136. Liking Sights (1st)
“Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches and thoughts, the lot of them— they’re likable, desirable, and pleasurable as long as you can say that they exist.
In all the world with its gods, this is reckoned as happiness. And where they cease this is reckoned as suffering.
The noble ones have seen that happiness is the cessation of identity. Those who see contradict the whole world.
What others say is happiness the noble ones say is suffering. What others say is suffering the noble ones say is happiness.
See, this teaching is hard to understand, it confuses the ignorant. Those who don’t see are closed off; for them, all is blind darkness.
But those who see are open; for the good, it is light. Though it’s right there, the unskilled fools don’t understand the teaching.
They’re mired in desire to be reborn, flowing along the stream of lives, mired in Māra’s sovereignty: this teaching isn’t easy for them to understand.
Who, apart from the noble ones, is qualified to understand this state? When they’ve rightly understood it, they’re extinguished without defilements.”