Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A mendicant with many desires, discontent with any kind of robes, almsfood, lodgings, and medicine, and faithless, unethical, unmindful, and witless, can expect decline rather than growth in skillful qualities, day or night; the reversal of all six brings growth rather than decline.
Contentment named first, ethical qualities following
The list opens not with an ethical failing but with a disposition toward material provisions: many desires (mahiccha) and discontent (asantuṭṭha) with “any kind” of the four basic requisites. Only after this does the list turn to faith, ethics, mindfulness, and wisdom — suggesting contentment with material provision is treated here as a precondition for the more familiar ethical qualities that follow it, not a separate, unrelated concern.
'Whether by day or by night' — an unusual temporal frame
Most discourses in this chapter state their outcome without any temporal qualification. This discourse's closing phrase, “whether by day or by night” (rattiṁ vā divā vā), makes explicit what is elsewhere left implicit: that growth or decline in skillful qualities is not confined to formal meditation sessions but proceeds continuously, at every hour.
Closing the chapter on the same register it opened with
Arahattavagga opened at AN 6.75 with thoughts and perceptions determining present happiness and future rebirth, and closes here with contentment and ethical qualities determining growth or decline across all hours — both discourses framing their six items as operating continuously, in the texture of an ordinary day, rather than only within formal practice.
Key terms
The text
Six things that bring decline
§1“Mendicants, a mendicant with six qualities can expect decline, not growth, in skillful qualities, whether by day or by night. What six? It’s when a mendicant has many desires—they’re frustrated and not content with any kind of robes, almsfood, lodgings, and medicines and supplies for the sick. And they’re faithless, unethical, unmindful, and witless. A mendicant with these six qualities can expect decline, not growth, in skillful qualities, whether by day or by night.
Six things that bring growth
§2A mendicant with six qualities can expect growth, not decline, in skillful qualities, whether by day or by night. What six? It’s when a mendicant doesn’t have many desires—they’re not frustrated but content with any kind of robes, almsfood, lodgings, and medicines and supplies for the sick. And they’re faithful, ethical, mindful, and wise. A mendicant with these six qualities can expect growth, not decline, in skillful qualities, whether by day or by night.”
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