Reading guide
A new sub-chapter, a new named godling
The source text's own heading marks this as the opening discourse of ‘2. With Anāthapiṇḍika’, this book's second sub-chapter, taking its name from its closing discourse, SN 2.20, rather than its first.
Deer in a mosquito-free marsh
Candimasa's verse pictures deer reaching safety in a marsh free of mosquitoes, applied to those who have entered absorption — ‘unified, alert, and mindful’ — an image of stillness rewarded.
Fish when the net is cut
The Buddha's answering verse keeps Candimasa's structure exactly — four lines, the same opening clause ‘having entered the absorptions’ — but swaps the qualifying pair: not stillness and mindfulness, but diligence and strife discarded (araṇa-vippahīna).
Strife discarded: a term this book has used before
The word for ‘discarding strife’ shares its root with araṇa, the term this book's predecessor closed on at SN 1.81, ‘Araṇasutta’, on being free of strife — a quiet echo across the boundary between this collection's first two books.
Two similes, one underlying claim
Read together, the deer's safety and the fish's freed passage make the same point from different angles: what protects is not the absence of danger but a specific condition met — absorption paired, in the Buddha's version, with diligence rather than mere stillness.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Then, late at night, the glorious godling Candimasa, lighting up the entire Jeta’s Grove, went up to the Buddha, bowed, stood to one side, and spoke this verse in the Buddha’s presence:
§2“Like deer in a mosquito-free marsh, they will reach a safe place having entered the absorptions, unified, alert, and mindful.”
§3“Like fish when the net is cut, they will reach the far shore having entered the absorptions, diligent, with strife discarded.”
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