87 unique sutta/vinaya quotes are extracted across the three posts, treating each distinct quoted passage as a unique quote (including multiple unique passages from the same sutta, e.g., three separate quotes from MN 22, three from MN 26, etc., and consolidating identical passages cited in multiple posts).
The grouping follows the requested order: (1) Right View → (2) Stream Entry → (3) Practice Curriculum. Within each group, shorter quotes are listed first to draw the reader in gradually; longer, more complex quotes are placed last.
TABLE 1: Right View (Sammā Diṭṭhi) — Knowing the Teaching, Discerning True from False, and the Nature of the Buddha's Words
| # | Full Quote (as quoted in the posts) | Reference / Link | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "I'm on the same boat with Siha where he has to put faith on the Buddha regarding the afterlife" | AN 5.34#7.9 | Siha the general places faith in the Buddha on matters beyond empirical verification (e.g., rebirth, afterlife). Establishes the role of verifiable-confidence (saddhā) regarding the Teacher even when direct proof is impossible. |
| 2 | "In the past, as today, what I teach is just suffering and the cessation of suffering." | MN 22 | The Buddha's concise summary of his entire teaching — the four noble truths in miniature. |
| 3 | "Singing is regarded as wailing in the training of the Noble One. Dancing is regarded as madness. Too much laughter, showing the teeth, is regarded as childish." | AN 3.107 | The Noble One's training cuts off frivolous, undignified conduct — establishing the disciplined demeanor proper to one who has right view. |
| 4 | "Mendicants, for an individual person who transgresses in one thing, there is no atrocity that evil person would not do, I say. What one thing? It is this: telling a deliberate lie." | KN Iti 25 | Right view is anchored in truthfulness; deliberate lying is the gateway to all evil. |
| 5 | "Human beings are shady, while beasts are obvious." | MN 51 | Humans are capable of disguising intentions and actions, making discernment (and right view) more difficult than in animals. |
| 6 | "Someone with three qualities is placed in hell as if delivered there. What three? They themselves kill living creatures. They encourage others to kill living creatures. And they approve of killing living creatures." | AN 3.163 | Right view rejects killing in all three modes — by self, by encouraging others, and by approval. |
| 7 | "Mendicants, I do not see a single thing that is so very blameworthy as wrong view. Wrong view is the most blameworthy thing of all." | AN 3.318 | Wrong view is the worst of evils because it conditions all other unskillful actions; right view is therefore supreme. |
| 8 | "It is impossible, mendicants, it cannot happen for a likable, desirable, agreeable result to come from bad bodily … bad verbal … bad mental conduct. But it is possible for an unlikable, undesirable, disagreeable result to come from bad bodily … bad verbal … bad mental conduct." | AN 1.278-286 | The law of kamma: unskillful conduct can never yield pleasant results. Foundational to right view. |
| 9 | "Is consciousness permanent or impermanent? … Impermanent, sir. But if it's impermanent, is it suffering or happiness? … Suffering, sir. But if it's impermanent, suffering, and perishable, is it fit to be regarded thus: 'This is mine, I am this, this is my self'? … No, sir." | SN 22.59 | The classic three-lakshana contemplation applied to consciousness — dislodging the soul-view. |
| 10 | "What difference does womanhood make when the mind is serene, and knowledge is present as you rightly discern the Dhamma. Surely someone who might think: 'I am woman', or 'I am man', or 'I am' anything at all, is fit for Māra to address." | SN 5.2 | Identity views (gender, self) are precisely Māra's playground; serenity and wisdom make them irrelevant. |
| 11 | "'Divinity' is a term for your parents. 'First tutors' is a term for your parents. 'Worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods' is a term for your parents. Why is that? Parents are very helpful to their children, they raise them, nurture them, and show them the world." | AN 3.31 | Right view recognizes the empirical role of parents as the genuine "divinities" in one's life. |
| 12 | "Mendicants, the one who encourages someone in a poorly explained teaching and training, the one who they encourage, and the one who practices accordingly all brim with much evil. Why is that? Because the teaching is poorly explained." | AN 1.320 | Threefold danger of a poorly explained Dhamma: teacher, student, and practitioner all generate evil. Right view rejects misrepresented teaching. |
