Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
To give up the five weaknesses in training — killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxicants — a mendicant should develop the four right efforts: striving to prevent, abandon, develop, and maintain skillful and unskillful qualities respectively.
The identical obstacle, a substituted remedy
This discourse's five weaknesses are word-for-word identical to AN 9.63's opener several chapters back. What changes is entirely the remedy: where ch.7 answered every obstacle with the four kinds of mindfulness meditation, this chapter answers the identical ten obstacle-lists with the four right efforts instead.
Four efforts, aimed in two directions each
The four right efforts split cleanly into prevention and cure for each of two categories: preventing unskillful qualities from arising, abandoning those that have arisen, developing skillful qualities not yet arisen, and maintaining and increasing those already present — an active, effort-driven complement to mindfulness meditation's more observational approach.
A chapter built on substitution, not new content
This chapter's real interest lies less in its individual obstacle-lists, already fully explored in ch.7, than in what it reveals by substitution: the same ten problems this project has already named can each be answered by more than one canonical remedy, mindfulness meditation and right effort standing as parallel, not competing, approaches.
Key terms
The text
Five weaknesses in training
§1“Mendicants, there are these five weaknesses when you’re training. What five? Killing living creatures, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and consuming beer, wine, and liquor intoxicants. These are the five weaknesses when you’re training.
Four right efforts
§2To give up these five weaknesses in your training you should develop the four right efforts. What four? It’s when a mendicant generates enthusiasm, tries, makes an effort, exerts the mind, and strives so that bad, unskillful qualities don’t arise. They generate enthusiasm, try, make an effort, exert the mind, and strive so that bad, unskillful qualities that have arisen are given up. They generate enthusiasm, try, make an effort, exert the mind, and strive so that skillful qualities arise. They generate enthusiasm, try, make an effort, exert the mind, and strive so that skillful qualities that have arisen remain, are not lost, but increase, mature, and are completed by development. To give up these five weaknesses in your training you should develop these four right efforts.”
Self-check quiz
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