Reading guide
Three unchanged qualities
As in AN 5.232, this discourse begins with ethical restraint, extensive learning, and articulate speech — the same foundation shared across this chapter's related lists.
Teaching ability, not personal attainment, as the fourth item
Where AN 5.232 named the four absorptions as its fourth quality, this discourse instead names the capacity (paṭibala) to educate, encourage, fire up, and inspire whoever approaches with a Dhamma talk — an outwardly directed teaching skill, not an inward meditative state.
Four absorptions retained as the fifth item
The four absorptions, displaced from the fourth position, reappear here as the fifth and final item — still part of the formula, but no longer its culmination, replaced in that role by teaching capacity.
What 'gracing the monastery' actually names
Āvāsaṁ sobheti, ‘graces the monastery’, is a vivid, almost aesthetic phrase — suggesting that a resident mendicant's presence can genuinely improve a monastery's character, much as this discourse's four-part teaching skill (sandassetuṁ samādapetuṁ samuttejetuṁ sampahaṁsetuṁ) is a set phrase used elsewhere in the early texts for skillful Dhamma instruction generally.
A chapter building a family of related lists
Cross-ref AN 5.232 immediately preceding: together, these two discourses suggest this formula's core (ethics, learning, speech) is stable, while its final item shifts depending on what specific outcome — being beloved, or beautifying a monastery — is being explained.
Key terms
The text
Five qualities that grace a monastery
§1“Mendicants, a resident mendicant with five qualities graces the monastery. What five? They’re ethical, restrained in the monastic code, conducting themselves well and resorting for alms in suitable places. Seeing danger in the slightest fault, they keep the rules they’ve undertaken. They’re very learned, remembering and keeping what they’ve learned. These teachings are good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end, meaningful and well-phrased, describing a spiritual practice that’s totally full and pure. They are very learned in such teachings, remembering them, reciting them, mentally scrutinizing them, and penetrating them theoretically. They’re a good speaker who enunciates well, with a polished, clear, and articulate voice that expresses the meaning. They’re able to educate, encourage, fire up, and inspire those who approach them with a Dhamma talk. They get the four absorptions—blissful meditations in this life that belong to the higher mind—when they want, without trouble or difficulty. A resident mendicant with these five qualities graces the monastery.”
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