Saṃyuktāgama

154. [Discourse on the View of the Inefficacy of Offerings]

Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying at Sāvatthī in Jeta's Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika's Park.

At that time the Blessed One said to the monks: “The existence of what is the cause, by clinging to what, by being fettered and attached to what, by seeing what as the self, do living beings have a view like this and speak like this: 'There is no [efficacy in] offerings, there is no [efficacy] in sacrifices, there is no [efficacy] in recitations, there is no arising in good realms or arising in bad realms as the result of deeds, there is neither this world nor another world, there is no [obligation towards] one's mother, there is no [obligation towards] one's father, there are no [spontaneously arisen] living beings, there are no arahants in this world who have rightly arrived and rightly advanced who, knowing themselves this world and that world in the present are fully established in the personal realization that 'birth for me has been eradicated, the holy life has been established, what had to be done has been done, I myself know that there will be no receiving of any further existence?'”

The monks said to the Buddha: “The Blessed One is the root of the Dharma, the eye of the Dharma, the foundation of the Dharma …” to be recited fully in the same way in the sequence of the above three discourses.