The Buddha alone, addressing the assembled mendicants
Form
SN 22.12's structure restated with "suffering" substituted for "impermanent," reduced in the source to its two changed lines
Length
under a minute to read
Northern parallel
A rough counterpart may exist in the Chinese Saṃyukta-āgama (T99), though this reading guide does not assert a specific matching sutra number
Difficulty
★☆☆☆☆ — the shortest discourse in the vagga so far, read alongside SN 22.12
Why this discourse
Where SN 22.12 spelled out its four-step liberation chain in full, this discourse is compressed by the source itself to almost nothing: the aggregates are named as suffering rather than impermanent, and everything else — disillusionment, fading desire, freedom, the arahant's declaration — is elided with a bare ellipsis, trusting the reader's memory of the discourse immediately before it. This brevity is itself informative: whoever compiled this material judged the chain from “seeing X” to “freed, knowing they are freed” robust enough to survive substituting a different starting premise without needing to be rewritten each time.
Reading guide
The premise changes; nothing else needs to be said
The discourse's only substantive content is its opening claim: the five aggregates are suffering. Everything that follows in SN 22.12 — disillusionment, fading desire, freedom, and the arahant's four-part declaration — is represented here only by a bare “seeing this …” and a closing ellipsis pointing back to “there is nothing further for this place.”
A genuine feature of the source, not a shortcut taken here
As with SN 22.6 earlier in this book, this elision is preserved exactly as bilara-data gives it rather than expanded with invented prose. The pattern recurs throughout this vagga: SN 22.12 states the full chain once, and the discourses that share its shape lean on that full statement rather than repeating it.
Suffering as a premise on its own terms
Even compressed this far, the discourse still makes a distinct claim worth pausing on: the aggregates themselves — not merely one's relationship to them, as in SN 22.7-8's grasping-based analysis — are directly named as suffering (dukkha), the second of the three marks, standing on its own rather than derived from impermanence the way the traditional sequence (what is impermanent is suffering) would suggest.
The second of three direct statements
This discourse is the middle term of Aniccavagga's opening triplet — impermanence in SN 22.12, suffering here, not-self in SN 22.14 immediately after — each stating one mark of the three directly and without argument, in contrast to the more elaborate reasoning SN 22.15-20 will build later in the same vagga.
Key terms
dukkha — “suffering” — the term substituted for anicca (impermanent) in this discourse's opening claim, otherwise identical to SN 22.12.
peyyāla — the technical term for an elided passage like this discourse's, where the source points back to a fuller statement rather than repeating it.
nibbindati — “grows disillusioned” — the first link of the chain, present here only by cross-reference to SN 22.12.
vimuccati — “is freed” — the third link, likewise elided but assumed by the discourse's closing ellipsis.
nāparaṁ itthattāya — “nothing further for this place” — the closing phrase of the arahant declaration, the only part of it directly quoted even in this compressed form.
The text
The discourse in full — genuinely this short in the source, its ellipses given exactly as bilara-data preserves them rather than expanded from SN 22.12. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
§1At Sāvatthī. “Mendicants, form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness are suffering. Seeing this … They understand: ‘… there is nothing further for this place.’”
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Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
What is this discourse's only substantive change from SN 22.12?
Correct: A. Everything else is elided by cross-reference to the previous discourse.
Question 2 of 10
How does the source handle the rest of the discourse's content?
Correct: A. A genuine peyyāla feature of the source material.
Question 3 of 10
What does this discourse's brevity suggest about the underlying liberation chain?
Correct: A. The chain's structure stays fixed while its starting premise varies.
Question 4 of 10
How does this discourse's claim differ from SN 22.7-8's earlier analysis of grasping?
Correct: A. A direct claim about the aggregates' nature, distinct from the grasping-based diagnosis earlier in the book.
Question 5 of 10
What position does this discourse hold in Aniccavagga's opening triplet?
Correct: A. Impermanence, suffering, not-self — each stated directly in turn.
Question 6 of 10
How does this discourse's directness compare to SN 22.15-20 later in the vagga?
Correct: A. SN 22.12-14 state; SN 22.15-20 build progressively more elaborate arguments.
Question 7 of 10
Does this project's reading guide reconstruct the elided content and present it as this discourse's own text?
Correct: A. Consistent with this project's practice on other short peyyāla stubs.
Question 8 of 10
Where is this discourse set?
Correct: A. Continuing the same setting as SN 22.12.
Question 9 of 10
How many aggregates does this discourse's claim apply to?
Correct: A. Named together as a group, as in SN 22.12.
Question 10 of 10
What discourse comes immediately after this one?
Correct: A. Not-self is the third term of the opening triplet.