| 13 | "The doctrine of the foolish Jains looks fine initially: for fools, not for the astute, but can't endure being scrutinized or pressed." | MN 56 | Right view's teaching withstands scrutiny; wrong view collapses under examination. |
| 14 | "One individual, mendicants, arises in the world for the detriment and suffering of the people, against the people, for the harm, detriment, and suffering of gods and humans. What one individual? Someone with wrong view, whose perspective is distorted. They draw many people away from the true teaching and establish them in false teachings." | AN 1.316 | The one with wrong view is a singular disaster to the world; mass deception is its fruit. |
| 15 | "One individual, mendicants, arises in the world for the welfare and happiness of the people, for the people, for the benefit, welfare, and happiness of gods and humans. What one individual? Someone with right view, whose perspective is undistorted. They draw many people away from false teachings and establish them in the true teaching." | AN 1.317 | The counterpart: a person with right view benefits gods and humans. |
| 16 | "Gotamī, you might know that certain things lead to passion, not dispassion; to yoking, not to unyoking; to accumulation, not dispersal; to more desires, not fewer; to lack of contentment, not contentment; to crowding, not seclusion; to laziness, not energy; to being burdensome, not being unburdensome. Categorically, you should remember these things as not the teaching, not the training, and not the Teacher's instructions." | AN 8.51 (also cited as AN 8.53) | Eight criteria for identifying what is categorically not Dhamma — a checklist for testing supposed "teachings." |
| 17 | "It's like native gold, which doesn't disappear as long as counterfeit gold hasn't appeared in the world. But when counterfeit gold appears in the world then native gold disappears. In the same way, the true teaching doesn't disappear as long the counterfeit of the true teaching hasn't appeared in the world. … the true teaching doesn't disappear like a ship that sinks all at once." | SN 16.13 | The true Dhamma is eroded gradually by the appearance of counterfeits (faux-teachers, faux-monastics) — a warning relevant to the modern age. |
| 18 | "Take a mendicant who says: 'Reverend, I have heard and learned this in the presence of the Buddha: this is the teaching, this is the training, this is the Teacher's instruction.' You should neither approve nor reject that mendicant's statement. Instead, having carefully memorized those words and phrases, you should make sure they fit in the discourse and are exhibited in the training. If they do not fit in the discourse and are not exhibited in the training, you should draw the conclusion: 'Clearly this is not the word of the Blessed One…' And so you should discard it." | AN 4.180 | The Great Standards — the proper method for testing any alleged teaching against the Suttas and Vinaya. |
| 19 | "It is impossible, mendicants, it cannot happen for an individual accomplished in view to take any condition as permanent. … to take any condition as pleasant. … to take anything as self. … to murder their mother … their father … a perfected one … injure a Realized One with malicious intent … cause a schism in the Saṅgha. … to dedicate themselves to another teacher. … It is impossible … for two perfected ones, fully awakened Buddhas to arise in the same solar system at the same time." | AN 1.268-277 | What the sotāpanna's right view cannot do — a litany of impossibilities defining the magnitude of the attainment. |
| 20 | "It is impossible, mendicants, it cannot happen that someone who has engaged in bad bodily … bad verbal … bad mental conduct, could for that reason alone, when their body breaks up, after death, be reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm. But it is possible that someone who has engaged in bad bodily … bad verbal … bad mental conduct could, for that reason alone, when their body breaks up, after death, be reborn in a place of loss, a bad place, the underworld, hell." | AN 1.287-295 | Bad conduct cannot result in heavenly rebirth; the moral law of kamma cannot be inverted. |
| 21 | "The world is unstable and swept away.' This is the first summary. 'The world has no shelter and no savior.' This is the second summary. 'The world has no owner: you must leave it all behind and pass on.' This is the third summary. 'The world is wanting, insatiable, the slave of craving.' This is the fourth summary of the teaching." | MN 82 | The four axiomatic summaries: impermanence, helplessness, ownerlessness, the totality of craving. The skeleton of right view. |
