Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Relying on the wrong way, wrong view produces wrong purpose, which produces wrong speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, immersion, knowledge, and finally wrong freedom, leading to failure; relying on the right way, the identical nine-step causal chain runs in its positive form, leading to success.
The eightfold path, extended by two
The ten factors named here are the eight familiar factors of the noble eightfold path (view, purpose, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, immersion) with two further factors appended at the end: knowledge and freedom, the culminating fruits of actually walking that path, folded into the path's own sequence as its ninth and tenth links.
A causal chain, not a simple list
Rather than merely enumerating ten factors, the discourse states each one as directly producing the next — wrong view produces wrong purpose, not merely accompanies it — the same causal chain-building logic already met in this nipāta's opening discourses (AN 10.61, 10.76), here applied to the path itself rather than to hindrances or defilements.
The master version this chapter will repeat eight times
This exact ten-factor chain, in both its wrong and right forms, is the single piece of content that AN 10.104 through 10.110 will each restate under a different rhetorical frame — a seed simile, an ignorance/knowledge framing, a wearing-away metaphor, a washing ceremony, a purgative, an emetic, and a blowing-away — without changing the underlying ten factors even once.
Key terms
The text
The wrong way
§1“Mendicants, relying on the wrong way leads to failure, not success. And how does relying on the wrong way lead to failure, not success? Wrong view produces wrong purpose. Wrong purpose produces wrong speech. Wrong speech produces wrong action. Wrong action produces wrong livelihood. Wrong livelihood produces wrong effort. Wrong effort produces wrong mindfulness. Wrong mindfulness produces wrong immersion. Wrong immersion produces wrong knowledge. Wrong knowledge produces wrong freedom. That’s how relying on the wrong way leads to failure, not success.
The right way
§2Relying on the right way leads to success, not failure. And how does relying on the right way lead to success, not failure? Right view produces right purpose. Right purpose produces right speech. Right speech produces right action. Right action produces right livelihood. Right livelihood produces right effort. Right effort produces right mindfulness. Right mindfulness produces right immersion. Right immersion produces right knowledge. Right knowledge produces right freedom. That’s how relying on the right way leads to success, not failure.”
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