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92
THE QUESTIONS AND PUZZLES
IV, 7, 1.
Book IV. CHAPTER 7.
[DILEMMA THE SIXTY-FIRST.
THE OBSTACLES.] 1. 'Venerable Nâgasena, the Blessed One said :
" Live, O brethren, devoted to and taking delight in that which has no Papañkas (none of those states of mind which delay or obstruct a man in his spiritual growth ?)."
What is that which has no Papañkas?' *The fruit of Conversion has no Papañkas, O king, the fruit of that stage of the Path in which those live who will be only once, or not all reborn, the fruit of Arahatship has no Papañkas.'
But if that be so, Nagasena, [283] then why do the brethren concern themselves with recitation of, with asking questions about the discourses, and the pieces in mixed prose and verse, and the expositions, and the poems, and the outbursts of emotion, and the passages beginning “ Thus he said," and the birth-stories, and the tales of wonder, and the extended treatises ?? Why do they trouble themselves about new buildings 3, about gifts and offerings to the Order ?'
1 This passage has not yet been traced in the Pitakas.
. These are the well-known na vangani, the nine divisions into which the Scriptures are divided. See Magghima Nikâya I, 133 ; Anguttara Nikaya IV, 6, &c.
s Navakammena palibugghanti. The Simhalese adds khanda-phulla-patisamkharanayen, 'repairing dilapidations.
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