Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A mendicant complete in faith, ethics, learning, teaching ability, assembly attendance, teaching with assurance, training expertise, forest dwelling, and the classic three knowledges — recollection of past lives, clairvoyance regarding others' rebirth, and the ending of defilements — is ‘impressive all around.’
The identical nine, a third substitution
This discourse repeats AN 10.8 and AN 10.9's first eight qualities without change, but its ninth and tenth items merge into what the tradition names as a single unit: the three knowledges (tevijjā), here spread across two positions in the list rather than compressed into one, as AN 10.8 and AN 10.9 each kept a single ninth item separate from the tenth.
The canon's most classic threefold attainment
Where AN 10.8's absorptions and AN 10.9's formless liberations are meditative accomplishments, the three knowledges are traditionally the specific content attributed to the Buddha's own awakening night: recalling his own past lives in the first watch, seeing other beings' rebirths according to their deeds in the second, and realizing the ending of defilements in the third.
Closing a deliberate ascending sequence
Read together, this three-discourse set moves through increasingly specific and traditionally weighty attainments: ordinary jhāna mastery at AN 10.8, subtler formless liberation at AN 10.9, and finally the canon's own signature threefold knowledge at AN 10.10, closing both this small set and the entire chapter. With this discourse, Anisaṁsavagga closes; the source's own untranslated colophon and chapter-summary verse name all ten discourses by their opening words.
Key terms
The text
Ten qualities, closing with the three knowledges
§1“A mendicant is faithful, but not ethical. So they’re incomplete in that respect, and should fulfill it, thinking: ‘How can I become faithful and ethical?’ When the mendicant is faithful and ethical, they’re complete in that respect. A mendicant is faithful and ethical, but not learned … they’re not a Dhamma speaker … they don’t frequent assemblies … they don’t teach Dhamma to the assembly with assurance … they’re not an expert in the monastic law … they don’t recollect their many kinds of past lives … they don’t, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, see sentient beings passing away and being reborn … they don’t realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life, and live having realized it with their own insight due to the ending of defilements. So they’re incomplete in that respect, and should fulfill it, thinking: ‘How can I become faithful, ethical, and learned, a Dhamma speaker, one who frequents assemblies, one who teaches Dhamma to the assembly with assurance, an expert in the training, one who recollects their many kinds of past lives, one who with clairvoyance that surpasses the human sees sentient beings passing away and being reborn, and one who lives having realized the ending of defilements?’ When they are faithful, ethical, and learned, a Dhamma speaker, one who frequents assemblies, one who teaches Dhamma to the assembly with assurance, an expert in the training, one who recollects their many kinds of past lives, one who with clairvoyance that surpasses the human sees sentient beings passing away and being reborn, and one who lives having realized the ending of defilements, they’re complete in that respect. A mendicant who possesses these ten qualities is impressive all around, and is complete in every respect.”
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