Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Someone in whom sensual desire and craving are already absent, and who has gone past all indecision, does not have some further liberation still waiting to happen — that condition simply is the finished state, one with nothing left over to add: no hope still needed, no wisdom still being built.
A question built from its own answer
Todeyya’s question is unusual in how it is constructed: he describes the person first — “in whom sensual pleasures do not dwell, and for whom there is no craving, and who has crossed over indecision” — and only then asks what kind of liberation belongs to someone like that. The Buddha’s first reply repeats Todeyya’s own description word for word, then adds a single line: “there is no liberation that is further.” It is less a new fact supplied from outside than a recognition that the description, taken seriously, already names the destination. A person with no desire, no craving, and no indecision has nothing left to arrive at.
Free of hope, or still hoping?
Todeyya presses further with two paired questions that function as a kind of diagnostic: is this person “free of hope, or still in need of hope”? Do they “possess wisdom, or are they still forming wisdom”? Both pairs distinguish someone still in training (a sekha, still developing insight and still carrying some residual expectation about the future) from someone who has completed the training entirely. “Hope” here (āsā) is not simply optimism; it names the forward-leaning expectation that there is still more to get, still more ground to cover. The Buddha’s answer is unhedged in both directions: such a person is free of hope, not still in need of it; they possess wisdom, not still forming it.
“One who has nothing”
The closing line names Todeyya directly and gives the sage a final description: “one who has nothing, unattached to sensual life.” The Pali word rendered “one who has nothing,” akiñcana, recurs across the Pārāyanavagga as a description of the fully awakened person — it will appear again, in almost identical language, in Kappa’s answer immediately following this one (Snp 5.11), where “having nothing, taking nothing” is offered as a direct definition of extinguishment itself. Read together, the two discourses form a small pair: here, having nothing is what makes someone a sage; there, it is named as nibbāna outright.
Key terms
The text
§1“In whom sensual pleasures do not dwell,”
said Venerable Todeyya,
“and for whom there is no craving,
and who has crossed over indecision—
of what kind is their liberation?”
§2“In whom sensual pleasures do not dwell,”
replied the Buddha,
“and for whom there is no craving,
and who has crossed over indecision—
there is no liberation that is further.”
§3“Are they free of hope,
or are they still in need of hope?
Do they possess wisdom,
or are they still forming wisdom?
O Sakyan, elucidate the sage to me,
so that I may understand, All-seer.”
§4“They are free of hope,
they are not in need of hope.
They possess wisdom,
they are not still forming wisdom.
That, Todeyya, is how to understand a sage,
one who has nothing, unattached to sensual life.”
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