Maraṇasati Sutta (AN 6.19, opening)

The Aṅguttara Nikāya 6.19 opens with the Buddha at Sāvatthī addressing a group of monks. The opening declaration that follows establishes the basic framing of maraṇa-sati's cultivation — its fruit, its benefit, and its terminus — before the discourse proceeds to specific instruction on how the practice should be sustained.

Sāvatthinidānaṃ. Tatra kho bhagavā bhikkhū āmantesi: "Maraṇassati, bhikkhave, bhāvitā bahulīkatā mahapphalā hoti mahānisaṃsā amatogadhā amatapariyosānā."

— Aṅguttara Nikāya 6.19, opening. Pāli text from the Sixth Council edition (1956). The Pāli original is in the public domain.

[Editorial paraphrase] At Sāvatthī. There the Blessed One addressed the monks: "Death-recollection, monks, when developed and cultivated, is of great fruit, of great benefit; it merges into the deathless, terminates in the deathless."

— Editorial paraphrase by ATLAS stewardship. Established translations by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Bhikkhu Bodhi, and others render the passage with variation in the choice of "deathless" (amata) and in the rendering of bhāvitā bahulīkatā; readers seeking translation depth should consult those.

Notes

The closing phrases — amatogadhā amatapariyosānā — are notable. Amata means "deathless" (the privative of mata, "dead") and is one of the standard terms for nibbāna in the canonical literature. The declaration that death-recollection "merges into the deathless" and "ends in the deathless" makes a structural claim that connects the practice's beginning (attending to mortality) to its ultimate horizon (the unconditioned). The connection is internal to the Buddhist soteriological frame and does not transfer cleanly to other traditions' engagements with death-attention; the architecture preserves the connection without claiming it generalizes.

The editorial paraphrase here is offered transparently as such. It is not a claim to scholarly translation but a rendering for the reader who does not read Pāli. Readers seeking serious engagement should consult the established translations (Thanissaro, Bhikkhu Bodhi, the Pali Text Society edition) which themselves vary in how they handle the technical vocabulary.