Just as one upon the summit of a mountain beholds the groundlings, even so when the wise man casts away heedlessness by heedfulness and ascends the high tower of wisdom, this sorrowless sage beholds the sorrowing and foolish multitude.

The image is the highest in the chapter. The wise person has climbed the paññāpāsāda — the tower of wisdom — and looks down at the world from a height. The verse risks sounding aloof, and traditional commentary has long had to address that risk. What the Buddha means, the tradition has held, is not contempt for the world below but a different position from which to see it. Sorrow looks from sorrow as suffering. Sorrow looks from wisdom as the human condition. The same scene is read by a different observer.