Reading guide
The only discourse in this vagga naming other path-groups
Where every other discourse in this vagga measures the eightfold path against a single external image, this discourse alone names four further groups of qualities — the four kinds of mindfulness meditation, the four right efforts, the four bases of psychic power, the five faculties, the five powers, and the seven awakening factors — as themselves brought to fulfillment when the eightfold path is developed.
Key terms
The text
§1“Mendicants, various winds blow in the sky. Winds blow from the east, the west, the north, and the south. There are winds that are dusty and dustless, cool and warm, weak and strong. In the same way, when the noble eightfold path is developed and cultivated the following are fully developed: the four kinds of mindfulness meditation, the four right efforts, the four bases of psychic power, the five faculties, the five powers, and the seven awakening factors. And how are they fully developed? It’s when a mendicant develops right view, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right immersion, which rely on seclusion, fading away, and cessation, and ripen as letting go. That’s how they’re fully developed.”
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