Kāma Sutta 1 — On Sensual Pleasures
[408] If objects of sensual pleasure were always to come about for beings who desire them, then when a being desires something and obtains it, that being would indeed become filled with delight.
But if, while desiring and longing, those sensual pleasures fade and slip away, then that being is shattered — as though struck by an arrow.
Whoever avoids sensual pleasures as one would avoid the head of a venomous snake with one’s own hand, that person, mindful, crosses over craving in this world.
When a person delights excessively in sensual pleasures — farms, land, wealth, cattle, horses, servants, laborers, women, and kin — then feeble mental defilements gain power and overwhelm that person. Great dangers likewise assail such a one, and suffering follows the one overcome by dangers as water enters a house with broken walls.
Therefore one should be ever mindful and abstain from sensual pleasures. Having abandoned those pleasures, one crosses the flood — as a man, after bailing out a boat, reaches the far shore.
End of Kāma Sutta 1.
Short Pāli Glossary (concise · intensive)
- kāma — sensual pleasures; sense-desire tied to the five senses.
- vatthukāma — “sensual objects”; external sense-objects which stimulate craving.
- taṇhā — craving; thirst that drives becoming and suffering.
- ogha — flood; metaphor for overwhelming defilements that sweep beings along in saṃsāra.
- kilesa — defilements of mind such as greed, aversion, and delusion.
- sati — mindfulness; clear awareness that guards the mind.
- pāra — the far shore; awakening, liberation from saṃsāra.