And not long after Citta Hatthisāriputta shaved off his hair and beard, dressed in ocher robes, and went forth from the lay life to homelessness. Then Citta Hatthisāriputta, living alone, withdrawn, diligent, keen, and resolute, soon realized the supreme culmination of the spiritual path in this very life. He lived having achieved with his own insight the goal for which gentlemen rightly go forth from the lay life to homelessness.
He understood: “Rebirth is ended; the spiritual journey has been completed; what had to be done has been done; there is nothing further for this place.” And Venerable Citta Hatthisāriputta became one of the perfected.
Numbered Discourses 6.61 6. The Great Chapter In the Middle
So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Varanasi in the deer park at Isipatana.
Now at that time, after the meal, on return from almsround, several senior mendicants sat together in the pavilion and this discussion came up among them, “Reverends, this was said by the Buddha in ‘The Way to the Far Shore’, in ‘The Questions of Metteyya’:
‘The thoughtful one, knowing both ends,
is not stuck in the middle.
He is a great man, I declare;
he has escaped the seamstress here.’
But what is one end? What’s the second end? What’s the middle? And who is the seamstress?” When this was said, one of the mendicants said to the senior mendicants: