Attadiipaa Sutta (A Lamp to Oneself) | From the Buddhist Tradition

Harvard Divinity School

From the Buddhist Tradition | Attadiipaa Sutta (A Lamp to Oneself) Read by Liem Nguyen, MDiv II Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life. The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s TRANSCRIPT: Monks, be a lamp unto yourselves, be your own refuge, having no other; let the Dhamma be a lamp and a refuge to you, having no other. Those who are lamps unto themselves... should investigate to the very heart of things: ‘What is the source of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair? How do they arise?’  Here, monks, the uninstructed worldling. Change occurs in this man's body, and it becomes different. On account of this change and difference, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair arise.  But seeing the body’s impermanence, its change-ability, its waning, its ceasing, he says ‘formerly as now, all bodies were impermanent and unsatisfactory, and subject to change.’ Thus, seeing this as it really is, with perfect insight, he abandons all sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. He is not worried at their abandonment, but unworried lives at ease, and thus living at ease he is said to be ‘assuredly delivered.’