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Aṅguttara Nikāya · Discourse 5.37

Food

Bhojanasutta — Sumanavagga — the fourth chapter of the Fives

Setting
None stated; the discourse continues from AN 5.1, whose setting at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove is understood to hold
Speakers
The Buddha alone, addressing the mendicants
Form
A five-item list of what food-giving confers, restated as what the giver receives in return, closing with verses
Length
~1 minute to read
Northern parallel
Reciprocal like-for-like karmic mechanisms for specific kinds of giving are common across the Chinese Āgamas; this reading guide does not assert a specific matching sutra number
Difficulty
★★☆☆☆ — short, and unusually precise about the mechanism connecting gift to result

Why this discourse

This discourse narrows the chapter's focus a final step, from giving in general to one specific gift: food. And it makes an unusually exact claim about how the mechanism works. Giving food does not simply produce good karma in the abstract; it gives the recipient five named things — long life, beauty, happiness, strength, eloquence — and the giver is then said to receive the identical five things themselves, as a god or human, in return.

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

A giver of food gives the recipient long life, beauty, happiness, strength, and eloquence, and by giving each of these, becomes a sharer in that same thing themselves, as a god or human.

A precise, symmetrical mechanism

Unlike most of this chapter's discourses, which name benefits without specifying exactly how cause connects to effect, this one states the connection item by item: āyuṁ datvā āyussa bhāgī hoti, having given long life, one becomes a sharer in long life. The same formula repeats for beauty, happiness, strength, and eloquence, with no variation in structure across the five.

Why food specifically produces these five

The discourse does not explain why food-giving in particular maps onto exactly these five results rather than some other set, but the connection is not arbitrary on its face: food sustains the body's life, appearance, comfort, and vigor directly, and the fifth item, eloquence, extends the logic from bodily nourishment to the kind of vitality that shows in speech.

A narrower discourse than it first appears

This is the most specific gift this chapter examines — not giving broadly, not giving at a particular time, but giving one particular substance, food, with a correspondingly precise account of what it returns. Read after AN 5.36's broader occasions, this discourse completes a narrowing movement across three consecutive discourses: general benefits, then timing, then one specific gift examined in detail.

Key terms

āyuṁ vaṇṇaṁ sukhaṁ balaṁ paṭibhānaṁ — “long life, beauty, happiness, strength, and eloquence” — the five things this discourse says food-giving confers and returns.
bhāgī hoti — “becomes a sharer in” — the verb marking the giver's own future share in each of the five things given.
paṭibhāna — “eloquence, quick wit” — the fifth item, extending the logic from bodily nourishment to vitality in speech.
paṭiggāhaka — “recipient” — the person receiving the food, whose gain the giver's own future gain is said to mirror.
dibba mānusa — “divine or human” — the two forms of existence in which the giver is said to receive each of the five things back.

The text

The discourse in full: the five things given with food, and the giver's own share in each, closing with verses. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).

Five things, given with food

§1“Mendicants, when a giver gives food, they give the recipients five things. What five? Long life, beauty, happiness, strength, and eloquence.

§2Giving long life, they have long life as a god or human.

§3Giving beauty, they have beauty as a god or human.

§4Giving happiness, they have happiness as a god or human.

§5Giving strength, they have strength as a god or human.

§6Giving eloquence, they are eloquent as a god or human.

§7When a giver gives food, they give the recipients five things.

The closing verses

§8Being attentive, one is a giver of life, strength, beauty, and eloquence. An intelligent giver of happiness gains happiness in return.

§9Giving life, strength, beauty, happiness, and eloquence, they’re long-lived and famous wherever they’re reborn.”

· · ·

Self-check quiz

Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.

Question 1 of 10
What five things does this discourse say a giver of food gives to the recipient?
Correct: B. A precise, five-item list specific to food-giving.
Question 2 of 10
What happens to the giver, according to this discourse's mechanism?
Correct: B. An exact, symmetrical return for each of the five items given.
Question 3 of 10
How does this discourse's account of cause and effect compare to most of this chapter's other discourses on giving?
Correct: B. Most other discourses name benefits without this level of item-by-item mechanism.
Question 4 of 10
Why might food-giving specifically map onto these five results, according to the guide?
Correct: B. A connection the guide reads as not arbitrary on its face, even though the text itself doesn't explain it.
Question 5 of 10
How does the guide describe this discourse's place in a three-discourse sequence with AN 5.35 and 5.36?
Correct: B. General, then timely, then specific — a deliberate narrowing across three discourses.
Question 6 of 10
What verb marks the giver's own future share in what was given?
Correct: B. Repeated identically for each of the five items.
Question 7 of 10
Is the structure of the five-item formula varied across the five items, or kept consistent?
Correct: B. No variation in structure across the five repetitions.
Question 8 of 10
In what two forms of existence does the giver receive each of the five things back?
Correct: B. The same two destinations named across several discourses in this chapter.
Question 9 of 10
Does this discourse concern giving broadly, or one specific kind of gift?
Correct: B. The narrowest, most specific gift examined in this chapter.
Question 10 of 10
Where is AN 5.37 set?
Correct: B. Consistent with the default setting used throughout this nipāta when nothing new is stated.
Answered 0 of 10 · Correct 0

Further reading

← PreviousAN 5.36 · Timely Gifts