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Why There Is a Way Out

Ud 8.3, the Tatiyanibbānapaṭisaṁyutta Sutta — set 5, Advanced and Reference Texts

Reading time: about 1 min · 139 words

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Before you read

This is the shortest page in the collection, and it makes one argument.

Everything you can point at is conditioned: it came about because other things did, and it will stop when they stop. That is the ordinary subject of these texts. The question this page raises is what it would mean if that were all there is.

The Buddha's answer is conditional, and worth reading twice. If there were nothing unborn, unmade and unconditioned, then there would be no discernible way out of what is born, made and conditioned — you could only ever move around inside it. Because there is, there is a way out.

Notice what the text does not do. It does not say what the unborn is, or where, or what it is like. It only says that without it the escape would not be findable. Readers have been filling that silence in for two thousand years; the page itself leaves it open, and so does this translation.

Unbecome is an odd word on its own. It sits between unborn and unmade in a list of four, and it means the same kind of thing: not having come to be.

Translation

What the Escape Depends On

So I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī, in Jeta's Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika's monastery.

At that time the Buddha was pointing out, urging on, rousing, and gladdening the bhikkhus with a Dhamma talk about nibbāna. And the bhikkhus were treating it as something that mattered, attending to it, bringing their whole heart to bear, listening closely.

Then the Buddha, understanding what this meant, spoke this inspired saying at that moment:

"Bhikkhus, there is what is unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.

If there were no such thing, bhikkhus — nothing unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned — then no escape would be discerned here from what is born, become, made, conditioned.

But because there is what is unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, an escape is discerned from what is born, become, made, conditioned."

The third discourse is finished.

Words used in this translation (7)
bhikkhus
Buddhist monks -- those who have left household life to practise full time. The Buddha's usual way of addressing the assembly, roughly "friends" in force.
conditioned
This project's rendering of "saṅkhata" -- anything that came about because other things did, and that stops when they stop. Nearly everything is.
Dhamma
The Buddha's teaching taken as a whole -- both what he taught and the way things actually are, which the teaching describes.
escape
This project's rendering of "nissaraṇa". It is the real way out of whatever the text is discussing, unlike the false escapes an untrained mind reaches for. In SN 36.6 the escape is from being stuck in a feeling; in Ud 8.3 it is from everything born, made, and conditioned.
heart
This project's rendering of "citta": the feeling side of mind. It takes on moods, wants, leans, and reacts. Practice can gladden, steady, train, and release it. Some call it the "heart-mind" or "feeling mind". Here "heart" does not mean only emotion, or the physical organ.
nibbāna
The end of greed, hatred, and confusion -- the traditional goal of Buddhist practice. Left untranslated because no single English word covers it; "quenching" is the closest one-word gloss.
unconditioned
This project's rendering of "asaṅkhata" -- what did not come about that way. The word says only what it is not; the texts deliberately do not describe it further.
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