Ascetics

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

An ascetic has three jobs and they are ethics, mind, and wisdom.

Samaṇa, and what a duty is

Samaṇa is the general word for a renunciate of any school — the wanderers, Jains, Ājīvakas, and Buddhist mendicants all counted. The word is not sectarian, which is why the discourse can speak of the duties of an ascetic and mean something that could in principle be evaluated from outside.

Karaṇīya is what is to be done: a task, a duty, the thing the role exists for. So the question the discourse answers is not what a renunciate believes or where they live, but what their work is.

That framing has an edge to it. A person can be a samaṇa by dress, by ordination, and by residence, and still not be doing the three things. AN 3.82, the next discourse, is about exactly that person.

The three trainings

Adhisīla, the higher ethics; adhicitta, the higher mind; adhipaññā, the higher wisdom. The prefix adhi- means higher or further, and it distinguishes these from ordinary good conduct, ordinary concentration, and ordinary intelligence.

In East Asian usage the triad is 戒定慧, precepts, concentration, and wisdom — one of the most familiar formulas in Chinese Buddhism, and one that a bilingual class will already have. Pointing out that 戒定慧 is adhisīla adhicitta adhipaññā takes ten seconds and connects a great deal.

The order is not arbitrary and the collection treats it as a sequence: AN 3.73 has Ānanda expound the three in exactly this order, with the trainee’s immersion described as the four absorptions and the trainee’s wisdom as understanding the four truths.

The instruction, and one word in it

“So you should train like this: we will have keen enthusiasm for undertaking the training in the higher ethics, the higher mind, and the higher wisdom.”

Tibbo chando — keen or sharp desire. The word for the desire is chanda, which the canon distinguishes carefully from taṇhā, craving. One is the wanting that drives a task; the other is the wanting that produces continued existence, as AN 3.76 has just described.

That distinction is worth making explicitly to a class, because a tradition that attacks desire as thoroughly as this one does has to be able to say what it is asking for here. The answer is that chanda for the training is one of the four bases of psychic power and is recommended everywhere; it is not an exception to the teaching on craving but a different item.

The instruction is also not do the three trainings but be keen to undertake them. What is being asked for is an appetite, which is the same thing AN 3.42 named as the first two grounds on which faith is recognized.

Why the chapter repeats itself

Nine of the eleven discourses in this chapter restate the three trainings, most of them closing with the identical instruction. A reader working through in order will find it repetitive, and it is worth explaining rather than apologizing for.

The variation is in the frame. AN 3.82 gives a donkey; AN 3.83 gives a farmer; AN 3.84 gives a monk who cannot manage the rules; AN 3.85 gives a definition of the word trainee; AN 3.86 through 3.88 give the three trainings against the stages of attainment. The list is the constant and the entry points are the variables.

That is a teaching structure rather than an accident. A class encountering 戒定慧 for the first time will not learn it from one statement; they will learn it from a donkey, a field, and a monk with a problem.

Using it

Use it as a hinge. If a class knows 戒定慧 already, this discourse tells them where the phrase comes from and that it is presented as a job description rather than a doctrine. If they do not, this is the shortest possible introduction and the ten discourses after it supply the illustrations.

The one substantive point to draw out is the word duty. The discourse is not describing what an ascetic hopes for or believes; it is describing what they are supposed to be doing, which makes the standard checkable and makes AN 3.82’s donkey possible.

Key terms