Hoa Vo Uu (Buddha Dharma Education Association)
Venerable Shravasti Dhammika
The Buddha’s Words of Wisdom
At the time, the Lord, having stayed as long as he liked at Benares, set out for Uruvelã. Then turning off the road, he entered a woodland grove and sat down at the foot of a tree. Now at that time a group of about thirty friends of high standing and their wives were enjoying themselves in that same woodland.
One of the friends had no wife, so a prostitute had been brougth along for him, and while they were enjoying themselves she took their belongs and ran away. So these friends began looking around for the woman, and as they roamed about they saw the Lord at the foot of the tree. They approached him and asked: “Lord, have you seen a woman?”
“What, young men, have you to do with a woman?”
So they told the Lord what had happened and why they were looking for the woman. And the Lord said to them: “What do you think? Which is better? To seek for this woman, or to seek for yourself?”
“Truly, Lord, it would be better to seek for ourselves.”
“Well then, sit down and I will teach you Dhamma.”
So those friends sat down and the Lord gave a progressive talk, that is to say, on virtue, heaven, the danger, the frutility and the depravity of sense pleasures and the advantages of giving the up. Then, when the Lord knew that their minds were ready, malleable, free from hindrance, uplifted and gladddened, he explained to them the teaching which is unique to the Buddhas—suffering, its cause, its overcoming and the way to its overcoming.
