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Brahmajalasutta 1.31

The Divine Net 1.31

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English

1.31.1

It’s when some ascetic or brahmin—by dint of keen, resolute, committed, and diligent effort, and right application of mind—experiences an immersion of the heart of such a kind that they recollect their many kinds of past lives.

1.31.2

That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details.

1.31.3

They say:

1.31.4

‘The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar.

1.31.5

They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.

1.31.6

Why is that?

1.31.7

Because by dint of keen, resolute, committed, and diligent effort, and right application of mind I experience an immersion of the heart of such a kind that I recollect my many kinds of past lives,

1.31.8

with features and details.

1.31.9

Because of this I know:

1.31.10

“The self and the cosmos are eternal, barren, steady as a mountain peak, standing firm like a pillar.

1.31.11

They remain the same for all eternity, while these sentient beings wander and transmigrate and pass away and rearise.”’

1.31.12

This is the first ground on which some ascetics and brahmins rely to assert that the self and the cosmos are eternal.

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