Reading guide
The same diagnostic formula, a different cause
As with AN 5.205, each shackle is shown to produce the identical result: a mind that doesn't incline toward keenness, commitment, persistence, and striving. Where hard-heartedness names doubt and resentment as the cause, this discourse names attachment.
Sensuality, the body, and form
Not being free of desire for sensual pleasures generally; not being free of desire specifically for one's own body; and not being free of desire for external form — three progressively more subtle objects of the same underlying attachment.
Indulgence in comfort
The fourth shackle names a specific, concrete behavior: eating until full, then indulging in the pleasures of sleeping, lying down, and drowsing — ordinary bodily comfort-seeking, named as a genuine obstacle to sustained practice.
The most subtle shackle: renunciation for the wrong reason
The fifth shackle is the most striking: leading the spiritual life while secretly hoping, through one's ethics or austerity or discipline, to be reborn as a god — renunciation itself, genuinely practiced in outward form, corrupted from within by a subtly self-interested motive.
A companion note on the fourth shackle's phrase
Cross-ref AN 5.192's brahmin typology, where devasama (equal to a god) names a genuinely praiseworthy path involving rebirth in a heavenly realm through disciplined household life. This discourse's fifth shackle names something related but distinct: wanting that outcome specifically, as the motive behind renunciation — the difference between a genuine outcome and a corrupting wish for it.
Key terms
The text
Five shackles of the heart
§1“Mendicants, there are these five shackles of the heart. What five? Firstly, a mendicant isn’t free of greed, desire, fondness, thirst, passion, and craving for sensual pleasures. This being so, their mind doesn’t incline toward keenness, commitment, persistence, and striving. This is the first shackle of the heart. Furthermore, a mendicant isn’t free of greed for the body … They’re not free of greed for form … They eat as much as they like until their belly is full, then indulge in the pleasures of sleeping, lying down, and drowsing … They lead the spiritual life hoping to be reborn in one of the orders of gods, thinking: ‘By this precept or observance or fervent austerity or spiritual practice, may I become one of the gods!’ This being so, their mind doesn’t incline toward keenness, commitment, persistence, and striving. This is the fifth shackle of the heart. These are the five shackles of the heart.”
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