Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
“The ending of the defilements is for one who knows and sees, not for one who does not know or see” — and what must be known and seen, the Buddha specifies immediately, is nothing exotic: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation.
Not effort alone, but knowledge
The discourse’s structure is almost argumentative: it states a claim, then asks its own follow-up question — “knows and sees what?” — before answering. This has the effect of ruling something out before it can even be proposed: the ending of the āsavas (the deep-seated defilements or “influxes” that the tradition treats as the very last things to go before full awakening) is not achieved by willpower, ritual, or duration of practice as such. It is achieved by a specific act of understanding, directed at a specific object — the four truths already named across the Itivuttaka’s earlier discourses on ascetics and brahmins (Iti 103, standing right next to this one, restates the same four truths from a different angle).
Two knowledges, not one
The verse adds a detail the prose alone doesn’t supply: a sequence. “As a trainee trains, following the straight road, first they know about ending; enlightenment follows in the same lifetime.” There are two distinct moments of knowing named here — the “knowledge of ending” (khaya-ñāṇa) that arises at the moment the defilements actually end, and then a further, retrospective “knowledge of freedom” (aññā) that arises for the person who is now freed by that very ending. The text is careful not to collapse these into a single event: the ending happens, and then the fact of having been freed by it becomes known as its own further realization.
Not for the lazy or the unlearned
The verse’s closing lines are its bluntest: “Not by the lazy, or by fools who don’t understand, may this be realized — extinguishment, the release from all ties.” Diligence and understanding are named together as the twin preconditions, ruling out both the person who simply doesn’t try and the person who tries without the right understanding. Nothing here promises that effort by itself is sufficient; the entire discourse has been built to make exactly that point.
Key terms
The text
§1This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.
§2“Mendicants, I say that the ending of defilements is for one who knows and sees, not for one who does not know or see. For one who knows and sees what? The ending of defilements is for one who knows and sees suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path. The ending of the defilements is for one who knows and sees this.”
The Buddha spoke this matter. On this it is said:
§3–5“As a trainee trains, following the straight road, first they know about ending; enlightenment follows in the same lifetime. Then to one freed through enlightenment the knowledge of ending arises, the supreme knowledge of freedom, with the ending of the fetters. Not by the lazy, or by fools who don’t understand may this be realized—extinguishment, the release from all ties.”
§6This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.
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