The Fire Sermon
The Teaching
Monks, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?
The eye is burning. Forms are burning. Eye-consciousness is burning. Eye-contact is burning.
Burning with what? Burning with the fire of passion, with the fire of aversion, with the fire of delusion. Burning, I tell you, with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.
Seeing this, the well-instructed disciple grows disenchanted. Being disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is released.
Commentary
The Buddha's Fire Sermon diagnoses the human condition: the three fires of passion (raga), aversion (dvesha), and delusion (moha) are the same as the Gita's three qualities in their distorted form.
The Stoics identified the same three in their language: desire, aversion, and false judgment. Epictetus' entire teaching is structured around the same diagnosis.
Rumi's Song of the Reed is the same fire from the other direction, the fire of separation-longing that burns as spiritual catalyst rather than spiritual trap. The same burning, read two ways: as suffering to be released, or as the ache of the divine for reunion with itself.