Precepts and Observances

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

An observance is fruitful if unskillful qualities decline and skillful ones grow, and not otherwise — and the question of whether observances are good cannot be answered yes or no.

A worked example of AN 3.67

Eleven discourses earlier, AN 3.67 said that a question may need to be answered categorically, or analytically, or with a counter-question, or set aside — and that someone who cannot tell which is which is not competent to hold a discussion.

This discourse is that theory in action, and the two should be taught together. The Buddha asks a yes-or-no question. Ānanda replies this matter is not categorical — identifying the kind of question rather than answering it. The Buddha says well then, break it down, using the verb vibhaja, the same word behind the second category.

So the exchange is a small examination: a question with the wrong shape is offered, and the student is judged by whether he notices. Nothing in the text says it is a test, and the Buddha’s comment afterward suggests it may well have been.

What sīlabbata means, and why the question is live

Sīlabbata — precepts and observances, ethics and vows — is a word with a shadow on it. Sīlabbataparāmāsa, misapprehension of precepts and observances, is the third of the ten fetters and one of the three abandoned at stream-entry. It names the mistake of treating a rule or a rite as itself the thing that purifies.

That is why the Buddha’s question is not idle. If observances can be misapprehended in a way that blocks the path, a natural conclusion is that they are worthless, and a tradition with a monastic code and a list of precepts cannot afford that conclusion.

The phrase that carries the difficulty is taken as the essence, sārato paccāgacchati — treating the observance as the substance of the matter. The question is whether an observance held that way is fruitful, and it is a sharper question than whether observances are good.

The answer, and its criterion

“If unskillful qualities grow while skillful qualities decline, that’s not fruitful. However, if unskillful qualities decline while skillful qualities grow, that is fruitful.”

Two sentences, and the criterion is entirely about results in the practitioner. Not whether the observance is orthodox, not who prescribed it, not how demanding it is, and not whether it belongs to this tradition. The same test AN 3.66 gave for judging a teaching is applied here to judging a practice.

The generality is the point. On this criterion an observance from any tradition could be fruitful, and one from this tradition could fail. Nothing in the answer restricts its scope, and Ānanda does not add a qualification.

The test is also usable, which is more than can be said for most criteria offered in this area. A person keeping an observance is not asked to judge whether it is theologically sound; they are asked whether the unskillful is declining, which they can observe over a few weeks.

The praise given behind his back

Ānanda finishes, the teacher approves, and Ānanda gets up, bows, circles the Buddha keeping him on the right, and leaves. Then, not long after Ānanda had left, the Buddha addresses the mendicants: Ānanda is a trainee, but it’s not easy to find his equal in wisdom.

The timing is deliberate and the discourse records it precisely. The praise is made to a third party, after the subject has gone, and it contains both a limitation and a superlative: he is still a sekha, a trainee, and among those who are not trainees there are few his equal in wisdom.

Ānanda’s status as a trainee at this point is well known in the tradition — he is remembered as having reached the goal only after the Buddha’s death, on the eve of the first council. Saying so in his absence and praising him in the same sentence is a small and very precise piece of conduct.

For a teacher there is something usable here. The correction and the compliment are separated: the student got the approval to his face and the assessment was made elsewhere, in a form that raised his standing among his peers without putting him in the position of having to respond to it.

Using it

This is a two-minute discourse with three separable lessons, and a class can be given all three: how to recognize a question that cannot be answered yes or no, a criterion for evaluating any practice, and a small model of how to praise somebody.

The criterion is the most transferable. Applied to a school subject, a training regime, or a devotional practice, the question are the unskillful qualities declining and the skillful growing? cuts through a great deal of argument about whether a method is the right one.

Key terms