| 22 | "Mendicants, be your own island, your own refuge, with no other refuge. Let the teaching be your island and your refuge, with no other refuge." | SN 22.43 | Right view takes refuge in the Dhamma itself, not in a personality, parent, nation, or priest. |
| 23 | "I've taught the Dhamma without making any distinction between secret and public teachings. The Realized One doesn't have the closed fist of a tutor when it comes to the teachings. … Come now, mendicants, I say to you all: 'Conditions fall apart. Persist with diligence.'" | DN 16 | The Buddha's last words — there is no esoteric "inner" teaching kept from the public; the Dhamma is fully and openly given, with urgency. |
| 24 | "Mendicants, these three evil roots. What three? Greed, hate, and delusion. Greed … hate … delusion is a root of evil. When a greedy … hateful … delusional person chooses to act by way of body, speech, or mind, that person is evil. … And so these many evil, unskillful things are produced in them, born, sourced, originated, and conditioned by greed … hate … delusion." | AN 3.69 | The three unskillful roots (lobha, dosa, moha) — the foundation of wrong view and the basis for all wrongdoing. |
| 25 | "Is it really true, Ariṭṭha, that you have such a harmful misconception: 'As I understand the Buddha's teaching, the acts that he says are obstructions are not really obstructions for the one who performs them'? … Stupid man, who on earth have you ever known me to teach in that way? … With the similes of a skeleton … a scrap of meat … a grass torch … a pit of glowing coals … a dream … borrowed goods … fruit on a tree … a butcher's knife and chopping board … swords and spears … a snake's head, I've said that sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks. But still you misrepresent me by your wrong grasp, harm yourself, and brim with much evil. This will be for your lasting harm and suffering." | MN 22 | The Buddha rebukes a monk who misrepresents his teaching — the canonical warning against "secularizing" the Dhamma. |
| 26 | "Is it really true, Sāti, that you have such a harmful misconception: 'As I understand the Buddha's teaching, it is this very same consciousness that roams and transmigrates, not another'? … Stupid man, who on earth have you ever known me to teach in that way? Haven't I said in many ways that consciousness is dependently originated, since consciousness does not arise without a cause? But still you misrepresent me by your wrong grasp, harm yourself, and brim with much wickedness. This will be for your lasting harm and suffering." | MN 38 | Rejection of the eternalist/soul-view disguised as a "Buddhist" doctrine of consciousness. |
| 27 | "All the suffering that originates is caused by consciousness: this is one contemplation. 'When consciousness has faded away and ceased with no residue left behind, there is no origination of suffering': this is the second contemplation. … All the suffering that originates is caused by consciousness. With the cessation of consciousness, there is no origination of suffering. Knowing this danger, that suffering is caused by consciousness, with the stilling of consciousness a mendicant is hungerless, quenched." | KN Snp 3.12 | Consciousness is the cause of suffering's origination — it is not the self that transmigrates. |
| 28 | "I went up to the Jain ascetics … 'Do you know for sure that you existed in the past … do you know for sure that you did bad deeds in the past … do you know that you did such and such bad deeds … do you know that so much suffering has already been worn away? Or that so much suffering still remains to be worn away? Or that when so much suffering is worn away all suffering will have been worn away? … do you know about giving up evil qualities in this very life and embracing skillful qualities?' … 'No.' … 'So it seems that you don't know any of these things. In that case, it's not appropriate for the Jain venerables to declare this.'" | MN 101 | The Buddha demolishes determinist past-kamma doctrine by demonstrating its propositional emptiness. |
