Training (1st)

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

How far you get depends on how many of the three trainings you have fulfilled — and breaking minor rules does not stop you at any level.

The claim about the code

“Each fortnight over a hundred and fifty training rules come up for recitation, in which gentlemen who desire self-knowledge train. These are all included in the three trainings.”

That is the same reduction offered to the Vajji monk two discourses earlier, stated as a general principle rather than as a concession to somebody struggling. The rules are not a separate system alongside the three trainings; they are a detailed expansion of the first of them.

The phrase who desire self-knowledge is worth noticing. The rules are described as the training of people who want to know something about themselves, not as discipline imposed on people who need controlling.

Four cases, and what varies

Case one: ethics fulfilled, immersion and wisdom limited — with the ending of three fetters, a stream-enterer, not liable to be reborn in the underworld, assured, destined for awakening.

Case two: the same description of the person, with a further result — the three fetters ended and greed, hate, and delusion weakened, a once-returner.

Case three: ethics and immersion fulfilled, wisdom limited — the five lower fetters ended, reborn spontaneously, extinguished there without returning. A non-returner.

Case four: all three fulfilled — the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom, realized in this very life.

So the mapping is clean and mechanical: ethics alone takes you to the first two stages, ethics plus immersion to the third, all three to the fourth. It is one of the clearest statements in the canon of what the three trainings are actually for, and it explains why the collection keeps insisting on their order.

It also says something a class will find surprising: a stream-enterer is described as having limited immersion and wisdom. The first stage of awakening does not require meditative attainment on this account. It requires fulfilled ethics and the ending of three fetters.

The sentence repeated in all four cases

“They break some lesser and minor training rules, but are restored. Why is that? Because I don’t say they’re incapable of that.”

This appears identically in every case, including the one describing somebody with all three trainings fulfilled who has realized freedom in this very life. Such a person still breaks minor rules.

The reasoning given is abhabbo — I do not say they are incapable of it. The canon is precise elsewhere about what an awakened person cannot do, and the list is short and grave: they cannot deliberately kill, steal, lie about attainments, or store up for sensual enjoyment. Minor infractions are not on that list, and this discourse says so.

The balancing clause matters as much: they are constant and steady in their precepts regarding the training rules that are fundamental, befitting the spiritual path. So the distinction is between rules that are load-bearing and rules that are not, and the difference between the two is exactly what a person at any of these stages is reliable about.

This is a passage worth showing to anyone who has met Buddhism as a system of perfectionism. The canon’s own account of an awakened monastic includes the sentence they break some lesser and minor training rules.

The closing rule of proportion

“If you practice partially you succeed partially. If you practice fully you succeed fully. But in any case, these training rules are not barren, I say.”

Padesaṁ padesakārī ārādheti, paripūraṁ paripūrakārī — the partial doer achieves partially, the complete doer completely. It is stated as a general law and it is remarkably encouraging by the standards of religious literature, which more often presents partial practice as failure.

And then the last clause, which is the one to remember: these training rules are not barren. Amoghā, not fruitless, not in vain. Whatever a person manages, the rules will have produced something.

That claim is what makes the four cases readable as encouragement rather than as a ranking. The discourse has just sorted mendicants into four levels by how much of the training they have fulfilled, and it ends by saying that nobody in any of those positions is wasting their time.

Using it

Teach it against the perfectionist reading, and quote the repeated sentence exactly. A class that believes Buddhist practice is about flawlessness will be corrected faster by this one passage than by any amount of explanation.

The proportion rule is the transferable part and it applies to anything cumulative: language, an instrument, a discipline. Partial practice produces partial results, which is neither nothing nor everything, and the exercises are not barren.

Key terms