The Buddha provides a detailed analysis of the six sense bases, differentiating worldly feelings based on attachment from those born of renunciation and insight. He outlines a progressive path of abandoning lower states for higher ones, guiding practitioners through refined meditative states toward complete liberation.

Can seeing the pure in another purify one still bound by attachments? A sage’s purity is not found through another, nor through what is seen, heard, or sensed. While the attached mind swings like a monkey from branch to branch, the wise one, having relinquished all grasping, abides unbound.

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.

Upon learning that he was not awakened, Bāhiya travels a great distance to seek the Buddha. Upon arriving, he sees the Buddha on alms round and begs for urgent instruction despite the hour. The Buddha gives him a terse training to see only the seen, heard, sensed, and cognized—without clinging. Bāhiya realizes the Dhamma immediately, only to be killed by a charging cow shortly after. The Buddha declares his attainment and honors him.