Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Bad friendship makes it impossible to fulfill the supplementary regulations, which makes it impossible to fulfill a trainee's practice, which makes it impossible to fulfill ethics, which makes it impossible to give up sensual desire and the desire for rebirth in the form and formless realms; good friendship reverses every link.
A chain, not a list
Each of the four links names one thing as impossible without the thing before it, rather than presenting four independent items the way AN 6.65 and 6.66 did. The reader is meant to trace cause through cause, ending at the chain's final and most consequential term: giving up desire for rebirth in any of the three realms.
Friendship named first, not last
Of everything that could open a chain ending in freedom from rebirth, this discourse opens with something as ordinary as who a mendicant spends time with, “frequenting, accompanying, and attending” them and “following their example.” The choice suggests companionship is treated here not as a minor social preference but as the first domino in a chain reaching all the way to liberation.
What the supplementary regulations are
The “practice dealing with the supplementary regulations” (abhisamācārikā dhammā) names the detailed rules of conduct beyond the core precepts — etiquette, decorum, the small disciplines of communal monastic life. The chain's claim is that these small disciplines, easy to dismiss as peripheral, are the very foundation the rest of the chain depends on.
Three realms, one closing term
The chain's final link does not stop at sensual desire alone but names the desire for rebirth in the realm of luminous form and the formless realm as well — the three domains a fully freed mind has let go of. The chain that began with ordinary companionship ends at the outer edge of the entire cosmos as this literature maps it.
Key terms
The text
The chain that begins with bad friends
§1“Mendicants, it is quite impossible that a mendicant with bad friends, companions, and associates, while frequenting, accompanying, and attending, and following their example, will fulfill the practice dealing with the supplementary regulations. Without fulfilling the practice dealing with supplementary regulations, it’s impossible to fulfill the practice of a trainee. Without fulfilling the practice of a trainee, it’s impossible to fulfill ethics. Without fulfilling ethics, it’s impossible to give up sensual desire, or desire to be reborn in the realm of luminous form or in the formless realm.
The same chain, reversed
§2It’s quite possible that a mendicant with good friends, companions, and associates, while frequenting, accompanying, and attending, and following their example, will fulfill the practice dealing with the supplementary regulations. Having fulfilled the practice dealing with supplementary regulations, it’s possible to fulfill the practice of a trainee. Having fulfilled the practice of a trainee, it’s possible to fulfill ethics. Having fulfilled ethics, it’s possible to give up sensual desire, and desire to be reborn in the realm of luminous form and in the formless realm.”
Self-check quiz
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