Reading guide
A second full-refrain poem in this book
Every verse opens with the identical couplet: ‘saddhāya abhinikkhamma, navapabbajito navo’, ‘one newly gone forth, who has left their home out of faith’. This is the second poem in the Book of the Threes built this way, after Thag 3.4 (Dhaniya) earlier in this chapter — confirming the device is a recurring structural choice in this book, not a one-off.
Three completions, addressed to the newly ordained
The first verse completes the refrain with advice on company: mix with ‘spiritual friends, who are tireless and pure of livelihood’. The second turns to training in monastic discipline (vinaya) as a mendicant within the Saṅgha. The third names skill in ‘what is appropriate and what is not’, closing on wandering ‘undistracted’.
A name whose specialty this site already confirms
This site's own AN 1.219–234, §228, names Upāli foremost among those who have memorized the monastic law (vinayadhara) — the same figure remembered as reciting the discipline at the first council, as Ānanda recited the discourses. This poem's second verse, urging a newly ordained monk to ‘train in monastic discipline’, fits that specialty closely enough that this reading guide treats the two as very plausibly the same Upāli — though, as always, no comment on this specific poem confirms it.
Key terms
The text
§1One newly gone forth, who has left their home out of faith, should mix with spiritual friends, who are tireless and pure of livelihood.
§2One newly gone forth, who has left their home out of faith, a mendicant staying in the Saṅgha, being wise, would train in monastic discipline.
§3One newly gone forth, who has left their home out of faith, skilled in what is appropriate and what is not, would wander undistracted.
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