| 29 | "I went up to the ascetics and brahmins whose view is that everything an individual person experiences is because of past karma … because of God Almighty's creation … has no cause or reason, and I said to them: 'Is it really true that this is the venerables' view?' … 'In that case, you might kill living creatures, steal, not being celibate; use speech that's false, backbiting, harsh, or nonsensical; be covetous, malicious, or have wrong view, all because of past karma … because of God Almighty's creation … has no cause or reason.' … Those who believe that past karma … have no enthusiasm or effort, no idea that there are things that should and should not be done. Not finding as a genuine fact that there are things that should and should not be done, they're unmindful and careless, and can't rightly be called ascetics." | AN 3.61 | Past-kamma, divine-creation, and acausal views all lead to moral paralysis. Right view is necessary for any spiritual life. |
| 30 | "Mendicants, these four things are unthinkable. They should not be thought about, and anyone who tries to think about them will go mad or get frustrated. What four? The domain of the Buddhas … The domain of one in jhana … The results of deeds … Speculation about the world." | AN 4.77 | Right view respects the limits of conceptual thought. The acintita (unthinkable) are not for speculation. |
| 31 | "Mendicants, these five fatal wounds lead to a place of loss, to hell. What five? Murdering your mother or father or a perfected one; maliciously shedding the blood of a Realized One; and causing a schism in the Saṅgha. These five fatal wounds lead to a place of loss, to hell." | AN 5.129 | The five ānantariya kammas — actions so grave that they seal the result in hell. Boundary of right view regarding kamma. |
| 32 | "Mendicants, these seven perceptions, when developed and cultivated, are very fruitful and beneficial. They have freedom from death as their objective and culmination. What seven? The perceptions of ugliness, death, repulsiveness of food, dissatisfaction with the whole world, impermanence, suffering in impermanence, and not-self in suffering." | AN 7.49 | The seven sammā-saññā — contemplations of right view whose maturation is "freedom from death" (i.e., unbinding). |
| 33 | "futile man who has arisen in the world for the harm, suffering, calamity, and disaster of many beings" | AN 1.319 (paraphrased in post) | A specific harsh indictment of those with wrong view who mislead many — illustrating the Buddha's uncompromising tone. |
| 34 | "the Buddha … didn't hesitate to call out the whole class of contemporary Brahmins as being 'worse than dogs' at every angle" | AN 5.191 (paraphrased) | Right view sees through priestly claims to authority; spiritual status is established by conduct, not birth. |
| # | Full Quote (as quoted in the posts) | Reference / Link | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | "Others will have sex, but here we will not have sex." | MN 8 | The brief declaration of celibacy — the bare minimum behavioral marker separating the stream-enterer's household from the lay sensual life. |
| 36 | "Then Gavesī thought: 'I'm the helper, leader, and adviser of these five hundred lay followers, and both I and they have fulfilled the precepts. We're the same, I'm in no way better. So let me do better.' Then Gavesī went to those five hundred lay followers and said to them: 'From this day forth may the venerables remember me as one who is celibate, set apart, avoiding the vulgar act of sex.' Then those five hundred lay followers did the same." | AN 5.180 | A lay stream-enterer's voluntary progression: not content with parity, he (and his five hundred followers) take on the celibate discipline of the five precepts in its stricter form. The trajectory after stream entry. |
| 37 | "Sir, the great earth is far more. The little bit of dirt on your fingernail is tiny. Compared to the great earth, it's not nearly a hundredth, a thousandth, or a hundred thousandth part." … "In the same way, for a noble disciple accomplished in view, an individual with comprehension, the suffering that's over and done with is more, what's left is tiny." | SN 13.11 | The fingernail-earth simile: the bulk of suffering has been ended by the stream-enterer; only a small residue remains. Quantifies the magnitude of the attainment. |
| 38 | "Now suppose a noble disciple wears rags and feeds on scraps of almsfood. Still, as they have four things, they're exempt from hell, the animal realm, or the ghost realm. … What four? … experiential confidence in the Buddha: 'That Blessed One is perfected, a fully awakened Buddha…' … experiential confidence in the teaching: 'The teaching is well explained by the Buddha: apparent in the present life, immediately effective, inviting inspection, relevant, so that sensible people can know it for themselves.' … experiential confidence in the Saṅgha: 'The Saṅgha of the Buddha's disciples is practicing the way that's good, direct, systematic, and proper…' … a noble disciple's ethical conduct is loved by the noble ones, unbroken, impeccable, spotless, and unmarred, liberating, praised by sensible people, not mistaken, and leading to samadhi." | SN 55.1 | The four conditions of a stream-enterer: verifiable faith in the Triple Gem + ethical conduct "leading to samadhi." (Note: "experiential confidence" is the rendering of avecca-pasāda.) |
