法苑珠林 99.20

99.20

Regarding the third path-trace, the anāgāmin: Having attained non-returning, he sees those who previously attained once-returning, and reflects in his mind: 'My three fetters in the desire realm have already become thin, and the remainder is slight. Looking back at the noble truths, I see the flaws of desire and craving, which bring much suffering and little peace. I should not indulge in desire like the common crowd; fixing one's intent on sensual passions is like a bluebottle fly clinging to a corpse. Why should I not eliminate them, so that lust, anger, and delusion may be extinguished without remainder, and having attained the dhyāna of exhausted outflows, only then find peace and tranquility?' It is like a person in the height of summer who cannot bear the heat: he seeks a fan to fan himself and yearns for water to bathe. Once-returning is like this: seeing lust, anger, and delusion as intense heat, one resolves to seek non-returning. Thereupon, practicing the contemplation of foulness, one forever escapes lust for forms as well as anger and delusion, truly seeing the arising and ceasing from which the five aggregates come, taking complete cessation as absorption. Having such knowledge and vision, one severs the five fetters and is free from the hindrances of the aggregates, attaining the path of non-returning. With the fruit of anāgāmin, one does not fall back and return to the world; having escaped craving and desire, one is without obstructions. The peril of the lustful demon gives way to coolness, free from all heat. If one beholds the desires of form, one constantly sees their impurity, and thus knows their flaws and filth. For example, some merchants arrive from afar, each extremely exhausted. It happens to be the twenty-ninth day of the month, a dark night without a moon. At midnight they arrive at the city gates, but the gates are closed and not opened. Circling to the south wall, there is a pool of accumulated rainwater. Corpses, chickens, dogs, and mixed kinds of worms—some alive, some dead, some sinking, some floating, hundreds of thousands of myriads of them—are leaping and disporting in it; furthermore, the sweeping filth, dung, hair, and excrement of the city are all discarded into the water. These people, travelers from afar, have never arrived there before and do not know good from bad. Weary, hungry, and thirsty, they drink of it freely, and, suffering from heat and exhaustion, they strip off their clothes to bathe. Feeling their bodies relieved of fatigue, they lie down peacefully and happily. When day breaks, having recovered from fatigue and awakened, they go again to the pool intending to draw water for use. Seeing that the water is impure and extraordinarily foul, some abandon it and run away, some close their eyes, some block their noses, and some vomit. Thereupon the verses say: