Kama Sutta: Toiling for pleasure (Snp 4.1)

You stupid bish, you and your pansy vegan boytoy don't know ish about farming! - OK, sir.

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We love Earth and avoidchemicalskilling a!

Kāma Sutta: This is the first sutra in the "Chapter of the Eights" (Atthakavagga) of the "Sutra Collection" (Sutta Nipāta).

The Buddha, seeing a Brahmin cutting down trees on the banks of the Aciravatī River and preparing a field for sowing, spoke to him.

He spoke to the Brahmin again on several other occasions whenever he saw the farmer engaged in various operations in the field.

Very uplifted by the Buddha's courtesy, the Brahmin resolved to invite him to accept a meal when the field was finally ready for harvest.

Who knew all my work could be ruined?

But on the day before the reaping of the field, heavy rains fell, the river flooded, and the harvest was entirely swept away.

The Buddha foresaw that all the Brahim's efforts would amount to nothing, so he visited to console him.

It was on this occasion that the Buddha saw that the man was receptive. With a chance to make a breakthrough, he taught him this sutra. At the climax of the discourse, the Brahmin awakened to the first stage of enlightenment (stream entry) and became a sotāpanna (Sn.vv.766-71; SnA.ii.511ff; J.iv.167f; cp. DhA.iii.284f; see also MNid.i.1ff).

• Elsewhere among the texts, in the Kāmanīta Jātaka (J.ii.212), this Brahmin is referred to as Kāmanītabrāhmana or the "Brahmin Kamanita."

What did the Buddha teach the that brought him to direct realization and enlightenment?

SUTRA: Objects, Desires, and Pleasures

Kāma Sutta—Laurence Khantipalo Mills (trans.), Snp 4.1 (suttacentral.net); edited by Dhr. Seven

Thank you, Friend, for helping me pull the plough! - You're welcome! I'm strong and happy to help. Let's go down by the river now. I want to eat some sweet grass. - OK, let's go. We can swim, too!

.

Are you going to release me now, Friend? - No,
you stupid animal, I'm a gonna kill and eat you!

If one with lustful mind

Succeeds at feeling pleasure,

Such a mortal is pleased

With that wish fulfilled.

But if the impassioned person

Were to see those pleasures lost,

Then the addict would feel

As though by arrows pierced.

One who shuns pleasures of sense

Avoids treading on a serpent’s head,

As such this person by mindfulness

This tangled world transcends.

Obsessed with property and fields,

With money, estates, and servants,

With many pleasures, family and friends —

That person, overcome by greed,

Such weaknesses indeed bring down.

By dangers is that person sunk,

By disappointments overwhelmed —

As water enters a boat that leaks.

So let a mindful person avoid

Addiction and cravings for sense,

And with them abandoned, cross the flood,

As a boat is bailed to reach the Further Shore.

SUTRA: Sensual Pleasures

Sujato Bhikkhu (trans.), Anthology of Discourses (Snp 4.1); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

If a mortal desires sensual pleasure

And that sense desire succeeds,

One may become elated,

Having got what was wished.

But for a person in throes of pleasure,

Aroused by desire,

If such pleasures go away,

It hurts like an arrow’s strike.

One who, being mindful,

Avoids sensual pleasures

Like side-stepping a snake’s head,

Transcends being stuck to the world.

There are many objects of sense:

fields, lands, and gold, cattle and horses,

slaves and servants, women and relatives.

When one lusts over these,

The weak overpower one

And by adversities is one crushed.

Suffering follows one

Like water in a leaky boat.

• (Bhikkhu Bodhi, Norman, and Ven. Ñāṇadīpa all have “enter” here, while Ven. Ṭhānissaro has “invades.” But this is a stock line, and it’s hard to read anveti as anything other than “follows.” Niddesa (Mnd 1:70.2) has anveti anugacchati anvāyikaṁ hoti. The metaphor is not that water “enters” a boat, but that a leaky boat already contains water and takes it along (like a shadow that always follows or an ox-cart following behind, as in the opening verses of the Dhammapada). That is why it has to be bailed out in the next verse.)

That is why a person, ever mindful,

Wisely avoids sensual pleasures.

Give them up and cross this flood,

As a bailed-out boat reaches the further shore.

• A Reader’s Guide to the Pali Suttas—SuttaCentral
• G.P. Malalasekera (Dictionary of Pali Names); Snp 4.1: Kāma Sutta; Ven. Khantipalo (Laurence Mills); Ven. Sujato (suttacentral.net); compiled and edited by Dhr. Seven and Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly