Reading guide
A single pass through the chain, not one per aggregate
This discourse states the impermanence chain only once — form is impermanent, what's impermanent is suffering, what's suffering is not-self, and what's not-self should be seen as not mine — without separately restating or eliding it for feeling, perception, choices, or consciousness the way SN 22.76 did. The chain then moves directly to disillusionment with all five aggregates named together in a single collective clause.
The poem simply absent, not summarized or referenced
Unlike some other discourses in this book that explicitly point back to an earlier fuller statement with an ellipsis or cross-reference, this discourse simply ends where SN 22.76's prose section ended, with no indication that a poem exists elsewhere or that anything has been omitted. The prose stands as a complete discourse in its own right.
What the pairing suggests about the poem's role
Read together, SN 22.76 and this discourse suggest the poem functioned as an optional celebratory elaboration rather than a required component of the teaching itself — the same relationship SN 22.33 and SN 22.34 showed earlier in this book between a discourse with a vivid simile and its plainer companion lacking one.
A shorter discourse before the vagga's next major image
This discourse's brevity offers a brief pause before SN 22.78's extended lion simile, which will develop the very image SN 22.76's poem closed on — the lion's roar — into a full narrative comparison spanning the discourse's entire structure.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, form is impermanent. What’s impermanent is suffering. What’s suffering is not-self. And what’s not-self should be truly seen with right understanding like this: ‘This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.’
§2Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’ As far as there are abodes of sentient beings, even up until the pinnacle of existence, the perfected ones are the foremost and the best.”
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