binocular wrote:I don't see how the second part of the Patoda Sutta fits with the first one.
Each part per se makes sense to me, but the comparison eludes me.
There's seeing the hint of a goad-stick, and there's feeling the goad-stick to lesser, middling, and greater amounts. These are the four cases in which a horse, having experienced the goad-stick to one of these degrees, ends up in a state where they are amenable to the training.
So, hearing about pain & death is a goad-stick's shadow. The lesser, middling, and greater aspects are seeing the pain & death of any body, the body of a close relation, or one's own body. In each case the increasing discomfort of the goad-stick (to wit, awareness of mortality, etc.) is made more and more salient, more and more direct.
In each case, one who is motivated such that they are
"stirred & agitated by that. Stirred, he becomes appropriately resolute. Resolute, he both realizes with his body the highest truth and, having penetrated it with discernment, sees" is an excellent thoroughbred.