Sagacity

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Sagacity of body and speech is the same conduct as purity; sagacity of mind is being finished.

The word

Moneyya is the abstract noun from muni, sage. Muni in turn is connected in the tradition with mona, silence — a sage as one who is silent, and the connection is felt in the Pāli whether or not it is etymologically sound.

The word matters because it is not a Buddhist coinage. Muni was the general Indian word for a sage of the renunciate kind, older than this tradition and shared with others. And it is the second half of the epithet Sākyamuni, the sage of the Sakyans, which is how East Asia knows the Buddha: 釋迦牟尼.

So a class reading this discourse in Chinese is reading a definition of the second half of the name they say every day. That is worth pointing out, and it takes a sentence.

Three kinds

Sagacity of body: not killing, stealing, or having sex — identical to AN 3.121’s purity of body, monastic version.

Sagacity of speech: not using speech that is false, backbiting, harsh, or nonsensical — identical again.

Sagacity of mind: a mendicant realizes the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life, and lives having realized it with their own insight due to the ending of defilements. The formula for arahantship.

So the discourse is AN 3.121 with the third definition raised to the top. Where purity of mind was knowing the hindrances as they came and went, sagacity of mind is being done.

The set of three discourses

AN 3.120, AN 3.121, and AN 3.122 run the same three doors with three different third terms: right view and a good heart; knowledge of the hindrances; and liberation.

Read in order they form an ascent, and the first two doors do not move. A layperson, a practicing mendicant, and an arahant are described as doing exactly the same things with their bodies and their speech.

That is the point of the set and it is worth stating. What changes between a decent householder and a finished practitioner, on this account, is not their conduct. The bodily and verbal standard is reached early and does not rise; everything above it happens in the third position.

The same claim was made in the thoroughbred set at AN 3.96–3.98, where beauty and strength were identical across all three versions and only speed changed. The collection makes this point by structure rather than by statement, and a reader who has noticed it once will see it everywhere.

The verse

A sage in body, a sage in speech, a sage undefiled in heart; a sage, blessed with sagacity, has given up everything, they say.

Sabbappahāyinaṁ — one who has given up everything. The verse matches AN 3.121’s closing verse in shape exactly, with washed off all bad things replaced by given up everything.

That substitution is the whole difference between the two discourses in four words. Washing removes what is bad; giving up removes everything. The pair of verses says in miniature what the pair of discourses says at length.

Using it

Use it for the name. A Chinese-speaking class that has recited 釋迦牟尼佛 since childhood and has never been told what 牟尼 means will remember this discourse for that alone, and the definition given here is the tradition’s own.

The structural point is the second use, and it is the more important one. Read AN 3.120, 3.121, and 3.122 in three minutes and ask what changed. The answer — only the third term — says something about this teaching that no single discourse states.

Key terms