Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A mendicant worthy of the highest offerings has ten qualities: ethical conduct, deep learning, good friends, and right view as a foundation, followed by the six higher knowledges in full — psychic power, clairaudience, reading others' minds, recollecting past lives, clairvoyance into others' rebirths, and the ending of defilements.
Four foundations before six attainments
The list is not ten equally-weighted items but a clear two-tier structure: four ordinary, achievable qualities (ethics, learning, good friends, right view) establish the foundation, before the list moves into the extraordinary territory of the six higher knowledges themselves.
The six higher knowledges, given in full canonical form
Rather than naming the six higher knowledges in shorthand, this discourse spells out each one at the same length and vividness usually reserved for a dedicated teaching on that single power alone — walking through walls and water, hearing both human and heavenly sounds, reading the sixteen paired states of another's mind, recollecting specific personal details across countless past lives, and watching beings pass and reappear according to their deeds — before closing with the ending of defilements as the tenth and final quality.
Merit as a consequence of attainment, not its purpose
The discourse's framing is worth noting carefully: these ten qualities are not cultivated in order to become worthy of offerings; being a supreme field of merit is simply what follows, as an incidental consequence, once someone has actually developed the qualities and knowledges described.
Key terms
The text
Four foundations
§1“Mendicants, a mendicant with ten qualities is worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods, worthy of hospitality, worthy of a religious donation, worthy of veneration with cupped palms, and is the supreme field of merit for the world. What ten? It’s when a mendicant is ethical, restrained in the monastic code, conducting themselves well and resorting for alms in suitable places. Seeing danger in the slightest fault, they keep the rules they’ve undertaken. They’re very learned, remembering and keeping what they’ve learned. These teachings are good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, meaningful and well-phrased, describing a spiritual practice that’s entirely full and pure. They are very learned in such teachings, remembering them, rehearsing them, mentally scrutinizing them, and penetrating them theoretically. They have good friends, companions, and associates. They have right view, possessing right perspective.
Six higher knowledges, in full
§2They wield the many kinds of psychic power: multiplying themselves and becoming one again; materializing and dematerializing; going unobstructed through a wall, a rampart, or a mountain as if through space; diving in and out of the earth as if it were water; walking on water as if it were earth; flying cross-legged through the sky like a bird; touching and stroking with the hand the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful. They control the body as far as the realm of divinity. With clairaudience that is purified and superhuman, they hear both kinds of sounds, human and heavenly, whether near or far. They understand the minds of other beings and individuals, having encompassed them with their own mind. They understand mind with greed as ‘mind with greed’, and mind without greed as ‘mind without greed’. They understand mind with hate … mind without hate … mind with delusion … mind without delusion … constricted mind … scattered mind … expansive mind … unexpansive mind … mind that is not supreme … mind that is supreme … mind immersed in samādhi … mind not immersed in samādhi … freed mind … They understand unfreed mind as ‘unfreed mind’. They recollect many kinds of past lives, that is, one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ Thus they recollect their many past lives, with features and details. With clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds. ‘These dear beings did bad things by way of body, speech, and mind. They denounced the noble ones; they had wrong view; and they chose to act out of that wrong view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell. These dear beings, however, did good things by way of body, speech, and mind. They never denounced the noble ones; they had right view; and they chose to act out of that right view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.’ And so, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds. They realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life. And they live having realized it with their own insight due to the ending of defilements.
Closing
§3A mendicant with these ten qualities is worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods, worthy of hospitality, worthy of a religious donation, worthy of veneration with cupped palms, and is the supreme field of merit for the world.”
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