| 39 | "Sāriputta, … What is a factor for stream-entry? … Sir, the factors for stream-entry are associating with true persons, listening to the true teaching, rational application of mind, and practicing in line with the teaching. … What is the stream? … Sir, the stream is simply this noble eightfold path, that is: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right immersion. … What is a stream-enterer? … Sir, anyone who possesses this noble eightfold path is called a stream-enterer …" | SN 55.5 | The most concise statement: (1) the four paccayas (association, listening, application, practice), (2) the stream = N8P, (3) the sotāpanna is he who possesses the N8P. |
| 40 | "He gave a step by step talk especially for Suppabuddha on giving, ethical conduct, and heaven. He explained the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, so sordid and corrupt, and the benefit of renunciation. When the Buddha knew that Suppabuddha's mind was ready, supple, without hindrances, elated, and confident, he revealed the teaching unique to the Buddhas: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path. Just as a clean cloth rid of stains would properly absorb dye, in that very seat the stainless, immaculate vision of the Dhamma arose in Suppabuddha: 'Everything that is liable to arise is liable to cease.' Then Suppabuddha saw, attained, understood, and fathomed the Dhamma. He went beyond doubt, got rid of indecision, and became self-assured and independent of others regarding the Teacher's instructions." | KN Ud 5.3 | The proto-typical stream-entry narrative: progressive talk (giving → ethics → heaven → drawbacks of sensuality → renunciation) → four noble truths → Dhamma-eye. Prior conditions: mind ready, supple, without hindrances. |
| 41 | "With confident heart I paid homage to the Buddha. The Buddha taught me step by step, with a talk on giving, ethical conduct, and heaven. He explained the drawbacks of sensual pleasures, so sordid and corrupt, and the benefit of renunciation. And when he knew that my mind was ready, pliable, rid of hindrances, elated, and confident he explained the special teaching of the Buddhas: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path. Just as a clean cloth rid of stains would properly absorb dye, in that very seat the stainless, immaculate vision of the Dhamma arose in me: 'Everything that is liable to arise is liable to cease.' I saw, attained, understood, and fathomed the Dhamma. I went beyond doubt, got rid of indecision, and became self-assured and independent of others regarding the Teacher's instructions. Right there I went for refuge to the Buddha, his teaching, and the Saṅgha. And I undertook the five training rules with celibacy as the fifth. I had four teenage wives. And I went to them and said: 'Sisters, I've undertaken the five training rules with chastity as fifth. If you wish, you may stay here, enjoy my wealth, and do good deeds. Or you can return to your own families. Or would you prefer if I gave you to another man?'" | AN 8.21 | Visākha's autobiographical account: same step-by-step structure as Suppabuddha's, with the explicit detail of the five precepts with celibacy as the fifth — and immediate dissolution of the household sexual relationships. |
| 42 | "Suppose there was a chicken with eight or ten or twelve eggs. And she properly sat on them to keep them warm and incubated. That chicken might not wish: 'If only my chicks could break out of the eggshell with their claws and beak and hatch safely!' But still they can break out and hatch safely. Why is that? Because that chicken properly sat on them to keep them warm and incubated. In the same way, when a mendicant is committed to development, they might not wish: 'If only my mind were freed from the defilements by not grasping!' Even so, their mind is freed from defilements by not grasping. Why is that? You should say: 'It's because they are developed.' Developed in what? Developed in the four kinds of mindfulness meditation, the four right efforts, the four bases of psychic power, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven awakening factors, and the noble eightfold path." | SN 22.101 | The egg-incubation simile: gradual, conditional development — the chick breaks out of the shell if the egg is properly incubated. The full list of 37 factors leading to liberation. |
