Reading guide
A new chapter on monastic appointments
The Sammutipeyyāla (“Abbreviated Texts on Appointments”) turns from the previous chapter's ordination standards to a narrower, more procedural question: the specific qualities that make someone fit or unfit for particular administrative offices within the community, beginning with the office of meal assigner.
The agati formula, returning from the Fours
Four biases — favoritism, hostility, delusion, and fear — already given in full at AN 4.17 in the Book of the Fours, here combined with a fifth, office-specific item: whether the appointee actually knows if a meal has been assigned or not.
Three paired statements, one standard
The discourse runs the same five-item standard through three separate pairings: unfit or fit for appointment; once appointed, whether they should be called upon or not, judged a fool or astute, and keep themselves broken or unbroken; and finally, whether they are reborn in hell or heaven, described with the image ‘placed as if delivered there’, already tracked across this project since AN 5.173.
Naming a specific office as a test case
Where AN 4.17–19 treated the four biases as a general character flaw, this discourse gives them a concrete institutional application: a named administrative role, and a fifth qualification specific to that role's actual duty.
What follows
AN 5.273–285, a single merged page in the source, runs this identical structure across thirteen further monastic offices — from lodgings allotter to supervisor of novices — substituting only the office name and its duty-specific fifth item.
Key terms
The text
Unfit and fit for appointment
§1“Mendicants, someone with five qualities should not be appointed as meal assigner. What five? They make decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. And they don’t know if a meal has been assigned or not. Someone with these five qualities should not be appointed as meal assigner.
§2Someone with five qualities should be appointed as meal assigner. What five? They don’t make decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. And they know if a meal has been assigned or not. Someone with these five qualities should be appointed as meal assigner.
Consequences of the appointment
§3Someone with five qualities who has been appointed as meal assigner should not be called upon … should be called upon … should be known as a fool … should be known as astute … they keep themselves broken and damaged … they keep themselves unbroken and undamaged … is placed in hell as if delivered there … is placed in heaven as if delivered there. What five? They don’t make decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. And they know if a meal has been assigned or not. A meal assigner with these five qualities is placed in heaven as if delivered there.”
Self-check quiz
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