Practicing In Line With the Teaching

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

To practice in line with the teaching is to speak on the teaching rather than against it, to think on the teaching rather than against it, and — rejecting both of those framings as still incomplete — to meditate with equanimity, mindfulness, and awareness.

A definition, not just an exhortation

The phrase “practicing in line with the teaching” appears constantly across the Sutta Piṭaka as a stock compliment for a serious practitioner, but is rarely spelled out. This discourse is unusual in offering an actual definition, and it does so with a careful three-part structure: “When speaking, they speak on the teaching, not against it. When thinking, they think on the teaching, not against it.” The first two clauses are mirror images of each other — right speech and right thought, defined in the same terms, both oriented positively toward the teaching rather than away from or opposed to it.

The third move: rejecting both

The sentence doesn't stop at two well-behaved clauses. It adds: “And rejecting both, they meditate staying equanimous, mindful and aware.” This third clause is the discourse's real hinge. Having speech and thought aligned with the teaching is necessary but, on its own, still leaves a kind of engagement — even favorable engagement is still engagement, still a stance being maintained about something. The final move sets aside both the speaking and the thinking — not by contradicting them, but by settling into a meditative equanimity that doesn't need to keep affirming or refuting anything at all. Practicing in line with the teaching, on this account, isn't finished by getting one's speech and thoughts correctly aligned; it completes in a stillness that has moved past needing to take a position, for or against, in the first place.

The verse: delight without falling away

The verse restates the same point through a cluster of nearly synonymous verbs — “delighting in the teaching, enjoying the teaching, contemplating the teaching” — applied to a mendicant “who recollects the teaching” and, as a result, “doesn’t fall away from the true teaching.” The repetition here isn't padding; it emphasizes that this orientation toward the teaching is meant to be constant and many-sided — felt, thought, and recalled together — rather than a single act performed once.

Every posture, the same peace

The closing lines extend the practice across the full range of ordinary activity: “whether walking or standing, sitting or lying down, with mind collected inside, they attain only peace.” These four postures — walking, standing, sitting, lying down — are the canon's standard shorthand for the entirety of a day's activity, not a special meditative posture set apart from ordinary life. The claim being made is that practicing in line with the teaching, once genuinely established, isn't confined to formal sitting practice; it travels with the practitioner through whatever they happen to be doing, because what has actually changed is the collectedness of the mind itself, not the external activity.

Key terms