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Thera lives alone

Thus have I heard, once, the Buddha was staying at Sāvatthī at the Jeta Grove in the Anāthapiṇḍika Park.

At that time there was a monk called Thera, who lived alone, and praised living alone. At one time some monks went to the Buddha, paid homage to his feet, sat to one side, and told the Buddha: ‘World-honored One! This monk Thera praises living alone, wandering alone, sitting alone’. There the Buddha told the monks: ‘Call this monk Thera’. There one monk went to Thera’s place and said to him: ‘The World-honored One calls you!’. Having received the summons, monk Thera went to the Buddha, paid homage to his feet, and sat to one side. The Buddha said to Thera: ‘Do you really live alone and praise sitting and walking alone?’. Thera answered the Buddha: ‘It is true, World-honored One’. There the Buddha said: ‘How, now, do you enjoy living alone, how do you praise it?’. And Thera said: ‘World-honored One! Alone I enter the villages [for the alms-round], alone I leave them, alone I sit [in meditation]’. There the Buddha said to him: ‘There is a way of living alone, which is even better than yours. What is this way? [In whom the residue of] past desire has dried up , future desire will not arise, and present desire does not create [karmic formations]. [Such a person] is called a brāhmaṇa. Without ‘me’ and ‘mine’, he has cut though the fetters of doubt, keeping great distance from the sensual, he has extinguished his defilements’.

At that time the Buddha said a verse:

All the worlds / I know them all.//
Letting go of every thing / ending the fetter of attachment,//
this is the victorious teaching / called living alone.//

When the Buddha had finished, the monks, having listened to what he had said, were happy and practised accordingly.

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