What power has this insight, “Whatever is arising, in every respect it is ceasing”? Let’s start with why I didn’t translate “‘yaṃ kiñci samudaya·dhammaṃ, sabbaṃ taṃ nirodha·dhamma” in the usual way; that is, as: ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing’?

That way of saying this deep matter is not incorrect; and if we dwell on it, it will point to the same point as I am emphasising here, that’s true. However, it can be, and is often, read to mean something like: “What is here now, won’t be here for long. What is here today, isn’t here tomorrow.” Do you see that? Did you, too, read serial time into that line, ‘All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing’?

Let’s face it, that approach isn’t earth-shattering news to an adult; though, it is to a five-year old, as we have noted elsewhere. It’s not the kind of realisation that awakens a tathāgata. (Given the enormous creativity of the Kosmos, I imagine that for someone, somewhere, sometime, it might cause a revolution at the seat of consciousness, though.) One translation that I’ve seen – which didn’t include the translator’s name, so I can’t acknowledge her or him – says it well, with: “’All that has the nature of arising has the nature of ceasing.” However, this is still not clear enough, for me.

The standard translations run the risk of presenting only a first level of access to Buddhadharma, because they invite serial time. Folk wisdom can give us this access. ‘This’ – our actuality –requires an appropriate response, something more radical than beautiful folk wisdom. And, for the change of heart needed in our times, we, too, need something more radical than that.

What Kondañña is announcing is truly fresh news. This, if seen steadily, dependably, able to be checked and re-checked, this insight is only seen rarely in the world. Which is totally tragic, because if the actual insight (waking up) were the basis of our culture – combined with appropriate horizontal cultivation (growing up) – we would live in a vastly kinder, and joyful world.

This realisation opens the Heavens, and the ripples flow out:

“And with this teaching, the stainless, dust-free vision arose in Kondañña: “Whatever is arising, in every respect it is ceasing.”

Upon the flourishing one conveying the nature of reality, the earth-devas exclaimed with one voice, “The incomparable nature of reality has been conveyed by the flourishing one at Isipatana, the deer sanctuary near Benares, and no recluse, brahmin, deva, māra, brahma, or other being in the world can hinder it.”

The lowest-heaven devas, having heard what the earth-devas said, exclaimed with one voice, “The incomparable nature of reality has been conveyed by the flourishing one at Isipatana, the deer sanctuary near Benares, and no recluse, brahmin, deva, māra, brahma, or other being in the world can hinder it.”

This utterance was echoed and re-echoed in the upper realms, and from lowest-heaven it was proclaimed in the second deva realm, [where Sakka rules], and then to Yama, and then to fourth deva realm, Tusita, and then up to the fifth deva realm, and on to the Beyond Signs realm.

The devas in the company of Brahma, having heard what the Beyond Signs devas said, proclaimed in one voice, “The incomparable nature of reality has been conveyed by the flourishing one at Isipatana, the deer sanctuary near Benares, and no recluse, brahmin, deva, māra, brahma, or other being in the world can hinder it.”

So it was, in a moment, an instant, a flash, that knowledge of the transmission of the nature of reality travelled up to the world of Brahma, and the ten thousand worlds system trembled, quaked and shook.

A boundless, sublime radiance, surpassing the power of devas, appeared on earth.“

Everything about this episode tells me that Kondañña’s fresh, present-centred understanding is highly significant; that is, the Nikāya text is very vocal in saying, “Look at this. Don’t underestimate this!”

Of course, it would be instantaneous – a flash. Recent experiments in the Netherlands have confirmed that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behaviour. Your realisation changes the world.

However, our myth plays with ordinary time. It’s that kind of Kosmos, where all dimensions co-exist.

May we fully realise a tathāgata’s meaning.