| 43 | "An ascetic or brahmin who claims to be celibate while not mutually engage in sex with a female (of any species). However, they consent to being anointed, massaged, bathed, and rubbed by a female. They enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. This is a break, taint, stain, or mar in celibacy. This is called one who lives the celibate life impurely, yoked by the yoke of sex. They're not freed from rebirth, old age, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They're not freed from suffering, I say." | AN 7.50 | The strict definition of celibacy: not merely the absence of intercourse, but the absence of all forms of sensual indulgence with women (massage, gazing, listening, recall, etc.) — otherwise one is "yoked by the yoke of sex" and not freed from suffering. |
TABLE 3: Practice Curriculum (Paṭipadā) — The Path, the Training, Sense Restraint, Celibacy, the Hindrances, Dependent Origination
| # | Full Quote (as quoted in the posts) | Reference / Link | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 44 | "Just as, mendicants, even a little bit of fecal matter still stinks, so too I don't approve of even a little bit of continued existence, not even as long as a finger-snap." | AN 1.328 | The Buddha's radical view: not even the briefest continuation in saṃsāra is approved. The standard against which "rebirth" claims are evaluated. |
| 45 | "Sakyans, do you observe the sabbath with its eight precepts?" … "Sir, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't." … "That's your loss, Sakyans, it's your misfortune. In this life with its fear of sorrow and death, you sometimes keep the sabbath and you sometimes don't." | AN 10.46 | Observance of the eight precepts on the uposatha is non-negotiable; selective observance is denounced. |
| 46 | "Mendicants, a lay follower should not engage in these five trades. What five? Trade in weapons, living beings, meat, intoxicants, and poisons. A lay follower should not engage in these five trades." | AN 5.177 | The minimum "wrong-livelihood" list for lay followers — and the post argues this is not exhaustive. |
| 47 | "What should be described as liable to corruption? Partners and children" | MN 26 | Household relationships are "corruptible" — the first noble truth in miniature applied to the family. |
| 48 | "Our loved ones are a source of sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress." | MN 87 | Direct, often-shocking statement. Yet the Buddha's householder interlocutor rejects it, runs off, and finds "agreement" with gamblers who affirm the opposite. A case-study in the mind's resistance to the first noble truth. |
| 49 | "These are the three characteristics, signs, and manifestations of a moron. What three? A moron thinks stupidly, speaks foolishly, and acts moronic. … Having done evil things by way of body, speech, and mind, when their body breaks up, after death, they're reappear in a place of loss, an evil place, the underworld, hell." | MN 129 | The fool-by-three-bad-actions — distinguishing right from wrong through observable character. |
| 50 | "And what should be described as liable to corruption? Partners and children, male and female bondservants, goats and sheep, chickens and pigs, elephants and cattle, and gold and currency are liable to corruption. These attachments are liable to corruption. Someone who is tied, infatuated, and attached to such things, themselves liable to corruption, seeks what is also liable to corruption. This is the ignoble quest. And what is the noble quest? It's when someone who is themselves liable to be reborn, understanding the drawbacks in being liable to be reborn, seeks that which is free of rebirth, the supreme sanctuary from the yoke, extinguishment." | MN 26 | The contrast of the ignoble vs noble quest: the ignoble seeks more of what is corruptible; the noble seeks the incorruptible. |
| 51 | "They refrain from running errands and messages; buying and selling; falsifying weights, metals, or measures; bribery, fraud, cheating, and duplicity; mutilation, murder, abduction, banditry, plunder, and violence." | MN 51 | The list of trades and actions a noble disciple refrains from — the practical content of right action/livelihood. |
| 52 | "Even if low-down bandits were to sever you limb from limb with a two-handed saw, anyone who had a malevolent thought on that account would not be following my instructions." | MN 21 | The unsurpassable standard of patient endurance and mettā even under torture. The Buddha does not ask for the absence of pain, but the absence of hatred. |
