The Imported Cloth

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

The conduct the wise blame is the unskilful — that is, the blameworthy, the hurtful, the suffering-producing: whatever harms oneself, others, or both, and makes unskilful qualities grow and skilful ones wane — and the Buddha is one who has given up all of it and possesses all its opposite; and what matters is not the praise or blame of fools, but the examined judgement of the discerning.

The one word that completes the question

The king asks whether the Buddha would do anything “faulted by ascetics and brahmins.” Ānanda answers: he would not do what is faulted by sensible ascetics and brahmins — and the king is delighted, because that single addition is exactly the distinction he himself holds dear. “I do not believe the praise or criticism of incompetent fools, spoken without examining, is the important thing,” he says; “rather, the praise or criticism of competent and intelligent people, after examining and scrutinising.” This is a small but important point about the moral life. The world is full of approval and disapproval, and most of it is noise — the reflexive likes and dislikes of people who have not looked carefully. To live well is not to chase praise or flee blame as such, but to care only for the verdict of those who actually understand. A wise person’s blame is worth more than a thousand fools’ applause; and the Buddha’s conduct is such that no wise observer could fault it.

The chain of equivalences

Asked what conduct the wise blame, Ānanda answers through a descending ladder of synonyms, each unpacking the last — and the same in reverse for the praiseworthy:

These are not four different things but one thing seen from four sides: the unskilful is the blameworthy is the hurtful is the suffering-producing. The chain dissolves any gap between “morally wrong” and “actually harmful”: in the Dhamma, an act is not blamed by arbitrary decree but because of what it genuinely does. Bad conduct is not bad because a rule forbids it; it is forbidden because it hurts. This holds across body, speech, and mind alike — the same analysis runs through all three doors of action.

The final test: harm and growth

At the bottom of the ladder lies the actual criterion, stated twice over. Conduct “results in suffering” when it “leads to hurting yourself, hurting others, and hurting both, and makes unskilful qualities grow while skilful qualities decline.” And conduct “results in happiness” when it “leads to pleasing yourself, others, and both, and makes skilful qualities grow while unskilful decline.” Two measures are joined here. The first is consequence: whom does this act harm or benefit — oneself, others, or both? The second is character: what does this act do to the mind that does it, growing or shrinking its skilful qualities? An act is fully good only when it passes both tests — when it harms no one and also leaves the doer better, more generous, more clear. This double criterion — outward effect and inward effect together — is the heart of Buddhist ethics, and it is why the moral life and the meditative life are not two things: every action either purifies or pollutes the very mind one is trying to free.

The Buddha, who has done it completely

Twice the king asks whether the Buddha praises giving up all the unskilful and embracing all the skilful, and twice Ānanda gives the same quiet, total answer: “The Realized One has given up all unskilful things and possesses skilful things.” The Buddha is not merely a teacher of this standard but its complete fulfilment — one in whom the whole of the unskilful has been abandoned and the whole of the skilful is present. This is what makes him beyond the fault of even the most discerning critic: there is simply nothing harmful left in him to find. The standard the king was asking about is, in the Buddha, a finished fact.

The gift, and contentment that overflows

The closing scene is a small masterpiece of social grace. So pleased is the king that he wishes to give Ānanda a fitting reward — an elephant, a horse, a village — but knows none of these suits a monk. So he offers the bāhitika, a length of fine imported cloth sent to him by King Ajātasattu, sixteen cubits by eight. Ānanda declines: “Enough, great king. My three robes are complete.” Here contentment meets generosity, and at first they seem to block each other. But the king finds the resolution, with a simile from the very river beside them: as the Aciravatī, swollen by mountain rains, overflows both its banks, so let Ānanda make new robes from this cloth and pass his old robes on to his fellow monks — “in this way my gift will come to overflow.” And Ānanda accepts. The lesson is delicate: the contented monk need not refuse a gift outright, for a gift accepted and then shared onward multiplies into the whole community’s benefit. Contentment is not the rejection of all receiving, but freedom from grasping — and such freedom can let a gift flow through it to others rather than pool in oneself.

The Buddha’s praise of Ānanda

Ānanda reports the conversation and presents the cloth to the Buddha, who says to the monks: “King Pasenadi is lucky, so very lucky, to get to see Ānanda and pay homage to him.” It is a generous word about the great attendant, who throughout this discourse teaches in the Buddha’s absence with perfect fidelity — completing the king’s question, unfolding the analysis clearly, declining and then rightly accepting the gift. The discourse is, among other things, a portrait of Ānanda as a worthy representative of the Teacher: when the king meets him, he meets the Dhamma, and the good fortune is the king’s.

Key terms