“Yes, reverend,” those senior mendicants replied. Then those senior mendicants went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and informed the Buddha of all they had discussed. They asked, “Sir, who has spoken well?”

“Mendicants, you’ve all spoken well in a way. However, this is what I was referring to in ‘The Way to the Far Shore’, in ‘The Questions of Metteyya’ when I said:

‘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.’

Listen and apply your mind well, I will speak.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied. The Buddha said this:

“Contact, mendicants, is one end. The origin of contact is the second end. The cessation of contact is the middle. And craving is the seamstress, for craving weaves one to being regenerated in one state of existence or another. That’s how a mendicant directly knows what should be directly known and completely understands what should be completely understood. Knowing and understanding thus they make an end of suffering in this very life.”

Numbered Discourses 6.62 6. The Great Chapter Knowledge of the Faculties of Persons