Buddha’s word:-“Then, Bâhiya, thus must you train yourself: ‘In the seen there will be just the seen; in the heard, just the heard; in the sensed, just the sensed;2 in the cognized, just the cognized. That is how, O Bâhiya, you must train yourself. Now, when, Bâhiya, in the seen there will be to you just the seen, in the heard ….. just the cognized, then Bâhiya, you will have no ‘thereby’: when you have no ‘thereby,’ then Bâhiya, you will have no ‘therein’; as you, Bâhiya, will have no ‘therein’ it follows that you will have no ‘here’ or ‘beyond’, or ‘midway-between’. That is just the end of Ill.”
Explanation of Bhikkhu Katukurunde Ñāṇanada:- The first part of the exhortation presents succinctly the sum-total of sense – restraint, while the latter part interprets the philosophy behind it. This sense-restraint consists in ‘stopping-short’, at the level of sense-data without being led astray by them. He who succeeds in this, has truly comprehended the nature of sense-data so that he no longer thinks in terms of them (‘na tena’ =no ‘thereby’, ‘na tattha’ = no ‘therein’). He has thus transcended the superstitions of the grammatical structure as also the verbal dichotomy (nev’ idha, na hura§, na ubhayamantarena = ‘neither here nor beyond nor midway between’). In short, he has attained the Goal. As for Bâhiya, he did attain the Goal, and that almost instantaneously, since he had developed his spiritual faculties to such an extent in his own religious system, that—we are told in the Sutta – he even entertained the illusion of being an arahant before he came to the Buddha. We invite you read above explanation which was extracted from “Concept and Reality” written by Bhikkhu Katukurunde Ñāṇananda (Page no 29). This wonderful explanation will open your mind to read Bāhiya Sutta.
To read Bāhiya Sutta
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