Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
For someone who has renounced, craving does not appear in what was given up; it appears in what is still allowed.
Three requisites and one destination
Robes, almsfood, and lodgings are three of the four monastic requisites (the fourth, medicine, is not named here). They are the permitted minimum: what a mendicant may own and must receive.
The fourth item on the list is of a different order — itibhavābhava, rebirth in this or that state, meaning existence itself in whatever form. Three small things and one enormous one, presented without comment on the difference. The effect is to run a single continuous line from wanting a better robe to wanting to exist at all, and the discourse leaves the reader to notice that it is one line.
That is the argument, compressed to a list. Craving does not have a scale of its own. The mechanism that attaches a person to a lodging is the mechanism that attaches them to being.
Why the requisites
It would be easy to read this as a warning about monastic laxity, and the commentarial tradition does read it that way in part. But the sharper point is structural. The requisites are not a concession or a weakness; they are the necessary minimum for the life. There is no version of the training in which a mendicant does not receive robes, food, and shelter.
So the discourse is not saying: be careful, you might backslide into luxury. It is saying: the ground on which craving grows is not removable by renunciation, because it is the ground you are standing on. Anything you must have is something you can want.
For lay readers the transposition is direct. The equivalent list is not the things one has given up but the things one legitimately needs — work, home, health, family. Those are where craving actually lives, and no amount of simplifying elsewhere touches them.
The partner
Taṇhā dutiyo puriso — craving is a person’s second, their companion or partner, as they transmigrate on this long journey. The word dutiya means simply ‘second’, and is the ordinary word for a travelling companion.
The image is unusually gentle for a warning. Craving is not a demon or a fetter here but the one who walks alongside — and the trouble with a travelling companion is precisely that one does not notice them. The verse then names the cost plainly: they go from this state to another and do not escape transmigration.
The instruction
The second verse gives the whole practical content: knowing this drawback — that craving is the cause of suffering — rid of craving and free of grasping, a mendicant would wander mindful.
Sato, mindful, is the operative word and it is the only method the discourse offers. Given that the four items are unavoidable, mindfulness is the only available response: one cannot stop receiving robes and food, so what changes is the attention brought to receiving them. The discourse is short because there is nothing else to say.
Key terms
The text
Four things that give rise to craving
§1“Mendicants, there are four things that give rise to craving in a mendicant. What four? For the sake of robes, almsfood, lodgings, or rebirth in this or that state. These are the four things that give rise to craving in a mendicant.
The verses
§2Craving is a person’s partner as they transmigrate on this long journey. They go from this state to another, but don’t escape transmigration.
§3Knowing this drawback—that craving is the cause of suffering—rid of craving, free of grasping, a mendicant would wander mindful.”
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