Section VI. Deepening One’s Perspective on the World

The introduction to “The Path to Liberation” underscores the Buddha’s teachings as a nuanced guide tailored for individuals across a spectrum of beliefs and behaviors, aiming to steer them from unwholesome paths towards actions that foster pleasant outcomes, understanding of karmic rebirth, and ultimately, liberation from the cycle of birth and death. Highlighting the adaptability of the Buddha’s discourses, it points out that while heavenly rebirth is recognized as a positive step, it is merely provisional, with the cessation of suffering through the attainment of Nibbāna as the ultimate goal. This unconditioned state transcends the conditioned world and is accessible in this lifetime, signifying the end of craving and the beginning of perfect peace.

To navigate followers towards Nibbāna, the Buddha emphasized the impermanence and suffering inherent in all conditioned states, advocating for a path of complete mental purification and liberation. His teachings, presented as a new way of perceiving the world, revolve around a threefold insight process: recognizing the temporary gratification provided by worldly phenomena, understanding their inherent dangers, and realizing the path to escape attachment to them. This process mirrors the Four Noble Truths, guiding followers from recognizing suffering and its origin in craving to achieving cessation of suffering through detachment, dispassion, and enlightenment, thereby setting the foundation for a journey from the lure of sensual pleasures and attachment to worldly views towards the ultimate freedom of Nibbāna.

Introduction

  1. Four Wonderful Things (AN 4.128)
  2. Gratification, Danger, and Escape
    1. Before My Enlightenment (AN 3.103)
    2. I Set Out Seeking (AN 3.104)
    3. If There Were No Gratification (AN 3.105)
  3. Properly Appraising Objects of Attachment (MN 13)
  4. The Pitfalls in Sensual Pleasures
    1. Cutting Off All Affairs (from MN 54)
    2. The Fever of Sensual Pleasures (from MN 75)
    3. Life Is Short and Fleeting (AN 7.74)
  5. Four Summaries of the Dhamma (from MN 82)
  6. The Danger in Views
    1. A Miscellany on Wrong View (AN1.306-308)
    2. The Blind Men and the Elephant (Ud 6.4)
    3. Held by Two Kinds of Views (Iti 49)
    4. From the Divine Realms to the Infernal (AN 4.125)
  7. The Perils of Saṃsāra
    1. The Stream of Tears (SN 15.3)
    2. The Stream of Blood (SN 15.13)

This is the first section of: In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon by Bhikkhu Bodhi, published by Wisdom Publications, but linked to the free translations available on SuttaCentral.net.

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