Reading guide
The same elder, a second poem in a later book
This site's own Thag 1.42 already gives Revata of the Acacia Wood a single verse, addressing his three sisters Cālā, Upacālā, and Sīsupacālā directly: ‘meditate mindfully! I've come to you like a hair-splitter’. The identical specific epithet, ‘Khadiravaniya’, ‘of the Acacia Wood’, attached to both poems marks this as the same individual rather than a namesake, unlike the ordinal-disambiguated repeated names (Sopāka, Sumana, Gotama) found elsewhere in this collection — a single elder given both a short utterance in the Book of the Ones and a fuller testimony here.
Three lines shared verbatim with Thag 11.1
The second verse — ‘May these beings be killed! May they be slaughtered! May they suffer! I've not been aware of any such thought’ — matches Thag 11.1 (Saṅkicca)'s seventh verse word for word across three full lines, differing only in its closing phrase (‘in all this long while’ here, against ‘ignoble, hateful’ there).
A famous closing image, shared entirely, abbreviation and all
The tenth and eleventh verses reproduce Thag 11.1's closing couplet-pair in full: ‘I don't long for death; I don't long for life; I await my time, like a worker waiting for their wages’, then repeated with only its final phrase changed. Remarkably, the eleventh verse's Pali source abbreviates itself with ‘… pe …’, exactly as Thag 7.1 (Sundarasamudda) did — the second case in this collection of a poem's own manuscript relying on peyyāla shorthand rather than spelling out a repeated formula. Between these two poems, this specific closing image is now this collection's most extensively duplicated passage: two full verses, shared twice over, with the identical textual convention marking the repetition both times.
A hairsbreadth of evil, seen as a stormcloud
The eighth verse's image stands out for its psychological precision: to someone genuinely seeking purity, ‘even a hair-tip of evil seems as big as a stormcloud’. This isn't a claim about objective severity but about a scrupulous mind's own scale of perception, where moral sensitivity makes small lapses loom disproportionately large.
Loving-kindness as sustained, technical practice
Verses three through five describe mettā not as a passing sentiment but as cultivated technique: ‘limitless and well-developed... gradually consolidated as it was taught by the Buddha’, named explicitly as one of the brahmavihāras (‘divine meditations’) ‘which reprobates do not cultivate’ — friendliness treated with the same systematic seriousness this collection elsewhere gives to insight practice.
Key terms
The text
§1Since I’ve gone forth from the lay life to homelessness, I’ve not been aware of any thought that is ignoble and hateful.
§2“May these beings be killed! May they be slaughtered! May they suffer!”—I’ve not been aware of any such thought in all this long while.
§3I have been aware of loving-kindness, limitless and well-developed; gradually consolidated as it was taught by the Buddha.
§4I’m friend and comrade to all, sympathetic for all beings! I develop a mind of love, always delighting in harmlessness.
§5The unfaltering, the unshakable: I gladden that mind. I develop a divine meditation, which reprobates do not cultivate.
§6When in a meditation free of placing the mind, a disciple of the Buddha is at that moment blessed with noble silence.
§7As a rocky mountain is unwavering and well grounded, so when delusion ends, a monk, like a mountain, doesn’t tremble.
§8To the man who has not a blemish who is always seeking purity, even a hair-tip of evil seems as big as a stormcloud.
§9As a frontier city is guarded inside and out, so you should ward yourselves—don’t let the moment pass you by.
§10I don’t long for death; I don’t long for life; I await my time, like a worker waiting for their wages.
§11I don’t long for death; I don’t long for life; I await my time, aware and mindful.
§12I’ve served the teacher and fulfilled the Buddha’s instructions. The heavy burden is laid down, the leash to existence is eradicated.
§13I’ve attained the goal for the sake of which I went forth from the lay life to homelessness—the ending of all fetters.
§14Persist with diligence: this is my instruction. Come, I’ll be fully quenched—I’m liberated in every way.
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.