Meanwhile the Blessed One had left the highway and had sat down under a tree not far off, with legs crossed, keeping his body erect, having set up mindfulness before him. Then Dona the brahmin, following the Blessed One’s footprints, saw him seated under a tree, of pleasing appearance, inspiring confidence, with calm features and calm mind, in perfect composure and equipoise, controlled and restrained [like] a well-trained bull elephant.
Seeing the Blessed One, Dona approached him and said:
“Will your reverence become a deva?”
“No, brahmin, I shall not become a deva.”
“Then your reverence might become a gandhabba?”
“No, brahmin, I shall not become a gandhabba.”
“Then will your reverence become a yakkha?”
“No, brahmin, I shall not become a yakkha.”
“Then will your reverence become a human beings?”
“No, brahmin, I shall not become a human being.”
“Now when I asked whether your reverence will become a deva or a gandhabba or a yakkha or a human being, you replied, ‘I shall not.’ What, then, will your reverence become?”
“Brahmin, those taints whereby, if they were not abandoned, I might become a deva – these taints are abandoned by me, cut off at the root, made barren like palm-tree stumps, obliterated so that they are no more subject to arise in the future.
“Those taints whereby, if they were not abandoned, I might become a gandhabba, a yakkha or a human being – these taints are abandoned by me, cut off at the root, made barren like palm-tree stumps, obliterated so that they are no more subject to arise in the future.
“Just as, a blue, red or white lotus, though born and grown in the water, rises up and stands unsoiled by the water, so, brahmin, though born and grown in the world, I have overcome the world and dwell unsoiled by the world. Consider me, O Brahmin, a Buddha.”
Numerical Discourses of the Buddha
An anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikāya
Selected and translated from the Pāli by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi
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