The Word of the Buddha Insight

¶ 2When this was said: ‘I declare the wearing away of the taints dependent on the first jhana,’ with reference to what was this said? Here a bhikkhu, secluded from sensual pleasures ... [and so on] ... enters and dwells in the first jhana. In this state, he perceives whatever phenomena are present—whether form, feeling, perception, intentional constructs, or consciousness—as impermanent, unsatisfactory, a disease, a boil, a dart, misery, an affliction, alien, disintegrating, empty, and not-self. He turns his mind away from these phenomena. Having turned his mind away, he directs it towards the deathless element, reflecting: ‘This is peaceful, this is sublime, namely the stilling of all intentional constructs, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the wearing away of craving, the fading of desire, cessation, Nibbāna.’ If he is steady in that state, he attains the complete wearing away of the taints. But if he does not attain the complete wearing away of the taints because of that desire for the Dhamma, that delight in the Dhamma, then, with the wearing away of the five lower fetters, he becomes one due to reappear spontaneously [either in the Brahma world or in the Pure Abodes], and there he will attain final Nibbāna without ever returning from that world.