Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Exploring the Dhamma, as understood from the perspective of the ancient Pali commentaries.
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Bunks
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Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Bunks »

Hello everyone

Question:

How do you interpret the last line of the Karaniya Metta Sutta i.e. ‘ Not born again into this world ‘.

I have read different interpretations by different teachers.

Does he mean we go to the heavenly realms and then return to this realm or do we go to a place like the Pure Land and continue our cultivation there?
Stop thinking and start living!
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Ceisiwr »

Bunks wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 11:13 pm Hello everyone

Question:

How do you interpret the last line of the Karaniya Metta Sutta i.e. ‘ Not born again into this world ‘.

I have read different interpretations by different teachers.

Does he mean we go to the heavenly realms and then return to this realm or do we go to a place like the Pure Land and continue our cultivation there?
The commentary says it means not coming back again to this world. Instead they go to the pure abodes and achieve Arahantship from there.
“Knowing that this body is just like foam,
understanding it has the nature of a mirage,
cutting off Māra’s flower-tipped arrows,
one should go beyond the King of Death’s sight.”
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Bunks
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Bunks »

Ceisiwr wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 11:18 pm
Bunks wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 11:13 pm Hello everyone

Question:

How do you interpret the last line of the Karaniya Metta Sutta i.e. ‘ Not born again into this world ‘.

I have read different interpretations by different teachers.

Does he mean we go to the heavenly realms and then return to this realm or do we go to a place like the Pure Land and continue our cultivation there?
The commentary says it means not coming back again to this world. Instead they go to the pure abodes and achieve Arahantship from there.
Thank you - can you define the "pure abodes"?

Do you mean the heavenly realms within Samsara?
Stop thinking and start living!
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

See The 31 Realms of Existence.

Suddhāvāsa = The Pure Abodes
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Bunks
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Bunks »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 1:11 am See The 31 Realms of Existence.

Suddhāvāsa = The Pure Abodes
Thank you :anjali:
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mjaviem
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by mjaviem »

...
(3) “And what is the person who is inwardly firm? Here, with the utter destruction of the five lower fetters, some person is of spontaneous birth, due to attain final nibbāna there without ever returning from that world. This is called the person who is inwardly firm.
...

AN 4.5 Along with the stream
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
Bunks wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 11:13 pm How do you interpret the last line of the Karaniya Metta Sutta i.e. ‘ Not born again into this world ‘.
I think to make sense of it, you need to step back and read that final stanza in its totality...
Thanissaro translation wrote:Not taken with views,
but virtuous & consummate in vision,
having subdued desire for sensual pleasures,
one never again
will lie in the womb.
Consummate in vision implies to me a noble one. This is very similar to what we find in AN 4.126...
"There is the case where an individual keeps pervading the first direction — as well as the second direction, the third, & the fourth — with an awareness imbued with good will. Thus he keeps pervading above, below, & all around, everywhere & in every respect the all-encompassing cosmos with an awareness imbued with good will: abundant, expansive, immeasurable, free from hostility, free from ill will. He regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, an emptiness, not-self. At the break-up of the body, after death, he reappears in conjunction with the devas of the Pure Abodes. This rebirth is not in common with run-of-the-mill people.
Metta,
Paul. :)
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by dharmacorps »

A less common translation by Gil Fronsdal is "never to enter the cycles of suffering again", or something to that effect.
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Namkha
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Namkha »

Some students read the last stanza of the Karaniya sutta as something that was added later. I do not know the basis for this view; however, since coming across it, I tend to leave it off.
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by tharpa »

On a slight tangent, I think that the the Karaniya Metta Sutta, when chanted in Pali, is the most musical of all the suttas.
May all beings, in or out of the womb, be well, happy and peaceful.
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by wenjaforever »

If you don't hate yourself you most likely won't know what hate is and how to hate. I suppose hate has to be learned first.
money is worthless toilet paper • the tongue has no bone (a person might say one thing but it cannot be further from the truth) • you cannot teach a goat math as in you cannot teach the dhamma to a dumb person
Pasindu
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Re: Query about the Karaniya Metta Sutta: The Buddha's Words on Loving-Kindness

Post by Pasindu »

Hi! Bit of a late reply,

"Nahi jaathu gabbhaseiyyan punarethi thi" means that that person will not go into a mothers womb again. Which means he will not come to human world again.

The highest fruit you can archieve from loving kindness meditation is being anagami. Loving kindness meditation alone is not able to gain you arhathship. When you are an anagaami, after you die, you go to one of the suddhawasa brahma worlds, where you will definitely attain arhathship. So you are never born in a womb again.
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