A Dhamma Speaker

Linked Discourses 12.16

2. Fuel

A Dhamma Speaker

At Sāvatthī.

Then a mendicant went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and said to him:

“Sir, they speak of a ‘Dhamma speaker’.

How is a Dhamma speaker defined?”

“If a mendicant teaches Dhamma for disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding old age and death, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who speaks on Dhamma’.

If they practice for disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding old age and death, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who practices in line with the teaching’.

If they’re freed by not grasping, by disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding old age and death, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who has attained extinguishment in this very life’.

If a mendicant teaches Dhamma for disillusionment regarding rebirth …

continued existence …

grasping …

craving …

feeling …

contact …

the six sense fields …

name and form …

consciousness …

choices …

If a mendicant teaches Dhamma for disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding ignorance, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who speaks on Dhamma’.

If they practice for disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding ignorance, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who practices in line with the teaching’.

If they’re freed by not grasping, by disillusionment, dispassion, and cessation regarding ignorance, they’re qualified to be called ‘a mendicant who has attained extinguishment in this very life’.”