Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Whether sensual pleasures are simply present, imagined into being by a love of creating, or commandeered from others’ creations, this discourse says all three modes trap a being in an endless round of pleasant states that never actually escapes transmigration — so the astute forsake sensual pleasure altogether, human and heavenly alike.
Three ways of being “provided”
The prose names three modes: “some sensual pleasures are simply present; some are for those who love to create; and some are for those who control what is created by others.” It’s worth being precise about what the discourse does and doesn’t say here: it describes these three modes in general terms, without naming specific heavenly realms by their traditional titles. Read against the wider cosmology found elsewhere in the tradition, the progression clearly moves from ordinary human and lower-heavenly enjoyment, through gods who conjure their own delights, up to gods who commandeer what others have created — but that mapping is supplied by broader context, not spelled out within this short text itself.
Still transmigration, however pleasant
The verse’s point is that none of this matters, in the end, for escaping the cycle: such beings “go from this state to another, but don’t escape transmigration.” However refined the pleasure, it remains within the same basic problem the discourse is concerned with.
Cutting the stream
“Knowing this danger in sensual indulgence, an astute person would forsake all sensual pleasures, both human and heavenly.” The verse’s image for this renunciation is cutting “the stream so hard to pass, that’s tied to pleasant seeming things” — after which such a person becomes “fully extinguished, completely transcending suffering.”
A repeated closing formula
It’s worth noting honestly that the discourse’s final quatrain — “seers of the noble truths, knowledge masters, the astute, understanding rightly, directly know the ending of rebirth, they come not back to future lives” — is identical, word for word, to the closing verse of Iti 93 (“Fire”), two discourses earlier in this same set. This is evidently a stock formula the collection reuses to close multiple discourses on the same note of arahantship, rather than a coincidence or an error.
Key terms
The text
§1.1This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.
§2.1–2.6“Mendicants, there are these three ways of being provided with sensual pleasures. What three? Some sensual pleasures are simply present; some are for those who love to create; and some are for those who control what is created by others. These are the three ways of being provided with sensual pleasures.” The Buddha spoke this matter. On this it is said:
§3.1–3.6“Sensual pleasures that are simply present,
gods who control what is imagined by others,
gods who love to create,
and others who indulge in sensual pleasures—
They go from this state to another,
but don’t escape transmigration.
§4.1–4.4Knowing this danger
in sensual indulgence, an astute person
would forsake all sensual pleasures,
both human and heavenly.
§5.1–5.4Having cut the stream so hard to pass,
that’s tied to pleasant seeming things,
they become fully extinguished,
completely transcending suffering.
§6.1–6.4Seers of the noble truths, knowledge masters,
the astute, understanding rightly,
directly know the ending of rebirth,
they come not back to future lives.”
§7.1This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.
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