[Patacara recalls the Buddha's words:]
"You don't know
the path
of his coming or going,
that being who has come
from where? —
the one you lament as 'my son.'But when you know
the path
of his coming or going,
you don't grieve after him,
for that is the nature
of beings.Unasked,
he came from there.
Without permission,
he went from here —
coming from where?
having stayed a few days.And coming one way from here,
he goes yet another
from there.
Dying in the human form,
he will go wandering on.
As he came, so he has gone —
so what is there
to lament?"Pulling out
—completely out —
the arrow so hard to see,
embedded in my heart,
he expelled from me
—overcome with grief —
the grief
over my son.Today — with arrow removed,
without hunger, entirely
Unbound —
to the Buddha, Dhamma, & Sangha I go,
for refuge to
the Sage.
thig.6.1 Therigatha
Patacara's 500 Students
- Translator: Thanissaro Bhikkhu
- Editor: Ayya Kathrin Vimalañāṇī
Paṭācārā, Who Had a Following of Five Hundred
“One whose path you do not know,not whence they came nor where they went;
though they came from who knows where,
you mourn that being, crying, ‘Oh my son!’
But one whose path you do know,
whence they came or where they went;
that one you do not lament—
such is the nature of living creatures.
Unasked he came,
he left without leave.
He must have come from somewhere,
and stayed who knows how many days.
He left from here by one road,
he will go from there by another.
Departing with the form of a human,
he will go on transmigrating.
As he came, so he went:
why cry over that?”
“Oh! For you have plucked the arrow from me,
so hard to see, stuck in the heart.
You’ve swept away the grief for my son,
in which I once was mired.
Today I’ve plucked the arrow,
I’m hungerless, extinguished.
I go for refuge to that sage, the Buddha,
to his teaching, and to the Sangha.”
That is how Paṭācārā, who had a following of five hundred, declared her enlightenment.