SN 20:4 · Serving Dishes (Okkhā Sutta)

Staying near Sāvatthī. “Monks, if someone were to give a gift of one hundred serving dishes (of food) in the morning, one hundred at mid-day, and one hundred in the evening; and another person were to develop a mind of good-will—even for the time it takes to pull on a cow’s udder—in the morning, again at mid-day, and again in the evening, this [the second action] would be more fruitful than that (the first).

“Thus you should train yourselves: ‘Our awareness-release through good-will will be cultivated, developed, pursued, given a means of transport, given a grounding, steadied, consolidated, & well-undertaken. That’s how you should train yourselves.”

See also: MN 21; AN 2:30; AN 3:65; AN 3:101; AN 8:70; AN 11:16; Iti 27

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).