Reading guide
Four fixed qualities anchoring the whole series
Assaddha (faithless), ahirika (shameless, lacking hiri, the sense of conscience), anottāpī (imprudent, lacking ottappa, prudent moral dread), and duppañña (witless) recur unchanged across all nine discourses in this series — hiri and ottappa in particular are named elsewhere in this tradition as universal ethical safeguards, not qualities specific to any one gender.
A question prompted by direct clairvoyant observation
Unlike the plain declarative discourses around it, this one is framed as Anuruddha's own report of what he has personally seen, followed by a direct question — giving the fivefold answer that follows an evidentiary frame rather than presenting it as an unprompted teaching.
One variable slot, opening a template
“Irritable” (kodhana) occupies this discourse's own fifth position; SN 37.6 through SN 37.13 will each swap in a different fifth quality — acrimonious, jealous, stingy, adulterous, unethical, unlearned, lazy, and unmindful in turn — while leaving the other four positions untouched.
A series that will only grow more compressed from here
This discourse gives the full fivefold formula in complete, unabbreviated form; SN 37.6 onward progressively compress the shared material with peyyāla markers, this discourse's own full version becoming the template the later, shorter discourses lean on rather than restate.
Key terms
The text
§1Then Venerable Anuruddha went up to the Buddha, sat down to one side, and said to him: “Sometimes, sir, with my clairvoyance that’s purified and superhuman, I see that a lady—when her body breaks up, after death—is reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell. How many qualities do ladies have so that they’re reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell?”
§2“Anuruddha, when ladies have five qualities, when their body breaks up, after death, they are reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell. What five? They’re faithless, shameless, imprudent, irritable, and witless. When ladies possess these five qualities, when their body breaks up, after death, they are reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell.”
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