Reading guide
A second Gotama, distinct from the first
This poem's title marks it ‘Gotama (2nd)’, distinguishing this elder from Thag 2.9's Gotama in the Book of the Twos, whose own verse spoke of sleeping at ease and sensual pleasure slain. The two poems share only a name and clan, not subject matter — this one is cosmological retrospective where the earlier one was a compact declaration.
An unusually complete catalogue of realms
Across its first two verses, this poem names hell, the ghost realm, the animal realm, human rebirth, heaven, the realms of form and formlessness, and finally the ‘neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient’ and the non-percipient realms — eight distinct cosmological categories inside eight lines, one of the most exhaustive single-poem surveys of the realms this reading guide has found on this site.
A comment on how such states are made, not just where they are
Sujato's comment on the third verse's sambhavā (‘created states’) explains that the word means ‘creation, production’, bridging bhava, the ‘states of existence’ just catalogued, and the craving that produces them, named in what follows. The poem's insight is not simply cataloguing where one has been, but recognizing what creates such places to begin with — ‘when I understood that this is created in myself, mindful, I found peace’.
Key terms
The text
§1Transmigrating, I went to hell, and to the ghost realm time and again. Many times I dwelt long in the animal realm, so full of pain.
§2I was also reborn as a human, and from time to time I went to heaven. I’ve stayed in realms of form and formlessness, among the neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient, and the non-percipient.
§3I know well these created states are insubstantial—conditioned, unstable, always in motion. When I understood that this is created in myself, mindful, I found peace.
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