Reading guide
A causal chain, traced step by step
The verses move through a specific sequence rather than simply asserting a conclusion: desire gives rise to gloom, gloom and desire together give rise to suffering, and removing desire removes gloom, which in turn removes suffering. The logic is presented as a chain of dependency, not a single unexplained claim.
Pretty things are not themselves the problem
One verse draws a distinction easy to overlook: ‘the world's pretty things aren't sensual pleasures — greedy intention is a person's sensual pleasure.’ The pretty things ‘stay just as they are’; what the attentive remove is their own desire for them, not the things themselves.
A verse this collection has met before
The closing description of one who has cut every tie, whom gods and humans cannot find ‘in this life or the next… not in heaven nor in any abode,’ is close to verses already met in this collection at SN 1.20's third compressed verse to the deity Samiddhi encountered — the same image of complete untraceability recurring in a new context.
Mogharāja's question, and a different Mogharāja moment
Venerable Mogharāja is known elsewhere in the wider canon, in the Pārāyanavagga, for a celebrated question of his own about how to regard the world so as to escape Death's notice. Here his question is different: not how to achieve the liberation just described, but whether those who revere someone so thoroughly untraceable are themselves still worthy of respect. The Buddha's answer is unambiguous — yes, and specifically because they have understood the teaching and given up doubt.
Key terms
The text
Deities arrive; sensual pleasures, and their true cause
§1At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Monastery. Then, late at night, several glorious deities of the host of a hundred felicities, lighting up the entire Jeta’s Grove, went up to the Buddha, bowed, and stood to one side. Standing to one side, one deity spoke this verse in the Buddha’s presence:
§2“Among mankind there are no sensual pleasures that are permanent. Here there are sensuous things, bound to which, drunk on which, there’s no coming back. That person doesn’t return from Death’s dominion.”
§3“Gloom is born of desire; suffering is born of desire; when desire is removed, gloom is removed; when gloom is removed, suffering is removed.”
What is actually removed
§4“The world’s pretty things aren’t sensual pleasures. Greedy intention is a person’s sensual pleasure. The world’s pretty things stay just as they are, but the attentive remove desire for them. Give up anger, get rid of conceit, and get past all the fetters. Sufferings don’t torment the one who has nothing, not clinging to name and form. They gave up judgement without falling into conceit; craving for name and form was cut off right here. They cut the ties, untroubled, with no need for hope. Though gods and humans search for them in this life or the next, they never find them, not in heaven nor in any abode.”
Mogharāja asks a question
§5“If neither gods nor humans see one freed in this way,” said Venerable Mogharāja, “in this life or the next, are those who revere that supreme man, who lives for the good of mankind, also worthy of praise?” “The mendicants who revere one freed in this way,” said the Buddha, “are also worthy of praise, Mogharāja. Having understood the teaching and given up doubt, those mendicants slip their chains.”
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