Iti 41
Itivuttaka: The Group of Twos
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
This was said by the Blessed One, said by the Arahant, so I have heard: "Those beings are truly deprived who are deprived of noble discernment. They live in stress in the present life troubled, distressed, & feverish and at the break-up of the body, after death, a bad destination can be expected.
"Those beings are not deprived who are not deprived of noble discernment. They live in ease in the present life untroubled, undistressed, & not feverish and at the break-up of the body, after death, a good destination can be expected.
Look at the world including its heavenly beings: deprived of discernment, making an abode in name-&-form, it conceives that 'This is the truth.' The best discernment in the world is what leads to penetration, for it rightly discerns the total ending of birth & becoming.
Human & heavenly beings hold them dear: those who are self-awakened, mindful, bearing their last bodies with joyful discernment.