A lay person is puzzled at how, despite their long practice, they still have greedy or hateful thoughts. The Buddha explains the importance of absorption meditation for letting go such attachments. But he also criticizes self-mortification, and recounts a previous dialog with Jain ascetics.

A disrobed monk, Sunakkhata, attacks the Buddha’s teaching because it merely leads to the end of suffering. The Buddha counters that this is, in fact, praise, and goes on to enumerate his many profound and powerful achievements.

The Buddha declares that only those following his path can genuinely experience the four stages of awakening. This is because, while much is shared with other systems, none of them go so far as to fully reject all attachment to the idea of a self.

The Satipaṭṭhāna sutta is a most highly revered sutta setting out mindfulness as the one way to overcome suffering.

The Buddha sets out in clear terms the four contemplations that constitute “establishing mindfulness” watching the body, feeling, mind and qualities. The sutta closes with an extended statement on the result of establishing mindfulness – enlightenment or something very close to enlightenment.

In this sutta the Venerable Sāriputta explains how right view can be understood in a number of different ways.

The Buddha differentiates between peaceful meditation and spiritual practices that encompass the whole of life. He lists forty-four aspects, which he explains as “effacement”, the wearing away of conceit.

"Dirty stained cloth takes dye badly, like a dirty stained mind takes one to low states of birth full of suffering. New cloth well washed, on the other hand takes dye well, likewise when a pure mind when good rebirth can be expected. What are the dirt and stains of the mind? Things we know well like covetousness and unrighteous greed, ill will, anger, revenge and so on – these are our stained and dirty states on mind. Getting to know them is good for then they are seen as a source of trouble (dukkha) and so more easily abandoned. As one practises Dhamma and sees for oneself that the defilements are becoming steadily less powerful so one gains strong faith in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. One’s insight eventually reaches to the Noble Paths and Fruits when that faith becomes unshakeable. The Discourse goes on to show how after practising the Divine Abidings (in which one lives like Brahma or God), one then should aspire to Arahantship and attain Nībbāna. No doubt the Buddha was aware that a divine (brahmin) sitting nearby was interested in his discourse as well as being a spiritually capable person, hence his mention of the Divine (Brahma) Abidings. The brahmin’s interest was indeed aroused and he asked whether the Buddha went to bathe his sins away in the supposedly holy river Bahukā. This question has caused the splendid flow of the Buddha’s reply in verse. This ability to speak impromptu verse was much esteemed by the brahmins and it seems as though this and the straightforward content of their teaching reached to that Brahmin’s heart so that he said. “Magnificant, Master Gotama … And the venerable Bhāradvāja became one of the Arahants”. © Nyanamoli Bhikkhu , A Treasury of the Buddha's Discourses

In this discourse the Buddha teaches how, by keeping the precepts, devotion to internal serenity of mind, meditation, insight and seclusion various wishes can be obtained.

The Buddha’s chief disciples, Sāriputta and Moggallāna, use a simile of a tarnished bowl to illustrate the blemishes of the mind and conduct. They emphasize how the crucial thing is not so much whether there are blemishes, but whether we are aware of them.