Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The true teaching fails to last long after a Buddha's final passing when monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen lack respect for the Teacher, the teaching, the Saṅgha, the training, diligence, and hospitality; it lasts long when all four assemblies maintain that respect.
The same six items, checked directly, applied to a new scope
Compared word for word against AN 6.32's list — respect for the Teacher, the teaching, the Saṅgha, the training, diligence, hospitality — this discourse names the identical six. What changes is not the content but its scope: AN 6.32 concerned one mendicant's decline, while this discourse concerns whether “the true teaching” itself endures, and specifies all four assemblies — monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen — rather than mendicants alone.
Kimbila's question, and why it matters
The question “what is the cause, what is the reason why the true teaching does not last long” is asked about events after “the final quenching of the Realized One” — a question about the tradition's own long-term future, not about any single practitioner's present conduct. Framing the answer around respect held by the whole community, not any one figure's authority, locates the teaching's survival in a distributed responsibility rather than reliance on any single leader after the Buddha's death.
Symmetry as the whole answer
As at AN 6.31 and several other discourses in this chapter, the answer to “what causes decline” and “what prevents it” is a single list stated twice, once negated and once affirmed. No further elaboration is offered on how respect is cultivated or what erodes it; the discourse trusts the list itself to carry the weight of the answer.
Kimbila as a minor but recurring figure
Kimbila, the discourse's named questioner, gives this text and its setting — near the town of Kimbilā, in the Freshwater Mangrove Wood — their specific identity. He appears elsewhere in the canon as a companion of several senior disciples; here his single recorded question concerns nothing less than the teaching's own institutional future.
Key terms
The text
Why the teaching fails to last long
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Kimbilā in the Freshwater Mangrove Wood. Then Venerable Kimbila went up to the Buddha, bowed, sat down to one side, and said to him: “What is the cause, sir, what is the reason why the true teaching does not last long after the final quenching of the Realized One?” “Kimbila, it’s when the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen lack respect and reverence for the Teacher, the teaching, the Saṅgha, the training, diligence, and hospitality after the final quenching of the Realized One. This is the cause, this is the reason why the true teaching does not last long after the final quenching of the Realized One.”
Why the teaching lasts long
§2“What is the cause, sir, what is the reason why the true teaching does last long after the final quenching of the Realized One?” “Kimbila, it’s when the monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen maintain respect and reverence for the Teacher, the teaching, the Saṅgha, the training, diligence, and hospitality after the final quenching of the Realized One. This is the cause, this is the reason why the true teaching does last long after the final quenching of the Realized One.”
Self-check quiz
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