The venerable Sāriputta delivers a comprehensive exposition on “Right View,” detailing sixteen ways a noble disciple achieves clarity in the Dhamma. By understanding the wholesome and unwholesome, nutriments, the Four Noble Truths, dependent origination, and the taints—including their arising and cessation—a disciple abandons underlying tendencies and realizes the end of suffering.

When venerable Ānanda inquires about the Buddha’s frequent abiding in emptiness, the Blessed One describes a gradual progression of abidings in ever-stiller perceptions, each seen as empty of what is absent while discerning what still remains, culminating in the unsurpassed abiding in emptiness.

Though understanding impermanence and not-self, venerable Channa anxiously struggles to accept Nibbāna, wondering, “Who is my self?” Venerable Ānanda shares the Buddha’s teaching on avoiding the extremes of existence and non-existence, leading Channa to completely breakthrough to the Dhamma.

The Buddha explains how four modes of social partiality—affection and aversion arising in relation to others—bind beings to the world. He shows how a bhikkhu transcends these entanglements by means of the jhānas and attains final liberation through uprooting the deep-seated conceits of self-making.

The Buddha explains that ignorance regarding the six sense fields fuels infatuation, craving, and the five aggregates, leading to distress. Conversely, knowing and seeing the senses truly abandons craving and fulfills the Noble Eightfold Path. By coupling tranquility with penetrative vision, the practitioner comprehends the aggregates, abandons ignorance, and realizes true knowledge and liberation.

The Buddha deconstructs speculative views about the past and future, revealing them as forms of clinging. He exposes subtle attachments within even exalted meditative states, showing that all conditioned experiences are unstable. True liberation lies not in constructed peace, but in non-clinging through full understanding of the six sense bases.

The Buddha explains the cause for the restraint of all the taints and how there is abandoning of all the taints through the seven methods of seeing, restraint, proper use, enduring, avoiding, dispelling, and cultivation.

Overcome by two kinds of wrong views, some get stuck, while others overreach. But those with vision see.

A series of questions and answers between the lay follower Visākha and bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā that clarify subtle yet important aspects of the teachings. Topics covered include personal existence, Noble Eightfold Path, intentional constructs, attainment of cessation of perception and what is felt, felt experience, underlying tendencies and various counterparts.

The Buddha describes the three quests of sensual pleasure, renewed existence, and spiritual life.

The Buddha describes the three quests of sensual pleasure, renewed existence, and spiritual life as the result of holding tight to the thought ‘This is the truth’ and the accumulation of bases for views.

The Buddha describes the three taints - the taint of sensual desire, the taint of becoming, and the taint of ignorance, and the way of practice leading to their cessation.

The Buddha describes the three taints - the taint of sensual desire, the taint of becoming, and the taint of ignorance, and the one who is free from them.

The Buddha describes the three kinds of craving - 1.) craving for sensual pleasures, 2.) craving for existence, and 3.) craving for non-becoming.

The Buddha shares the three unwholesome thoughts - 1) concerning one’s reputation, 2) concerning acquisitions, respect, and popularity, and 3) associated with inappropriate concern for others.

The Buddha explains how Devadatta, overcome by evil desires, bad friendship, and abandoning the training, arrived at a state of prolonged suffering. Though once esteemed, his envy led to ruin. The wise should associate with those whose path leads to the end of suffering.

The Buddha classifies beings according to their attachment or detachment from sensual pleasures and conditioned existence. Those entangled in both are returners; those detached from sensual pleasures but still bound to existence are non-returners; and those freed from both are arahants who have ended the taints.

The Buddha explains how anxiety arises through clinging and how there is freedom from anxiety through non-clinging.

Imprisoned by the aggregates, the uninstructed ordinary person does not see the near shore or the far shore, grows old in bondage, dies in bondage, and passes from this world to the next still bound.

The Buddha answers step-by-step to a series of questions starting with the source of quarrels and disputes, followed by the arising of various things such as hopes, aims, desires, possessions; leading all the way to the description of the ultimate purity of the spirit.

Among those entrenched in views, arguing “This alone is truth,” the Buddha calls praise won by such to be a small matter. Seeing safety in the ground of non-dispute, the wise do not seek purity by precepts and vows or by what is seen, heard, or sensed. The sage ends craving for various states of existence and stands equanimous.

The venerable Dhotaka asks the Buddha to free him from doubt and teach the principle of peace. The Buddha explains that liberation cannot be bestowed by another but arises from directly knowing the Dhamma. He instructs Dhotaka to see even the act of knowing as a ‘sticking point’ in the world, and to abandon craving for any state of existence.

When approached with abundant offerings, the Buddha expresses a heartfelt wish to avoid fame, and speaks of five contemplations which result in being established in dispassion and wisdom.

After his full awakening, the Buddha surveys the world, seeing beings aflame with passion, aversion, and delusion. He reflects on the nature of the world and the suffering inherent in existence. By seeing the world as it truly is, he points to the path of liberation.