"'The ocean, the ocean!,' monks, says the ignorant worldling. But that is not the ocean in the Ariyan discipline, that is just a great heap of water, a great flood of water.
"The human eye, monks, is the ocean; its impulsion is produced by visible forms. Whoever withstands its buffeting produced by visible forms, is said to have 'crossed over': 'the Brahman
[1]
has traversed and passed over the ocean of the eye with its waves and whirlpools, its crocodiles
[2]
and monsters and stands on dry land.'"
[
Similarly with ear, nose, tongue, body (touch), mind.
]
The teacher declared:
He who's crossed this monster-teeming sea,
Hardly to be crossed for mighty waves.
Wisdom's his,
[3]
the holy life he's lived,
The world's end he's reached, and gone beyond.
Notes
-
1
.
-
The term
Braahma.na
is used in two different ways in the Pali Canon: (1) to denote a member of the Brahman caste, often depicted rather like the Pharisees in the New Testament; and (2) in the positive sense of one leading a pure life, even an Arahant. Cf.
inter alia
the
Braahma.navagga
of the
Dhammapada
.
-
2
.
-
Sagaaha.m:
"(with) sharks": Woodward.
Gaaha
lit. "grabber" is given in the PED [
Pali-English Dictionary
, by T.W. Rhys Davids & William Stede, PTS 1921-25] as "crocodile": in fact the estuarine crocodile swims far out to sea and so could well be meant here. Another word for "crocodile,"
su.msumaara
, is used in
SN 35.206
.
-
3
.
-
So vedaguu:
lit. "he is well-versed in the Vedas," but this word too, like
braahma.na
(
n. 1
), is often given a different, Buddhist, sense.