Iti 41 · uttaka 41
This was said by the Blessed One, said by the Arahant, so I have heard: “Monks, those beings are truly deprived who are deprived of noble discernment. They live in stress in the present life–troubled, distressed, & feverish–and at the break-up of the body, after death, a bad destination can be expected.
“Those beings are not deprived who are not deprived of noble discernment. They live in ease in the present life–untroubled, undistressed, & not feverish–and at the break-up of the body, after death, a good destination can be expected.
Look at the world
–including its heavenly beings:
deprived of discernment,
making an abode in name-&-form,
it conceives that ‘This is the truth.’
The best discernment in the world
is what leads
to penetration,
for it rightly discerns
the total ending of birth & becoming.
Human & heavenly beings
hold them dear:
those who are
self-awakened,
mindful,
bearing their last bodies
with joyful discernment.
Translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. © 2014 / rev. 2017 Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu — released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence, for free distribution only. Source: dhammatalks.org (Metta Forest Monastery).
