Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Real accomplishments, reported in a particular way, can themselves become the conceit, restlessness, and remorse blocking the accomplishment the reporter actually wants.
A remarkable report, taken at face value
Nothing Anuruddha says is false. He genuinely surveys the thousandfold galaxy with purified clairvoyance; his energy, mindfulness, physical calm, and mental unification are genuinely established. This matters for what follows: Sāriputta is not correcting a delusion or catching a lie. He is diagnosing a problem that exists even when every individual claim is accurate.
Three faults hiding in three true statements
The clairvoyance claim, Sāriputta says, is Anuruddha’s conceit, māna. The recitation of his own roused energy, lucid mindfulness, tranquil body, and unified mind is his restlessness, uddhacca. And the admission that his mind is still not freed is his remorse, kukkucca. None of the three faults is in the fact reported. Each is in what saying it, in this sequence, to this listener, is doing for Anuruddha — asserting standing, performing composure, and worrying aloud, all at once.
Why this is harder to see than an ordinary fault
A lie is easy to name. Boasting about something false is easy to name. This is neither. Anuruddha’s attainments are real, and reporting them accurately still constitutes conceit and restlessness, because the function the report is serving — establishing his own credentials before naming his actual problem — is where the fault lives, not in any single sentence taken alone. A teacher can use this discourse to make a hard point: accurate self-report is not automatically free of self-view.
Give them up, and apply the mind to the deathless
Sāriputta’s instruction is not analysis for its own sake. Having named the three things, he tells Anuruddha to give them up, stop attending to them, and apply the mind instead to amatāya dhātuyā, the deathless element — nibbāna named by one of its standard epithets. The redirection is total: not manage the conceit, not soften the restlessness, but stop dwelling in that whole register of self-assessment and point the mind somewhere else entirely.
The same disciple, the same image, a different scale
Anuruddha is the monk whose community life with Nandiya and Kimbila is described in MN 31 using the identical phrase this collection uses for a harmonious monastery in AN 3.124: blending like milk and water. Read together, the two discourses show the same disciple at two different moments — steadied by companionship in one, and here, alone with his own accomplishments, needing a friend’s correction to see what his own solitary report was doing. Not long after, he applies the redirection and becomes one of the perfected.
Key terms
The text
Anuruddha's report
§1Then Venerable Anuruddha went up to Venerable Sāriputta, and exchanged greetings with him. When the greetings and polite conversation were over, he sat down to one side and said to him: “Here’s the thing, Reverend Sāriputta. With clairvoyance that is purified and surpasses the human, I survey the thousandfold galaxy. My energy is roused up and unflagging, my mindfulness is established and lucid, my body is tranquil and undisturbed, and my mind is immersed in samādhi and unified. But my mind is not freed from the defilements by not grasping.”
Sāriputta's diagnosis
§2“Well, Reverend Anuruddha, when you say: ‘With clairvoyance that is purified and surpasses the human, I survey the thousandfold galaxy,’ that’s your conceit. And when you say: ‘My energy is roused up and unflagging, my mindfulness is established and lucid, my body is tranquil and undisturbed, and my mind is immersed in samādhi,’ that’s your restlessness. And when you say: ‘But my mind is not freed from the defilements by not grasping,’ that’s your remorse. It would be good to give up these three things. Ignore them and apply your mind to freedom from death.”
The resolution
§3After some time Anuruddha gave up these three things. Ignoring them, he applied his mind to freedom from death. Then Anuruddha, living alone, withdrawn, diligent, keen, and resolute, soon realized the supreme culmination of the spiritual path in this very life. He lived having achieved with his own insight the goal for which gentlemen rightly go forth from the lay life to homelessness. He understood: “Rebirth is ended; the spiritual journey has been completed; what had to be done has been done; there is nothing further for this place.” And Venerable Anuruddha became one of the perfected.
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