[411] 4.
"I see the pure, the supreme, the free from disease:
by what is seen a person's purification comes about."
Understanding thus, having known it as "the supreme,"
even one who contemplates the pure falls back upon it as knowledge (ñāṇa).
If by what is seen there is purification for a person,
or if by knowledge he abandons suffering (dukkha),
then one who still has acquisitions (upadhi) is purified by another [way]:
his view itself proclaims him as he asserts thus.
The brahmin does not say that purity is by another [means] —
not in what is seen, in what is heard, in virtue and vows, or in what is sensed (muta);
unsullied with regard to merit and to evil,
he has abandoned what was grasped, fashioning nothing here.
Abandoning the former, they cling to another;
in the train of agitation (ejā), they do not cross over the tie (saṅga).
They take hold and they let go,
like a monkey seizing the branch in front.
Having undertaken vows by himself, a person
attached to perception (saññā) goes now high, now low;
but the wise one, having comprehended the Dhamma through the knowledges (veda),
goes not high and low: he is one of vast wisdom.
Disarmed (visenibhūta) amid all dhammas —
toward whatever is seen or heard or sensed —
that seer who fares with the veil drawn open:
by what here in the world could one categorize him?
They do not construct, they do not prefer;
they do not say, "This is the ultimate purity."
Having cast off the knot of grasping (ādānagantha) by which they were bound,
they form no longing for anything in the world.
The brahmin who has passed beyond boundaries (sīmātiga) — for him there is nothing
grasped after knowing or after seeing.
Not impassioned by passion, not attached to dispassion,
for him there is nothing here grasped as supreme.
The Suddhaṭṭhaka Sutta, the fourth.
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In the Suttanipāta, the fourth chapter, the Aṭṭhakavagga:
the fifth discourse, the Paramaṭṭhaka Sutta.
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.