The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Bhikkhu Nanamoli [496]
26. “Next the wardens of hell ask him: ‘Good man, what do you want?’ He says: ‘I am thirsty, venerable sirs.’ Then the wardens of hell prise open his mouth with red-hot iron tongs, burning, blazing, and glowing, and they pour into his mouth molten copper, burning, blazing, and glowing. It burns his lips, it burns his mouth, it burns his throat, it burns his stomach, and it passes out below carrying with it his intestines and mesentery. There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings. Yet he does not die so long as that evil action has not exhausted its result.
27. “Then the wardens of hell throw him back again into the Great Hell.
28. “It has happened that King Yama thought: ‘Those in the world who do evil unwholesome actions indeed have all these many kinds of tortures inflicted on them. Oh, that I might attain the human state, that a Tathāgata, accomplished and fully enlightened, might appear in the world, that I might wait on that Blessed One, that the Blessed One might teach me the Dhamma, and that I might come to understand that Blessed One’s Dhamma!’
29. “Bhikkhus, I tell you this not as something I heard from another recluse or brahmin. I tell you this as something that I have actually known, seen, and discovered by myself.” [187]
30. That is what the Blessed One said. When the Sublime One had said that, the Teacher said further:
“Though warned by the divine messengers,
Full many are the negligent,
And people may sorrow long indeed
Once gone down to the lower world.
But when by the divine messengers
Good people here in this life are warned,
They do not dwell in negligence
But practise well the noble Dhamma.
Clinging they look upon with fear
For it produces birth and death;
And by not clinging they are freed
In the destruction of birth and death.
They dwell in bliss for they are safe
And reach Nibbāna here and now.
They are beyond all fear and hate;
They have escaped all suffering.”
4
The Division of Expositions
(Vibhangavagga)
Bhaddekaratta Sutta
A Single Excellent Night
1. THUS HAVE I HEARD.1209 On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Park. There he addressed the bhikkhus thus: “Bhikkhus.”—“Venerable sir,” they replied. The Blessed One said this:
2. “Bhikkhus, I shall teach you the summary and exposition of ‘One Who Has Had a Single Excellent Night.’1210 Listen and attend closely to what I shall say.”—“Yes, venerable sir,” the bhikkhus replied. The Blessed One said this:
3. “Let not a person revive the past
Or on the future build his hopes;1211
For the past has been left behind
And the future has not been reached.
Instead with insight let him see
Each presently arisen state;1212
Let him know that and be sure of it,
Invincibly, unshakeably.1213
Today the effort must be made;
Tomorrow Death may come, who knows?
No bargain with Mortality
Can keep him and his hordes away,
But one who dwells thus ardently,
Relentlessly, by day, by night—
It is he, the Peaceful Sage has said,1214
Who has had a single excellent night. [188]
4. “How, bhikkhus, does one revive the past? One nurtures delight there thinking, ‘I had such material form in the past.’1215 One nurtures delight there thinking, ‘I had such feeling in the past,’…‘I had such perception in the past,’…‘I had such formations in the past,’…‘I had such consciousness in the past.’ That is how one revives the past.
5. “And how, bhikkhus, does one not revive the past? One does not nurture delight there thinking, ‘I had such material form in the past.’1216 One does not nurture delight there thinking, ‘I had such feeling in the past,’…‘I had