.
• Iti 96  —  The yoke of sensuality and the yoke of becoming.
• Iti 97  —  Admirable virtue, admirable qualities, and admirable discernment defined.
• Iti 98  —  Two kinds of gifts, sharing, and assistance: in material things and in Dhamma.
• Iti 99  —  The three knowledges that characterize a brahman in the Buddha’s sense of the word.

The Group of Fours

• Iti 100  —  The Buddha as doctor; the monks as his heirs in Dhamma, not in material things.
• Iti 101  —  The four basic requisites are easy to gain and blameless. To be content with them is a factor of the contemplative life.
• Iti 102  —  For one knowing and seeing the four noble truths, there is the ending of stress (dukkha).
• Iti 103  —  To see the four noble truths is to count as a true contemplative.
• Iti 104  —  The rewards of associating with those who genuinely count as admirable friends.
• Iti 105  —  Where a monk’s craving takes birth.
• Iti 106  —  Mother and father as the Brahmās and first teachers of their children.
• Iti 107  —  The reciprocal ways in which monks and lay supporters benefit one another.
• Iti 108  —  Monks who are and who are not the Buddha’s true followers.
• Iti 109  —  An extended metaphor for the dangers of “going with the flow.”
• Iti 110  —  What it means to have ardency and compunction.
• Iti 111  —  When one is consummate in virtue, what more is to be done?
• Iti 112  —  The qualities that entitle the Buddha to be called Tathāgata.