From the Canon: The Visible Teaching

Once a wandering ascetic, Moliya Sivaka, addressed the Blessed One as follows:

“It is said, venerable sir, ‘The dhamma is directly visible.’ In what way, venerable sir, is the dhamma directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, worthy of application, to be personally experienced by the wise?”

“Well, Sivaka, I shall in return question you about this. You may answer as you see fit.

“What do you think, Sivaka: when there is greed in you, will you know, ‘There is greed in me’? And when there is no greed in you, will you know, ‘There is no greed in me’?” — “Yes, venerable sir, I shall know.”

“If you thus know of the greed present in you that it is there; and when greed is absent that it is absent—that is a way the dhamma is directly visible.

“In this way, Sivaka, the dhamma is directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, worthy of application, to be personally experienced by the wise.”

♦

From Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: An Anthology of Suttas from the Anguttara Nikaya, translated and edited by Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi, © 2010. Reprinted with permission of Yale University Press.