The Best Kinds of Confidence

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Confidence placed in the best of each category yields the best result, and the four categories are beings, conditioned things, everything at all, and communities.

Best of beings

The Buddha is best of all sentient beings, and the list of what he is best among is worth reading in full: footless, two-footed, four-footed, many-footed; with form or formless; with perception, without perception, or with neither perception nor non-perception.

That is a complete inventory of the possible modes of existence in this cosmology, arranged first by body and then by mind. The formless realms and the neither-perception-nor-non-perception sphere are the highest attainments available to a being who has not gone beyond rebirth. Naming them here places the Buddha above the ceiling rather than at the top of the range.

Best of conditioned things

The noble eightfold path is best of all saṅkhata, conditioned things — everything that is made, put together, dependent on causes.

This is a carefully bounded claim and the boundary is the interesting part. The path is not said to be the best thing there is. It is the best thing among things that are made, which is to say the best available instrument. An instrument is not the goal, and the discourse is about to name something that is.

Best of everything, conditioned or not

Virāga, fading away, is best of all things whether conditioned or unconditioned — and the discourse then gives eight names for it: the quelling of vanity, the removing of thirst, the abolishing of clinging, the breaking of the round, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment.

The widened category is the point. Everything else on the list is best within a class; this is best without qualification, because the class named includes both halves of the only exhaustive division the tradition recognizes. There is nothing outside saṅkhata and asaṅkhata.

The eight names are worth teaching as a set. They approach one thing from eight directions — conceit, thirst, attachment, rebirth, craving, passion, continuation, and the fire — and none of them is a positive description. What is being called the best of all things is stated exclusively as a series of endings, which is characteristic and worth pausing on rather than rushing past.

Best of communities

The Saṅgha is best of all gaṇa and parisā, groups and assemblies, and the definition given is the technical one: the four pairs, the eight individual persons.

That is the noble Saṅgha — those on and past the four stages, counted as four pairs (each path and its fruit) or eight individuals. It is not the monastic order as an institution. This distinction matters for the whole discourse: the confidence being recommended is not confidence in an organization but in the existence of people who have actually done this.

The standard formula follows: worthy of offerings, of hospitality, of a religious donation, of greeting with cupped palms, and the supreme field of merit for the world.

What is promised, and to whom

The verses turn the four confidences into a giving practice and promise a worldly return: the best lifespan, beauty, fame, reputation, happiness, and strength, whether reborn as a god or a human.

It is worth being straightforward about the register here. The prose is precise doctrinal analysis; the verses are an encouragement to donors with a list of rewards. Both are in the discourse and the collection puts them side by side without explanation.

The connective that makes them one text is the word agga, best, which appears in every clause of both halves. Confidence in the best, giving to the best, the best of merit, the best results. Whatever else it is, the discourse is a sustained piece of rhetoric built on a single word, and hearing it repeated is most of the experience of reciting it.

Key terms