Retreat

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Being on retreat in body and being on retreat in mind are two separate things, and a person may have either without the other.

The word

Nikaṭṭha means drawn away, withdrawn, kept apart. It is applied twice in each case — nikaṭṭhakāya, withdrawn in body, and nikaṭṭhacitta, withdrawn in mind — and the doubling is what makes the grid.

The bodily half is defined concretely: araññavanapatthāni pantāni senāsanāni, remote lodgings in the wilderness and the forest. Not an attitude, not a retreat in the modern sense of a scheduled week, but where a person actually sleeps.

The mental half is defined by three thoughts on each side. The unskillful trio is sensual, malicious, and cruel — kāma, byāpāda, vihiṁsā. The skillful trio is their exact negations: renunciation, good will, harmlessness. The same three appear in AN 4.11, where a mendicant who tolerates any of them in any posture is called lazy and lacking energy.

The order the four are given in

Body but not mind; mind but not body; neither; both. That places the doubly bad case third and the doubly good case last, which is not the order AN 4.132 or AN 4.134 used.

The effect of the ordering is to open with the case that stings. The forest-dweller who thinks cruel thoughts is the first person named in the discourse, before any positive example has been set up, and the definitions section repeats him first.

That is worth noticing when teaching, because the discourse is arranged as a provocation and reads very differently if the order is rearranged into something tidier. The compiler put the uncomfortable case in the doorway.

The second cell, and what it concedes

One is on retreat in mind but not body: they do not frequent remote lodgings, and they think thoughts of renunciation, good will, and harmlessness.

This is the cell that makes the discourse quotable, and it should be quoted accurately. It does not say that this person is doing as well as the fourth, or that the forest is unnecessary. It says that mental seclusion is present and bodily seclusion is not, and that this combination exists.

What the discourse does do is give that person their own name and their own paragraph, on the same footing as the other three. In a tradition where forest-dwelling is one of the standard ascetic practices, that is a real concession and it is made without comment.

The reading to resist is the flattering one — that since mind is what counts, circumstances are irrelevant. The discourse gives four cells and puts both qualities in the fourth. If the location did not matter it would not be one of the axes.

What the grid is actually claiming

The claim is independence, not indifference. Two variables that people habitually treat as one are being separated, and the separation is demonstrated by exhibiting all four combinations.

That is a modest claim and a durable one. It does not tell anyone where to live. It tells them that the question of where they live and the question of what they are thinking have to be asked separately, because the answer to one does not settle the other.

The chapter has made this move repeatedly with other pairs — on topic and fluent in AN 4.132, initiative and past deeds in AN 4.134, speaking little and staying on topic in AN 4.139. Every one of them separates two things that ordinary usage runs together, and none of them ranks the mixed cases.

Read as a set, the Puggalavagga is doing one thing over and over: refusing to let one good quality serve as evidence of another.

Teaching it

This is the discourse in the chapter most likely to be used as a weapon, in either direction — against people who go on retreat, and against people who do not. Both uses require ignoring one of the axes.

The honest use is self-directed and takes about a minute. Which cell was I in this week, and which of the two variables did I assume was taking care of the other?

The chapter ends with two discourses on speaking, AN 4.139 and AN 4.140, and then the Fours leave the classification of persons behind for the Ābhāvagga and its four kinds of light.

Key terms