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Three Trainings Cover Everything

AN 3.88, the Tatiyasikkhā Sutta — set 2, The Basic Diagnosis and the Path

Reading time: about 3 min · 367 words

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Before you read

This begins with an intimidating number: more than 150 monastic rules, recited every two weeks. The Buddha gathers all of them into three things to train: conduct, the mind, and discernment.

The long middle section lists traditional degrees of completion. You do not need to memorize them. Its point is the closing line: complete training brings complete success, partial training still brings partial success, and none of the work is wasted. Small mistakes can be repaired, while the commitments fundamental to the spiritual life must remain steady.

Translation

Three Trainings Cover Everything

"Bhikkhus, every two weeks more than 150 training rules are recited. Young men from respectable families who want what is good for themselves train in them.

All of these rules are included in three trainings. Which three?

  • training in higher conduct
  • training in higher mind
  • training in higher discernment

These are the three trainings that include them all.

Firm in What Matters

A bhikkhu completely fulfills conduct, unification of mind, and discernment.

They may break some lesser and minor training rules, then make things right and return to good standing.

Why is that? I do not say that a minor offense makes them incapable of success.

But in the training rules that are fundamental and fitting to the spiritual life, their conduct is constant and steady. They undertake those rules and train in them.

How Far the Training Can Lead

With the wearing away of the outflows, they realize for themselves release of mind and release through discernment, both free of outflows. They enter and live in these releases here and now.

If they do not get that far, then with the complete wearing away of the five lower fetters, they may reach final nibbāna in one of five ways:

  • between one life and the next
  • soon after being reborn
  • without extra effort
  • with extra effort
  • by heading upstream to Akaniṭṭha, the Highest Realm

If they do not get that far, then with the complete wearing away of three fetters and the thinning of passion, aversion, and confusion, they are a once-returner. They return to this world just one more time and then make an end of dissatisfaction.

If they do not get that far, then with the complete wearing away of three fetters, they may:

  • live one more human life and then make an end of dissatisfaction
  • be reborn in two or three families and then make an end of dissatisfaction
  • be reborn at most seven times among gods and humans and then make an end of dissatisfaction

None of the Training Is Wasted

So someone who trains fully succeeds fully. Someone who trains partly succeeds partly.

I tell you: none of these training rules is wasted."

The eighth discourse is finished.

Words used in this translation (14)
aversion
One of the three "roots" behind unwholesome action, alongside greed and delusion -- the pushback against what's unwanted or unpleasant.
bhikkhu
A Buddhist monk -- someone who has left household life to practise full time. Left untranslated because "monk" carries centuries of unrelated European associations.
bhikkhus
Buddhist monks -- those who have left household life to practise full time. The Buddha's usual way of addressing the assembly, roughly "friends" in force.
conduct
This project's rendering of "sīla", often translated "morality" or "virtue". It means how a person actually behaves. The rest of the practice grows from it; it is not a set of rules to obey.
dissatisfaction
This translation's rendering of "dukkha," the Buddhist term for the unsatisfying, unstable quality of ordinary experience. Often translated "suffering," but that can sound more dramatic than the everyday sense of things not quite being right.
final nibbāna
The final-completion use of nibbāna language. It is not a synonym for death, annihilation, or heaven.
five lower fetters
Five patterns said to bind a person to ordinary sensual existence: self-view, doubt, grasping at rules and observances, sensual passion, and aversion.
outflows
This project's rendering of "āsavā" -- deep-running habits that keep seeping out and driving behaviour, classically sensuality, becoming, and ignorance. Often translated "taints" or "defilements."
release of mind
Release described from the mind or heart side of experience, often paired with release through discernment.
release through discernment
Release described from the clear-understanding side, paired with release of mind rather than reduced to intellectual knowledge.
spiritual life
The Buddhist path of practice as a whole -- not just a set of beliefs, but a whole way of living.
unification of mind
This project's rendering of "samādhi" -- the thinking mind and heart gathered together into one organized, workable whole instead of pulling against each other. It does not mean narrowing attention onto one point. Usually translated "concentration," which this project avoids because it suggests forcing and strain.
wearing away
The gradual using-up of something until it runs out completely. The texts use it especially for what has to run out before release.
world
A word whose scope shifts with the teaching. It can mean the lived world we build through the senses and the mind, or the wider physical cosmos. The surrounding passage shows which sense it has.
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