The Noble Traditions

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Four ancient practices, each stated together with the way of holding it that would spoil it.

What ariyavaṁsa means

Vaṁsa is a lineage, a line of descent, a tradition handed down — the word used of family lines and of dynasties. Ariya is noble. So: the noble lineages, the descent line of the noble ones.

The set is described with four adjectives — primordial, long-standing, traditional, ancient — and then with a clause about corruption: uncorrupted as they have been since the beginning, not being corrupted now, and not going to be. That is a strong claim of continuity in a tradition well aware that institutions decay.

It is fair to read this against AN 4.25, three discourses earlier, which said the spiritual life was taught not because of tradition. The two can be held together: antiquity is not offered here as the reason to practise these four, but as an observation that they are the practices which do not degrade. What ages badly is everything else.

The first three

Contentment with any kind of robe, almsfood, and lodgings, and praising such contentment. Each comes with three further conditions: no improper solicitation for it; no worry if it does not come; and if it does come, using it untied, uninfatuated, unattached, seeing the drawback, and understanding the escape.

That last formula is the one to notice. It is not asked that the mendicant refuse a good robe. It is asked that they use it with the five headings of AN 4.10 in view. Contentment here is not a preference for less; it is a particular relationship to whatever arrives.

AN 4.27, just read, gave the floor of provision. This discourse gives the disposition that makes any level of provision safe, which is a different and more portable teaching.

The fourth, and why it is different

The fourth is not contentment with a requisite. It is enjoying meditation and loving to meditate, enjoying giving up and loving to give up — bhāvanārāma and pahānārāma.

So three renunciations and one appetite. The list would be lopsided without it: three practices of not-wanting, and then one thing it is right to want. The tradition is consistently uninterested in a purely negative account of the path, and this is where the chapter says so most plainly.

The word ārāma is worth a note. It means delight or pleasure, and also a park or pleasure-garden — the same word in the name of Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. The compound suggests a place one likes to be, which is a more relaxed image than ‘devoted to’ would give.

The clause that does the work

After each of the four: But they don’t glorify themselves or put others down on account of it.

This is what keeps the discourse from being a list of things to be proud of, and it is aimed at the specific failure mode of each item. Ascetic practices are unusually available to display, because they are visible and comparative: a worse robe is a publicly legible fact about you. Meditation is the same. The four practices most likely to earn admiration are exactly the four listed, and the clause is attached to each.

The corruption named is double — self-elevation and putting others down — and the second half is the more insidious. A person can hold their own practice modestly and still measure everyone else by it.

The four directions, and the verses

The closing prose says that a mendicant with these four prevails over discontent (arati) wherever they live, east, west, north, or south, because the attentive prevail over desire and discontent.

The point is portability. These four are not tied to a place, a climate, a supporter, or a season, which is precisely why they can be a lineage rather than a local custom. A tradition that can be carried anywhere is one that can last.

The second verse reuses the Black Plum River gold simile that closed AN 4.6 — a pendant of finest gold, whom even the gods praise. That the compilers reached for the same image for the learned disciple and for the one standing in the noble traditions is a small piece of evidence about how the collection was assembled, and worth pointing out to a reader who has been through both.

Key terms