[118] "Bhikkhus, I will teach you the near shore and the far shore. Listen to it and attend carefully; I will speak." "Yes, venerable sir," those bhikkhus replied to the Blessed One. The Blessed One said this: "And what, bhikkhus, is the near shore, and what is the far shore? Wrong view (micchādiṭṭhi), bhikkhus,¹ is the near shore; right view (sammādiṭṭhi) is the far shore. … Wrong deliverance (micchāvimutti) is the near shore; right deliverance (sammāvimutti) is the far shore. This, bhikkhus, is the near shore; this is the far shore."
Few among human beings are those people who go to the far shore;
the rest of humankind merely runs along the shore.
But those people who conform to the Dhamma
in the Dhamma that has been rightly proclaimed —
those people will cross over the realm of Death (maccudheyya),
so very hard to cross, and reach the far shore.
Having abandoned the dark state, the wise one should develop the bright,
having gone from home into homelessness,
into seclusion, wherein delight is hard to find.
There he should wish for delight, having given up sensual pleasures,
owning nothing; the wise one should cleanse himself
of the defilements of the mind (citta).
Those whose minds are rightly well developed
in the factors of awakening (sambodhiyaṅga),
who, without clinging, delight in the relinquishment of grasping —
with taints (āsava) destroyed, radiant,
they are fully quenched in the world.
¹ Footnote in the Siam Raṭṭha edition: "M[oramese ed.]: this reading is absent" (i.e., the word "bhikkhave" here is not found in the Burmese edition).
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.