Sensual Pleasures

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

A gentleman who goes forth is called a ‘faithful renunciate’ because sensual pleasures were available to him and he left them anyway; and just as a nursemaid protects an infant from swallowing a stick or stone, even at the cost of distress, the Buddha says he must go on looking after a mendicant until their development of the five powers is complete.

Why the discourse starts with sensual pleasure at all

The opening claim is easy to read past: sentient beings are mostly charmed by sensual pleasures, and a young man who has abandoned the scythe and flail — ordinary farm labor, and by extension the pleasures that labor would have funded — earns the title saddhāpabbajita, one gone forth out of faith, precisely because pleasures of some kind were available to him. The discourse is explicit that all sensual pleasures, inferior, average, or superior, count equally as ‘sensual pleasures’ for this purpose — renunciation is not only meaningful for someone giving up something spectacular.

The nursemaid, in full

The simile is given at length and does not sand down its own difficulty. A negligent nursemaid lets an infant put a stick or stone in its mouth; a good one notices quickly, tries to remove it gently, and if that fails, cradles the child’s head in one hand and uses a hooked finger of the other — even if it drew blood. The text has the Buddha say directly, in his own voice mid-simile: ‘This will distress the child; there’s no denying.’ The discourse does not claim the intervention is painless. It claims the intervention is still karaṇīya, something that should be done, by a nursemaid who wants what’s best for the child, out of kindness and sympathy.

Where the vigilance ends

The simile has a clear endpoint, and it is worth reading as carefully as the beginning. Once the boy has grown up and has enough sense, the nursemaid stops being concerned, on the grounds that the boy can look after himself; he won’t be negligent. The application makes the parallel explicit: the Buddha says he must go on looking after a mendicant only as long as their faith, conscience, prudence, energy, and wisdom regarding skillful qualities is unfinished; once it is finished, the same release from concern applies.

Reading this against AN 5.6

AN 5.6 described a mechanism with no gap: a power vanishes, its opposite instantly occupies the space. AN 5.7 supplies the reason that gap is watched at all — a mendicant who has not finished developing the five powers is, on this account, someone still vulnerable to exactly that kind of instant reversal, and still worth protecting from it even at real cost. The two discourses fit together as diagnosis and response.

Key terms