DN 7With Jāliya
Pāli / Sanskrit:Jāliyasutta
This discourse is mostly quoted by the Buddha in the previous.
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– Long Discourses 7
With Jāliya
So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Kosambī, in Ghosita’s Monastery. Now at that time two renunciates— the wanderer Muṇḍiya and Jāliya, the pupil of the wood-bowl ascetic—came to the Buddha and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, they stood to one side and said to the Buddha, “Reverend Gotama, are the soul and the body one and the same, or is the soul one thing, the body another?”
“Well then, reverends, listen and apply your mind well, I will speak.”
“Yes, reverend,” they replied. The Buddha said this:
“Take the case when a Realized One arises in the world, perfected, a fully awakened Buddha … That’s how a mendicant is accomplished in ethics. … They enter and remain in the first absorption … When a mendicant knows and sees like this, would it be appropriate to say of them: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’?”
“It would, reverend.”
“But reverends, I know and see like this. Nevertheless, I do not say: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’. …
They enter and remain in the second absorption … third absorption … fourth absorption. When a mendicant knows and sees like this, would it be appropriate to say of them: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’?”
“It would, reverend.”
“But reverends, I know and see like this. Nevertheless, I do not say: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’. …
They project and extend the mind toward knowledge and vision … When a mendicant knows and sees like this, would it be appropriate to say of them: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’?”
“It would, reverend.”
“But reverends, I know and see like this. Nevertheless, I do not say: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’. …
They understand: ‘… there is nothing further for this place.’ When a mendicant knows and sees like this, would it be appropriate to say of them: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’?”
“It would not, reverend.”
“But reverends, I know and see like this. Nevertheless, I do not say: ‘The soul and the body are one and the same’ or ‘The soul is one thing, the body another’.”
That is what the Buddha said. Satisfied, the two renunciates approved what the Buddha said.
The “…” is an abbreviation carried over from the Pāli original itself, called peyyāla. The early canon was memorized and recited, so passages repeated verbatim from a preceding discourse were commonly contracted to an elision mark rather than written out in full. Venerable Thích Minh Châu's translation preserves this convention. Some texts therefore look short — but that is the canonical form, not missing content or a truncated translation. The elided passages can be read in full in the preceding discourses of the same chapter.
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