Thag 4:8 Rāhula
In both ways
consummate,1
I’m known as Rāhula
the Fortunate:
because I’m the son of the Buddha,
because I’ve the eye that sees Dhammas,
because my effluents are ended,
because I’ve no further becoming.
I’m deserving of offerings,
a worthy one
a three-knowledge man,2
one with sight
of the deathless.
Those
blinded by sensuality
covered by the net,
veiled by the veil of craving,
bound by the Kinsman of the heedless,3
are like fish in the mouth of a trap.
Throwing that sensuality aside,
cutting through Māra’s bond,
pulling out craving, root & all,
cooled am I.
Unbound.
Notes
1. This phrase can be taken in two ways: (a) consummate in that he has a pure lineage on both his mother’s and his father’s side; and (b) consummate in that he belongs both to a well-born lineage in the worldly sense and, by means of his meditative attainments, to the lineage of the noble ones. See AN 4:28.
2. One with knowledge of past lives, knowledge of the passing away and rearising of living beings, and knowledge of the ending of mental effluents. See MN 4. This list is the Buddhist response to the brahmanical claim that a person should be a master of three knowledges. In the brahmanical case, a three-knowledge man knew the three Vedas. The Buddhists claimed that their three knowledges were superior in that they were not mere hearsay, they could be known by men and women of all castes (see Thig 13:5), and they could put an end to suffering.
3. Māra.
