With Channa

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Greed is objected to because of what it does to seeing, and there is a specified method for removing it.

The shape of the question

Channa does not ask what the teaching is. He asks two things in sequence: do you advocate this, and what drawbacks have you seen that you do?

That second question is the interesting one, and it is the right question to ask any tradition. Not what do you recommend, but what did you observe that made you recommend it. Ānanda answers it as asked — the reply is a list of consequences, not a citation of authority, and he never says that the Buddha taught it.

The wanderer is named Channa, which is also the name of the Buddha’s former charioteer who became a difficult monk. This is a different person; the canon has several Channas and does not distinguish them by epithet here.

The analysis, and the clause that is new

The first three parts are the ones AN 3.54 gave to a wanderer: a greedy person intends harm and suffers mental pain; acts badly in body, speech, and mind; and does not truly understand what is for their own good, another’s, or both. Each with its negation when greed has gone.

Then a fourth clause that the earlier discourses do not have: greed is a destroyer of sight, vision, and knowledge. It blocks wisdom, it’s on the side of distress, and it doesn’t lead to extinguishment.

Three verbs and a direction. Andhakaraṇa, making blind; acakkhukaraṇa, making eyeless; aññāṇakaraṇa, making unknowing. Then paññānirodhika, blocking wisdom, and a placement: on the side of distress, not leading to extinguishment.

This is the same claim AN 3.54 made about judgment, sharpened into a metaphor of blindness and then given a destination. It is worth telling a class that the canon’s central objection to greed is not that it is selfish but that it is a visual impairment — which is why the antidote is described as seeing rather than as restraint.

The question about method

Channa then asks the question that makes the discourse more than a complaint: is there a path and a practice for giving up that greed, hate, and delusion?

Ānanda answers with the noble eightfold path, given in full. Nothing else is offered and no shorter version is provided.

The pairing of these two questions is the discourse’s structure, and it is a good model for teaching anything. First, what is wrong with the current situation, stated as consequences that can be checked; then, what is to be done about it, stated as a method with parts. A diagnosis and a procedure, in that order, and nothing in between.

The closing line

“This is a fine path, a fine practice, for giving up that greed, hate, and delusion. Just this much is enough for diligence.”

Alameva appamādāya — this much is enough to be diligent about. It is Channa’s line, not Ānanda’s, and he is a wanderer of another school.

The sentence is doing something specific. He is not converting; he does not go for refuge, and the discourse does not record him becoming a lay follower, which is unusual in a chapter full of conversions. What he says is that the material he has just been given is sufficient to work on, which is a smaller and in some ways more interesting response.

Appamāda, diligence or heedfulness, is the canon’s great positive term — the opposite of the pamāda that the person in AN 3.36 gave as their excuse to King Yama. A discourse that has spent its length on what greed does to sight ends with somebody saying that this is enough to be going on with.

Using it

This is the version of the greed analysis to teach when the class wants to know why anybody would bother giving something up. AN 3.53 answers the question is this checkable; AN 3.54 adds the damage to judgment; this one adds the blindness clause and, crucially, the method.

Channa’s two questions are also the most transferable thing in the chapter. A teacher who can answer what drawbacks have you seen? and is there a path and a practice? about their own subject has a lesson; a teacher who can answer only the first has a complaint.

Key terms