Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
There are two mortifying things: someone who has not done good and skillful deeds that keep them safe, but has done bad deeds, violence, and sin, is mortified by the thought “I haven’t done good things” and mortified again by the thought “I have done bad things” — two separate torments named together.
A burning word
The discourse’s title, tapanīya, “mortifying,” shares its root with tapa, the word for ascetic austerity or self-imposed burning effort. There is a quiet irony in the connection: the “burning” described here is not a disciplined practice chosen for spiritual purposes, but an involuntary self-reproach that simply arises, unbidden, in someone who has neglected good conduct and taken up bad conduct instead. It is a kind of heat a person inflicts on themselves through neglect, rather than one they take on deliberately.
Two separate torments, not one
It would be easy to read “not having done good” and “having done bad” as two descriptions of a single failing. The discourse is careful to keep them apart: “thinking, ‘I haven’t done good things,’ they’re mortified; thinking, ‘I have done bad things,’ they’re mortified.” Each thought is presented as producing its own distinct mortification. This matters because it means the discourse is not only concerned with active wrongdoing; simply failing to build up good, protective qualities is treated as its own separate source of later regret, even apart from whatever bad deeds were or weren’t committed.
The verse’s final line
The verse extends the prose’s two-part diagnosis into a stated consequence: having done bad by way of body, speech, and mind, “and whatever else is corrupt,” not having done good deeds, and having done much bad, “that witless person” is reborn in hell when the body breaks up. The verse’s language is stronger than the prose’s — where the prose stays with the felt experience of mortification in the present, the verse follows the pattern through to its result after death, using the same stock “body breaks up” formula found across this collection.
Presumably one half of another pair
Following the pattern already established at the very start of this book — Iti 28 and Iti 29, on living in suffering and living in happiness — this discourse’s title and content strongly suggest it is meant to be read alongside a positive counterpart. The Itivuttaka’s table of contents lists exactly such a discourse immediately next, titled “Not Mortifying,” which would be expected to name the reverse condition: having done good, and refrained from bad, as free of this particular self-reproach.
Key terms
The text
§1This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.
§2“These two things, mendicants, are mortifying. What two? It’s when someone hasn’t done good and skillful things that keep them safe, but has done bad things, violence and sin. Thinking, ‘I haven’t done good things’, they’re mortified. Thinking, ‘I have done bad things’, they’re mortified. These are the two things that are mortifying.”
The Buddha spoke this matter. On this it is said:
§3“Having done bad things
by way of body,
speech, and mind,
and whatever else is corrupt;
§4not having done good deeds,
and having done many bad,
when their body breaks up, that witless person
is reborn in hell.”
§5This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.
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