Purity

"I see purity — the supreme, disease-free.

Through what is seen, a person becomes pure."

Knowing this directly, recognizing it as supreme,

"I am a seer of purity" — they fall back on knowledge.

If purity came to a person through what is seen,

or if by knowledge one abandoned suffering,

then one with attachments would be purified by another —

their view gives them away as they speak.

The true brahmin doesn't say purity comes from another —

not by belief, tradition, practice, or reasoning.

Unstained by good or evil,

having let go of what was taken up, fashioning nothing here.

Letting go of the old, depending on the new,

driven by craving, they don't cross the tangle.

They take up and let go,

like a monkey grabbing a branch as it releases another.

Having taken on vows of their own,

a person goes from one to another, stuck on perceptions.

But the wise one, master of true knowledge, has understood the way —

they don't go from one to another, vast in wisdom.

Unaffiliated with all teachings —

whatever belief, tradition, or reasoning —

seeing them just as they are, walking openly:

what could the world call them?

They construct nothing, prefer nothing.

They don't claim "this is the ultimate purity."

Loosening the tight knot of grasping,

they want nothing anywhere in the world.

The brahmin who has gone beyond the boundary —

nothing is tightly grasped, in knowing or in seeing.

Not in love with passion, not in love with dispassion —

they hold nothing here as supreme.