Majjhima / Majjhimanikāya / Uparipaṇṇāsa

At Devadaha

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying in the land of the Sakyans, near the Sakyan town named Devadaha. There the Buddha addressed the mendicants, “Mendicants!”

“Venerable sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Mendicants, there are some ascetics and brahmins who have this doctrine and view: ‘Everything this individual person experiences—pleasurable, painful, or neutral—is because of past deeds. So, due to eliminating past deeds by fervent mortification, and not doing any new deeds, there’s nothing to come up in the future. With no future consequence, deeds end. With the ending of deeds, suffering ends. With the ending of suffering, feeling ends. And with the ending of feeling, all suffering will have been worn away.’ Such is the doctrine of the Jain ascetics.