DN18.7. The Three Openings

Janavasabha Sutta ("With Janavasabha")

“What do the good gods of the Thirty-Three think about how much the Buddha has understood the three opportunities for achieving happiness? What three?

First, take someone who lives mixed up with sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities. After some time they hear the noble teaching, properly attend to how it applies to them, and practice accordingly. They live aloof from sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities. That gives rise to pleasure, and more than pleasure, happiness, like the joy that’s born from gladness. This is the first opportunity for achieving happiness.

Next, take someone whose coarse physical, verbal, and mental processes have not died down. After some time they hear the teaching of the noble ones, properly attend to how it applies to them, and practice accordingly. Their coarse physical, verbal, and mental processes die down. That gives rise to pleasure, and more than pleasure, happiness, like the joy that’s born from gladness. This is the second opportunity for achieving happiness.

Next, take someone who doesn’t truly understand what is skillful and what is unskillful, what is blameworthy and what is blameless, what should be cultivated and what should not be cultivated, what is inferior and what is superior, and what is on the side of dark and the side of bright. After some time they hear the teaching of the noble ones, properly attend to how it applies to them, and practice accordingly. They truly understand what is skillful and what is unskillful, and so on. Knowing and seeing like this, ignorance is given up and knowledge arises. That gives rise to pleasure, and more than pleasure, happiness, like the joy that’s born from gladness. This is the third opportunity for achieving happiness.

These are the three opportunities for achieving happiness that have been understood by the Buddha.”

That is the topic on which Brahmā Sanaṅkumāra spoke. And having spoken about that, he addressed the gods of the Thirty-Three:



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