| 53 | "Mendicants, I say that these two individuals cannot easily be repaid. What two? Mother and father. … You would not have done enough to repay your mother and father even if you were to carry your mother around on one shoulder and your father on the other, and if you lived like this for a hundred years, … if they were to defecate and urinate right there. Even if you were to establish your mother and father as supreme monarchs of this great earth … you would still not have done enough to repay them. … But you have done enough, more than enough, to repay them if you encourage, settle, and ground unfaithful parents in faith, unethical parents in ethical conduct, stingy parents in generosity, or ignorant parents in wisdom." | AN 2.33 | The real way to "repay" parents is to elevate them — not financially support their vices. |
| 54 | "He has a hundred thousand gold coins, not to mention the silver coins!" … "Well, Ugga, that is wealth, I can't deny it. But fire, water, rulers, thieves, and unloved heirs all take a share of that wealth. There are these seven kinds of wealth that they can't take a share of. What seven? The wealth of faith, ethics, conscience, prudence, learning, generosity, and wisdom." | AN 7.7 | "Worthy wealth" is seven internal qualities — not gold, not family, not property. |
| 55 | "Those who have a hundred loved ones, Visākhā, have a hundred sufferings. Those who have ninety loved ones, or eighty, seventy, sixty, fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, or one loved one have one suffering. Those who have no loved ones have no suffering. They are free of sorrow, stains, and anguish I say. All the sorrows and lamentations and the countless forms of suffering in the world occur because of those that we love; without love they do not occur. That's why those who have no loved ones at all in the world are happy and free of grief. So aspiring to the sorrowless and stainless, have no loved ones in the world at all." | KN Ud 8.8 | The arithmetic of love: 1:1 with sorrow; 0:0 with sorrowlessness. The post presents this as one of the strongest direct teachings on the avoidance of intimate attachments. |
| 56 | "Mendicants, that one can engage in sexual pleasures without sexual desires, without perceptions of sexual desire, without thoughts of sexual desire: that is impossible." | MN 22 | One of the four impossibilities — sexual intercourse is intrinsically tied to desire, perception, and thought of desire. There is no "mindful sex" loophole. |
| 57 | "Any intelligent person would avoid the non-celibate life, like a burning pit of glowing charcoals. But if too mentally weak to remain celibate, they'd at least not transgress with another's wives." | KN Snp 2.14 | The graduated minimum: ideally celibate; if not, then at least faithful. The "intelligent" choice is full celibacy. |
| 58 | "When you've laid down violence toward all creatures, not harming even a single one, don't wish for a child, let alone a companion: live alone like a horned rhino. Those with close relationships have affection, following which this pain arises. Seeing this danger born of affection, live alone like a horned rhino. When feelings for friends and loved ones are tied up in love, you miss out on the goal. Seeing this peril in intimacy, live alone like a horned rhino. As a spreading bamboo gets entangled, so does concern for partners and children. Like a bamboo shoot unobstructed, live alone like a horned rhino. As a wild deer loose in the forest grazes wherever it wants, a smart person looking for freedom would live alone like a horned rhino." | KN Snp 1.3 | The Rhinoceros Sutta excerpts — five verses on solitude as the structure of the holy life. |
| 59 | "When she came he was not glad, when she left he did not grieve. Victorious in battle, freed from chains, that's who I declare a brahmin." | KN Ud 1.8 | The brahmin-by-arahantship standard: indifference to the comings and goings of former relations. |
| 60 | "Mendicants, these are the ten ways of doing evil deeds. When you have these ten ways of doing evil deeds, then if you rise early, whether or not you stroke the earth from your bed … serve the sacred flame … revere the sun … immerse yourself in water three times (any ritual or prayer or vow), you're still impure. Why is that? These ten ways of doing evil deeds are impure and make things impure. It's because of those who do these ten kinds of evil deeds that hell, the animal realm, the ghost realm, or any other evil places are found." | AN 10.176 | Ritual purification is irrelevant for one whose conduct is unskillful — kamma, not ceremony, determines rebirth. |
