Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Two kinds of people are bound for hell unless they give up their fault: someone unchaste who claims to be chaste, and someone who groundlessly accuses a genuinely chaste person of being unchaste — the same lie about the same subject, told from opposite directions, and judged equally severely.
No narrative frame
As with almost every discourse in this collection, no place, audience, or occasion is given; the teaching opens directly with the Itivuttaka's formula.
Two mirrored faults
The prose names its two culprits precisely: "Someone who is unchaste, but claims to be chaste; and someone who makes a groundless accusation of unchastity against a person whose chastity is pure." Both are named as "bound for a place of loss, bound for hell, if they don't give up this fault" — the discourse is explicit that the danger is conditional on not giving up the fault, not an unalterable sentence. What makes the pairing striking is its symmetry: one person falsely claims a virtue they lack, the other falsely denies a virtue someone else genuinely has. Both are lies about the exact same thing, told in opposite directions, and both are judged by the same standard.
Equal in the hereafter
The first verse states the equivalence directly: "A liar goes to hell, as does one who denies what they did. Both are equal in the hereafter, those men of base deeds." A false claim to virtue and a false denial of wrongdoing are treated, in this verse, as the same category of act — both are simply lies, regardless of which direction they distort the truth.
A scrap of ocher cloth
The second verse turns from the individual liar to a wider warning about appearances: "Many who wear a scrap of ocher cloth are unrestrained and wicked. Being wicked, they are reborn in hell due to their bad deeds." The ocher robe, the visible mark of a Buddhist renunciant, is named here precisely to deny that it guarantees anything about the person wearing it — the robe alone does not make someone chaste, restrained, or good.
Better to eat fire
The third verse delivers the discourse's starkest image: "It'd be better for the immoral and unrestrained to eat an iron ball, scorching, like a burning flame, than to eat the nation's alms." "The nation's alms" (raṭṭhapiṇḍa) is the food offered by lay supporters to those they trust to be genuinely virtuous renunciants worthy of support. The comparison is deliberately extreme: better physical agony, the verse says, than consuming what was given in good faith by people who believed they were supporting real virtue.
Key terms
The text
§1This was said by the Buddha, the Perfected One: that is what I heard.
§2“Mendicants, these two are bound for a place of loss, bound for hell, if they don’t give up this fault. What two? Someone who is unchaste, but claims to be chaste; and someone who makes a groundless accusation of unchastity against a person whose chastity is pure. These are the two who are bound for a place of loss, bound for hell, if they don’t give up this fault.”
The Buddha spoke this matter. On this it is said:
§3“A liar goes to hell, as does one who denies what they did. Both are equal in the hereafter, those men of base deeds.
§4Many who wear a scrap of ocher cloth are unrestrained and wicked. Being wicked, they are reborn in hell due to their bad deeds.
§5It’d be better for the immoral and unrestrained to eat an iron ball, scorching, like a burning flame, than to eat the nation’s alms.”
§6This too is a matter that was spoken by the Blessed One: that is what I heard.
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