Reading guide
The exterior sense objects, given in full
"Sights are impermanent … sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas are impermanent" — the identical three-step chain as SN 35.1, now applied to what the six interior faculties perceive rather than the faculties themselves.
A deliberate return to full treatment
Unlike SN 35.2–3's own compressed shape, this discourse restates the full chain and full closing formula — confirming this vagga's own pattern of giving each new domain (interior first, exterior now) its own full opening discourse before compressing the two remaining terms.
Six objects, not six faculties
Rūpa ("sights"), sadda ("sounds"), gandha ("smells"), rasa ("tastes"), phoṭṭhabba ("touches"), and dhamma ("ideas" or "mental objects") together comprise the six exterior sense fields, paired one-to-one with the six interior faculties already covered at SN 35.1–3.
Opening this vagga's own second three-discourse cycle
SN 35.5–6 will complete this exterior cycle with suffering and not-self, compressed in the identical manner as SN 35.2–3, before the three-times dimension begins at SN 35.7.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, sights are impermanent. What’s impermanent is suffering. What’s suffering is not-self. And what’s not-self should be truly seen with right understanding like this: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’ Sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas are impermanent. What’s impermanent is suffering. What’s suffering is not-self. And what’s not-self should be truly seen with right understanding like this: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’ Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and ideas. Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’”
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