SN 36.2: Sukha Sutta

Translated from the Pali by

Source: From Contemplation of Feeling: The Discourse-grouping on the Feelings (WH 303), translated from the Pali by Nyanaponika Thera (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1983). Copyright © 1983 Buddhist Publication Society. Used with permission.

For free distribution. This work may be republished, reformatted, reprinted, and redistributed in any medium. It is the author's wish, however, that any such republication and redistribution be made available to the public on a free and unrestricted basis and that translations and other derivative works be clearly marked as such.

"There are, O monks, these three feelings: pleasant feelings, painful feelings, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feelings."

Be it a pleasant feeling, be it a painful feeling, be it neutral,
one's own or others', feelings of all kinds1 — 
he knows them all as ill, deceitful, evanescent.
Seeing how they impinge again, again, and disappear,2
he wins detachment from the feelings, passion-free.

Notes

1. On "feelings of all kinds," see SN 36.22.

2. Phussa phussa vayam disva, The Comy. explains differently, paraphrasing these words by ñanena phusitva phusitva, "repeatedly experiencing (them) by way of the knowledge (of rise and fall)." These verses occur also in Sutta Nipata, v. 739, with one additional line.