Reading guide
Echoing SN 48.21's own testimony, now for the six senses
Confirmed by direct reading, this discourse's own structure closely echoes this project's own SN 48.21 (Punabbhavasutta): the identical first-person testimony — withholding the proclamation of awakening until true understanding, then the identical closing utterance — but applied here to the six sense faculties rather than the five spiritual faculties.
A genuine textual variant, reported honestly
Confirmed by direct comparison of this discourse's own source: the Pali root text at segments 1.4-1.5 retains the FULL fivefold analytical lens (“samudayañca atthaṅgamañca assādañca ādīnavañca nissaraṇañca,” origin, disappearance, gratification, drawback, and escape), matching SN 48.21's own phrasing exactly — but the English translation at those same two segments renders only THREE terms, “gratification, drawback, and escape.” This project reports this variant plainly rather than silently harmonizing it or guessing at the translator's own reason.
The same closing utterance as SN 48.21 and SN 48.20
Confirmed by direct reading, this discourse closes with the identical post-awakening utterance already met at this project's own SN 48.21 — “my freedom is unshakable; this is my last rebirth; now there'll be no more future lives” — the same classic formula recurring a second time within this vagga.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, there are these six faculties. What six? The faculties of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. As long as I didn’t truly understand these six faculties’ gratification, drawback, and escape, I didn’t announce my supreme perfect awakening in this world with its gods, Māras, and Divinities, this population with its ascetics and brahmins, its gods and humans. But when I did truly understand these six faculties’ gratification, drawback, and escape, I announced my supreme perfect awakening in this world with its gods, Māras, and Divinities, this population with its ascetics and brahmins, its gods and humans. Knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘My freedom is unshakable; this is my last rebirth; now there’ll be no more future lives.’”
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