Mendicants, there are these two views: views favoring existence and views favoring nonexistence. Any ascetics or brahmins who resort to, draw near to, and cling to a view favoring existence will oppose a view favoring nonexistence. Any ascetics or brahmins who resort to, draw near to, and cling to a view favoring nonexistence will oppose a view favoring existence.

There are some ascetics and brahmins who don’t truly understand these two views’ origin, disappearance, gratification, drawback, and escape. They’re greedy, hateful, delusional, craving, grasping, and ignorant. They favor and oppose, and they enjoy proliferation. They’re not freed from rebirth, old age, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They’re not freed from suffering, I say.

There are some ascetics and brahmins who do truly understand these two views’ origin, disappearance, gratification, drawback, and escape. They’re rid of greed, hate, delusion, craving, grasping, and ignorance. They don’t favor and oppose, and they enjoy non-proliferation. They’re freed from rebirth, old age, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They’re freed from suffering, I say.

There are these four kinds of grasping. What four? Grasping at sensual pleasures, views, precepts and observances, and theories of a self.

There are some ascetics and brahmins who claim to propound the complete understanding of all kinds of grasping. But they don’t correctly describe the complete understanding of all kinds of grasping. They describe the complete understanding of grasping at sensual pleasures, but not views, precepts and observances, and theories of a self. Why is that? Because those gentlemen don’t truly understand these three things. That’s why they claim to propound the complete understanding of all kinds of grasping, but they don’t really.