Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A mendicant who has the six superhuman knowledges — psychic power, clairaudience, mind-reading, recollection of past lives, clairvoyance, and the ending of defilements — is worthy of offerings, exactly as the equanimous mendicant of AN 6.1 was said to be.
Five attainments and one culmination
The list is not six equal items. The first five — often grouped as the pañca abhiññā, the five mundane superhuman knowledges — are powers any sufficiently accomplished meditator might in principle develop, and the texts elsewhere note that they can be lost, or developed without full liberation. The sixth, the ending of defilements through freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom, is categorically different: it is full awakening itself, and it alone is irreversible.
The five, briefly
Psychic power (iddhividha): multiplying the body, passing through solid matter, walking on water, flying, touching sun and moon. Clairaudience (dibbasota): hearing sounds human and heavenly, near and far. Mind-reading (cetopariya): knowing the state of another’s mind — with or without greed, hate, delusion, and several further pairs. Recollection of past lives (pubbenivāsānussati): remembering former births in detail, across world-cycles. Clairvoyance (dibbacakkhu, here called the “divine eye”): seeing beings die and be reborn according to their deeds.
The sixth as the reason for the other five
The passage’s own structure makes a point often missed when the five worldly powers are discussed on their own: here they are listed only as a prelude to the sixth, the ending of defilements. Nothing in the discourse suggests the five are sought for their own sake, or that possessing them without the sixth would itself satisfy the worthiness formula. The passage names all six together as one bundle of qualities, but the weight falls on the last.
Why this belongs beside AN 6.1
Placed second in the chapter, this discourse stretches the fourfold worthiness formula from its simplest possible application to one of its largest. The pairing is instructive about how these formulaic openings work across the Aṅguttara: the same closing refrain is portable across radically different content, and its repetition is not padding but the thread that ties a whole chapter’s otherwise disparate material together.
Key terms
The text
The formula, and the first knowledge: psychic power
§1“Mendicants, a mendicant with six qualities is worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods, worthy of hospitality, worthy of a religious donation, worthy of veneration with cupped palms, and is the supreme field of merit for the world. What six? It’s a mendicant who wields the many kinds of psychic power: multiplying themselves and becoming one again; materializing and dematerializing; going unobstructed through a wall, a rampart, or a mountain as if through space; diving in and out of the earth as if it were water; walking on water as if it were earth; flying cross-legged through the sky like a bird; touching and stroking with the hand the sun and moon, so mighty and powerful. They control the body as far as the realm of divinity.
The second: clairaudience
§2With clairaudience that is purified and superhuman, they hear both kinds of sounds, human and heavenly, whether near or far.
The third: reading other minds
§3They understand the minds of other beings and individuals, having encompassed them with their own mind. They understand mind with greed as ‘mind with greed’, and mind without greed as ‘mind without greed’. They understand mind with hate … mind without hate … mind with delusion … mind without delusion … constricted mind … scattered mind … expansive mind … unexpansive mind … mind that is not supreme … mind that is supreme … mind immersed in samādhi … mind not immersed in samādhi … freed mind … They understand unfreed mind as ‘unfreed mind’.
The fourth: recollecting past lives
§4They recollect many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. They remember: ‘There, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn somewhere else. There, too, I was named this, my clan was that, I looked like this, and that was my food. This was how I felt pleasure and pain, and that was how my life ended. When I passed away from that place I was reborn here.’ And so they recollect their many kinds of past lives, with features and details.
The fifth: clairvoyance
§5With clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds: ‘These dear beings did bad things by way of body, speech, and mind. They denounced the noble ones; they had wrong view; and they chose to act out of that wrong view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell. These dear beings, however, did good things by way of body, speech, and mind. They never denounced the noble ones; they had right view; and they chose to act out of that right view. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm.’ And so, with clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, they see sentient beings passing away and being reborn—inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. They understand how sentient beings pass on according to their deeds.
The sixth: the ending of defilements, and the conclusion
§6They realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life. And they live having realized it with their own insight due to the ending of defilements. A mendicant with these six qualities is worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods, worthy of hospitality, worthy of a religious donation, worthy of veneration with cupped palms, and is the supreme field of merit for the world.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.