About this passageA discourse from the collection on feeling. The Buddha opens by asking what separates a trained disciple from an untrained person, given that both feel pleasure and pain alike — the answer is not that one of them stops hurting. The simile of the second arrow distinguishes the physical sensation from the reaction that follows it, and the discourse goes on to describe the untrained person reaching for pleasure as the only exit they know from pain.
"Mendicants, an unlearned ordinary person feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. A learned noble disciple also feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings. What, then, is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an ordinary unlearned person?"
"When an unlearned ordinary person experiences painful physical feelings they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience two feelings: physical and mental.
It's like a person who is struck with an arrow, only to be struck with a second arrow. That person experiences the feeling of two arrows.
In the same way, when an unlearned ordinary person experiences painful physical feelings they sorrow and wail and lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience two feelings: physical and mental.
When a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don't sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental."
In plainer words
Everyone feels pain — trained or untrained, it hurts the same. So what is the difference? When an untrained person is hurt, they also panic, grieve and spiral about it. That is two separate pains: the one in the body and the one in the mind. It is like being shot with an arrow and then shot with a second arrow. Someone who has practised feels the first arrow and not the second. One pain instead of two. The hurt does not go away — the extra layer does.
A restatement in modern English, written for this collection. The passage above is the text; this is one way of putting it.