Insight (6): Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance

[Full title: Insight: The Eight Knowledges (6): Knowledge of Desire for Deliverance]

45. When, owing to this knowledge of dispassion, this clansman becomes dispassionate towards, is dissatisfied with, takes no delight in any single one of all the manifold formations in any kind of becoming, generation, destiny, station of consciousness, or abode of beings, his mind no longer sticks fast, cleaves, fastens on to them, and he becomes desirous of being delivered from the whole field of formations and escaping from it. Like what?

46. Just as a fish in a net, a frog in a snake’s jaws, a jungle fowl shut into a cage, a deer fallen into the clutches of a strong snare, a snake in the hands of a snake charmer, an elephant stuck fast in a great bog, a royal nāga in the mouth of a supaṇṇa, the moon inside Rāhu’s mouth,^[1] a man encircled by enemies, etc.—just as these are desirous of being delivered, of finding an escape from these things, so too this meditator’s mind is desirous of being delivered from the whole field of formations and escaping from it. Then, when he thus no longer relies on any formations and is desirous of being delivered from the whole field of formations, knowledge of desire for deliverance arises in him.

Knowledge of desire for deliverance is ended.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Rāhu is the name for the eclipse of the sun or moon, personalized as a demon who takes them in his mouth (see S I 50–51 and M I 87).