In Charge

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

There are three things you can appeal to when nobody is making you practice, and all three end in the same place.

What ādhipateyya means

The word is built from adhipati, an overlord or ruler. To make something ādhipateyya is to give it the deciding vote — to let it be the authority a decision is referred to. Sujato’s “putting in charge” keeps the political flavor, which is right: the question is what governs you.

East Asian Buddhism took the triad over as 自增上、世增上、法增上, and it is one of the places where the Pāli and the Chinese vocabularies line up cleanly enough that a bilingual class can hold both.

All three descriptions share an opening and a closing. The opening is the practitioner alone — in a wilderness, at the root of a tree, or in an empty hut — recalling why they left home: not for a robe, almsfood, lodgings, or a better rebirth, but because they were swamped by suffering, mired in suffering. The closing is the resolution: energy roused and unflagging, mindfulness established and lucid, body tranquil, mind immersed in samādhi. Everything between the two is the variable.

Self in charge

The reflection is short: I did not go forth for this; it would not be appropriate for me to seek the same sensual pleasures I abandoned, or worse.

It is an appeal to consistency with one’s own stated purpose, and it needs no witness and no doctrine. This is what the canon elsewhere calls hiri, the sense of shame that faces inward — the first of the two qualities AN 2.9 names as what keeps the world from dissolving.

It is also the version most immediately transferable to lay life, and to work that nobody is checking. The whole of it is: remember what you said you were doing.

The world in charge

Here the discourse becomes surprising. The reflection is that the world is large, and it contains ascetics and brahmins with psychic powers who are clairvoyant and can read minds; they see far without being seen, even by those close. And there are deities of the same kind. Any of them might look and think: look at this gentleman; he’s gone forth out of faith, but he’s living mixed up with bad, unskillful qualities.

This is ottappa, prudence, the outward-facing counterpart of shame — and the discourse gives it a cosmology to work with. A reader who does not believe in mind-reading ascetics or in deities will find this section inert, and it is better to say so than to translate it into something more comfortable.

But notice what the argument actually needs, which is less than it says. It needs the practitioner to abandon the assumption of privacy. The closing verse states it without any supernatural machinery at all: there’s no privacy in the world for someone who does bad deeds. You’ll know for yourself, whether you’ve lied or told the truth. The first witness the verse names is the person themselves.

There is also a sharp psychological observation buried in the verses, and it is easy to read past: when you witness your good self, you despise it; while you disguise your bad self inside yourself. The line describes somebody who is contemptuous of the part of them that is doing well and protective of the part that is not. Anyone who has worked with their own motivation will recognize it, and the canon states it in one sentence and moves on.

The teaching in charge

The third reflection appeals to the quality of what is on offer: the teaching is well explained by the Buddha — apparent in the present life, immediately effective, inviting inspection, relevant, so that sensible people can know it for themselves. That is the standard recollection of the Dhamma, used here as a motive rather than as a devotion.

And a second clause that does not usually get quoted with it: I have spiritual companions who live knowing and seeing. The evidence is not only the doctrine’s elegance but the existence of people in the same community who have got somewhere with it. Given that, it would not be appropriate to live lazy and heedless.

This is the version that scales best, because it does not depend on your resolve holding or on anyone watching. It depends on the material being good and on somebody nearby having demonstrated it.

Using it

The triad is genuinely useful outside monastic life, and a class will find its own examples fast. Why does a teacher prepare a lesson properly when nobody will check? Because of what they said they were for; because someone might see; because the subject deserves it. The discourse says all three are legitimate and that they land in the same place.

It is worth resisting the temptation to rank them. The text does not, and the closing verse recommends all three in one line: with yourself in charge, live mindfully; with the world in charge, be alert and practice absorption; with the teaching in charge, live in line with that teaching.

The last verses end where the chapter began, with the messengers: Māra’s conquered; the terminator’s overcome: one who strives reaches the end of rebirth. The Devadūtavagga opened with three warnings that go unheeded and closes with three ways of getting oneself to act without being warned at all.

Key terms