The Hostile-Minded

Some speak with hostile minds.

Others speak, certain they're right.

The sage doesn't enter the dispute that arises —

the sage holds no ground anywhere.

How does anyone get past their own view —

pulled by desire, entrenched in preference?

Building their own absolutes,

they speak from what they think they know.

Whoever, unasked, broadcasts to others

their own precepts and vows —

the skilled call this not the noble way:

proclaiming oneself, unprompted.

But a peaceful monk, fully cooled,

not boasting "this is me" about their precepts —

this the skilled call a noble way:

one with no pretensions anywhere in the world.

Whose teachings are fabricated and assembled,

put forward, unclean —

seeing the advantage for themselves,

they rely on a peace conditioned on the unstable.

Attachments to views — hard to get past.

Having decided among teachings, one grabs hold.

So a person, in these positions,

rejects, and takes up, a teaching.

For the cleansed one, nowhere in the world

is there a constructed view about more and more existence.

Having let go of deceit and conceit,

where would the cleansed one go? — they're uninvolved.

One involved gets caught in disputes about teachings.

What could anyone say to the uninvolved, or how?

For them, nothing is taken up, nothing put down.

They have shaken off all views — right here.