Ud 4:9 Upasena Vaṅgantaputta (Upasena Vaṅgantaputta Sutta )

I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha at the Bamboo Forest, the Squirrels’ Sanctuary. And on that occasion, when Ven. Upasena Vaṅgantaputta was alone in seclusion, this line of thinking appeared to his awareness: “What a gain, what a true gain it is for me that my teacher is the Blessed One, worthy and fully self-awakened; that I have gone forth from home to the homeless life in a well-taught Dhamma & Vinaya; that my companions in the holy life are virtuous and endowed with admirable qualities; that I have achieved culmination in terms of the precepts; that my mind is unified and well-concentrated; that I am an arahant, with effluents ended; that I have great power & great might. Fortunate has been my life; fortunate will be my death.”

Then the Blessed One, comprehending with his awareness the line of thinking that had appeared to Ven. Upasena Vaṅgantaputta’s awareness, on that occasion exclaimed:

He doesn’t regret

what life has been,

doesn’t grieve

at death,

if–enlightened1–

he has seen that state.

He doesn’t grieve

in the midst of grief.

For one who has crushed

craving for becoming–

the monk of peaceful mind–

birth & the wandering on

are totally ended.

He has no further becoming.2

Notes

1. Enlightened (dhīra): Throughout this translation I have rendered buddha as “awakened,” and dhīra as “enlightened.” As Jan Gonda points out in his book, The Vision of the Vedic Poets, the word dhīra was used in Vedic and Buddhist poetry to mean a person who has the heightened powers of mental vision needed to perceive the “light” of the underlying principles of the cosmos, together with the expertise to implement those principles in the affairs of life and to reveal them to others. A person enlightened in this sense may also be awakened, but is not necessarily so.

2. This last verse is identical with a verse in Sn 3:12 (verse 746 in the PTS edition).