Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Danger, suffering, disease, boil, chain (or snare), and bog are all terms for sensual pleasures, because someone besotted by sensual greed and shackled by lustful desire is not freed from any of these six conditions, in this life or lives to come.
Six words, one argument
The discourse does not explain each term separately with its own distinct rationale. It states all six terms, then gives a single explanation that covers all six at once: entanglement in sensual desire keeps a person unfree from danger, unfree from suffering, unfree from disease, and so on through the whole list. The six words function less as six separate insights than as six angles on one claim, repeated with variation for emphasis.
Words chosen for their ordinary force
None of the six terms is a specialized doctrinal term coined for this discourse; each is a plain word for something anyone would want to avoid — a boil, a chain, a bog to be mired in. The argument's persuasive weight rests on this ordinariness: rather than asserting sensual pleasure is bad by definition, the discourse claims it deserves the same visceral aversion a listener already feels toward disease or a suppurating wound.
A change of state, not a permanent verdict
The closing verses describe not a condemnation without exit but a contrast between two conditions: “ordinary people” remain attached to what these six words describe, while “the unattached,” seeing the danger in grasping, are freed with the ending of birth and death. The six terms describe a condition that can be left, not an unalterable feature of sensual experience itself.
A different kind of six-item list
Compared to the qualities, practices, and occasions named elsewhere in this chapter, AN 6.23's list is unusual in being a list of words rather than a list of things to do or cultivate. Its place among the Sixes depends only on there being six terms offered, not on any six-fold structure in the underlying teaching about sensual pleasure itself.
Key terms
The text
Six terms for sensual pleasures
§1“‘Danger’, mendicants, is a term for sensual pleasures. ‘Suffering’, ‘disease’, ‘boil’, ‘chain’, and ‘bog’ are terms for sensual pleasures.
Why these terms apply
§2And why is ‘danger’ a term for sensual pleasures? Someone who is besotted by sensual greed and shackled by lustful desire is not freed from dangers in this life or in lives to come. That is why ‘danger’ is a term for sensual pleasures. And why are ‘suffering’, ‘disease’, ‘boil’, ‘snare’, and ‘bog’ terms for sensual pleasures? Someone who is besotted by sensual greed and shackled by lustful desire is not freed from suffering, disease, boils, chains, or bogs in this life or in lives to come. That is why these are terms for sensual pleasures.
The closing verses
§3Danger, suffering, disease, boils, and chains and bogs both. These describe the sensual pleasures to which ordinary people are attached. Seeing the danger in grasping, the origin of birth and death, the unattached are freed with the ending of birth and death. Happy, they’ve come to a safe place, quenched in this very life. They’ve gone beyond all threats and dangers, and risen above all suffering.”
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