Octad on The Ultimate (Snp 4.5)
Here is my translation of Sutta Nipāta 4.5:
Dwelling in a view they call "the highest view"--
A view that they grasped as highest in the world--
They compare and crow: "All your views are lesser!"
They're trapped in dispute; not gone beyond debate.
What they see as more advantageous to them
Through seeing, hearing, vows and virtue, a thought--
Through that very thing they cling so tightly to
All other things seem lesser in their view.
Clinging to that knot, relying on that view
They deem others low, so say the skillful ones
Bhikkhus should not lean on these things as support:
On seeing, hearing, vows and virtue, a thought.
Nor even build up any view in the world--
Built up through conduct, even built up through gnosis--
Nor compare themselves as "I am an equal".
Nor think themselves worse, nor as superior.
Giving up the grasped and grasping no further
They do not depend upon their own gnosis
Among the factions, they take no position
To any clung view, they will never return
Not inclining to either of the extremes
Of this world or next, of bhāva or its converse
They have no dwellings, no attachments at all
To dhammas that could be grasped through deciding.
Built-up perceptions of what's seen, heard, or thought
None are constructed, not even the slightest.
By not taking up any constructed view
By what in this world could one classify those?
They do not build up, they do not put forward.
They do not take up even views of dhamma
No longer led by even their virtue fine
Now on the far shore, those Brahmins don't return