Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Good friends and good habits are what make skillful qualities grow; losing relatives, money, or standing is a small matter next to losing wisdom, and gaining them is a small matter next to growing in it.
Good friendship as a technical term
Kalyāṇamittatā is not simply having pleasant company. A kalyāṇamitta is an admirable or beautiful friend — someone whose conduct, values, and practice make them worth being near, and whose influence works on a person over time without either party treating it as instruction. The canon treats this as a causal factor, not a sentiment. This chapter says it is the single thing that most reliably makes skillful qualities arise and unskillful ones fall away.
Elsewhere the claim goes further still. When Ānanda suggests that good friendship is half of the spiritual life, the Buddha corrects him: it is the whole of it. That correction is worth having ready, because the version of Buddhism that reaches most Western readers first is an individualist one — a solitary practitioner, a cushion, a technique — and this chapter is one of the places the canon is least compatible with that picture.
Habits, and what “pursuing” means
AN 1.72–73 turn on anuyoga: applying oneself to something, going after it repeatedly. What is pursued is kusalā or akusalā dhammā — skillful or unskillful qualities, which Sujato here renders “habits” to keep the sentence readable.
The pairing with friendship in the same breath is not incidental. Company and habit are the two factors on the whole list that operate below the level of decision. Nobody chooses, each morning, to be shaped by the people around them or by what they did yesterday; both happen anyway. What the chapter offers is not a way to escape that mechanism but a way to point it somewhere.
Feeding the awakening factors (AN 1.74–75)
Two entries apply the familiar template to the seven awakening factors (bojjhaṅga): mindfulness, investigation of principles, energy, rapture, tranquility, immersion, and equanimity. Irrational application of mind keeps them from arising and from reaching full development; rational application of mind does the reverse.
This is the same hinge that AN 1.15 and 1.20 used for doubt, now applied at the other end of the scale. Attention is the factor the collection keeps returning to because it is the one that operates on everything else. It is worth noting how much weight is being put on something so unglamorous: not a special state, not a technique, simply where and how the mind is applied.
The six entries on wisdom (AN 1.76–81)
The chapter closes with three matched pairs, each following the same shape. Loss of relatives is a small thing; wisdom is the worst thing to lose. Growth of relatives is a small thing; wisdom is the best thing to grow — so you should train like this: we will grow in wisdom. Then the same for wealth, and the same for fame.
The word rendered “a small thing” is appamattikā, slight or trifling. It is important to hear what is and is not being said. The passage does not say these losses do not hurt, or that grief over a family is a spiritual failure, or that poverty is not hard. It says they are small by comparison — and it establishes that comparison by putting all three on the same list, which is itself a claim: bereavement, ruin, and disgrace, the three catastrophes an ancient Indian audience would have named first, belong to one category, and wisdom belongs to another.
The pairs are also asymmetrical in a way worth pointing out. Only the growth entries carry the training instruction. The Buddha does not tell anyone to train in not losing wisdom; he tells them to train in growing it. The remedy offered for the worst possible loss is positive rather than defensive, which is characteristic of the collection and unlike much of what passes for spiritual advice about loss.
Teaching this chapter
The last six entries work exceptionally well as an opening for a group with no Buddhist background, because they require no vocabulary and make a claim anyone can immediately agree or disagree with. A useful sequence in a classroom is to read AN 1.78–79 — the wealth pair — first, ask whether the claim is true, and only then read AN 1.76–77 on relatives, which is much harder to accept and which reveals what the claim actually costs.
Key terms
The text
Friends and habits (AN 1.71–73)
§71“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to skillful qualities, or makes unskillful qualities decline like good friends. When you have good friends, skillful qualities arise and unskillful qualities decline.”
§72“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to unskillful qualities, or makes skillful qualities decline like pursuing bad habits and not good habits. When you pursue bad habits and not good habits, unskillful qualities arise and skillful qualities decline.”
§73“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to skillful qualities, or makes unskillful qualities decline like pursuing good habits and not bad habits. When you pursue good habits and not bad habits, skillful qualities arise and unskillful qualities decline.”
The awakening factors (AN 1.74–75)
§74“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that prevents the awakening factors from arising, or, if they’ve already arisen, prevents them from being fully developed like irrational application of mind. When you apply the mind irrationally, the awakening factors don’t arise, or, if they’ve already arisen, they’re not fully developed.”
§75“Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that gives rise to the awakening factors, or, if they’ve already arisen, fully develops them like rational application of mind. When you apply the mind rationally, the awakening factors arise, or, if they’ve already arisen, they’re fully developed.”
The only loss that matters (AN 1.76–81)
§76“Loss of relatives, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the worst thing to lose.”
§77“Growth of relatives, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the best thing to grow. So you should train like this: ‘We will grow in wisdom.’ That’s how you should train.”
§78“Loss of wealth, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the worst thing to lose.”
§79“Growth of wealth, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the best thing to grow. So you should train like this: ‘We will grow in wisdom.’ That’s how you should train.”
§80“Loss of fame, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the worst thing to lose.”
§81“Growth of fame, mendicants, is a small thing. Wisdom is the best thing to grow. So you should train like this: ‘We will grow in wisdom.’ That’s how you should train.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.