| 61 | "Sister, this body is produced by food. Relying on food, you should give up food. This body is produced by craving. Relying on craving, you should give up craving. This body is produced by conceit. Relying on conceit, you should give up conceit. This body is produced by sex. The Buddha spoke of breaking off everything to do with sex." | AN 4.159 | The four-fold genesis of the body (food, craving, conceit, sex) and the corresponding practice of abandoning each. Sex is a direct generative condition to be fully cut off. |
| 62 | "Mendicants, for a noble disciple, these five subjects should often be reviewed: … 'I am liable to grow old, I am not exempt from old age.' … give up the vanity of youth … 'I am liable to get sick, I am not exempt from sickness.' … give up the vanity of health … 'I am liable to die, I am not exempt from death.' … give up the vanity of life … 'I must be parted and separated from all I hold dear and beloved.' … give up desire and lust for their dear and beloved … 'I am the owner of my deeds and heir to my deeds. Deeds are my womb, my relative, and my refuge. I shall be the heir of whatever deeds I do, whether good or bad.' … give up bad conduct … When they review these subject often, the path is born in them." | AN 5.57 | The five daily subjects of recollection for the lay practitioner — the structured antidote to complacency. |
| 63 | "Killing creatures, mutilation, murder, abduction; stealing, lying, cheating and fraud, learning crooked spells, adultery: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. People here with unbridled sensuality, greedy for tastes, mixed up in impurity, nihilists, immoral, stubborn with wrong views: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. Tough, callous calumniators, pitiless and arrogant betrayers of friends, misers who only hoard: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. Anger, vanity, obstinacy, contrariness, deceit, jealousy, boastfulness, haughtiness, intimacy with the wicked: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. The ill-behaved, debt-evaders, informants, business cheats and con-artists, vile people committing sin: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. People here who can't stop harming living creatures, taking from others, intent on hurting, immoral, cruel, harsh, lacking regard for creatures: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat. Greedy, hostile, aggressive to others, and addicted to evil, those beings pass into darkness, falling headlong into hell: this is the real putrid, not the eating of meat." | KN Snp 2.2 | The Tissametteyya Sutta: ten "putridities" — none of them about diet, all of them about character. The post's lever to argue that modern medical/industrial complicity, not meat-eating, is what matters. |
| 64 | "Mendicants, these two extremes should not be cultivated by a spiritual practitioner. What two? Indulgence in sensuality, which is low, crude, ordinary, ignoble, and pointless. And indulgence in self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and pointless. Avoiding these two extremes, the Realized One understood the middle way of practice, which gives vision and knowledge, and leads to peace, direct knowledge, awakening, and extinguishment. And what is that middle way of practice? It is simply this noble eightfold path, that is: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi." | SN 56.11 | The middle way = N8P. The most cited "definition" of the path. |
| 65 | "By living together, know that they're irritable, with corrupt wishes, offensive, stubborn, and contemptuous, jealous, stingy, and devious. They speak to people with a voice so smooth, just like an ascetic. But they act in secret, with their evil views and their lack of regard for others. You should recognize them for what they are: a creep and liar. Then having gathered in harmony, you should expel them. Throw out the trash! Get rid of the rubbish! And sweep away the scraps: they're not ascetics, they just think they are. When you've thrown out those of corrupt wishes, of bad behavior and alms-resort, dwell in communion, ever mindful, the pure with the pure. Then in harmony, alert, you'll make an end of suffering." | AN 8.10 | The procedure for dealing with corrupt monastics — recognize, gather, expel, continue in purity. |
| 66 | "In a future time there will be mendicants who won't want to listen when discourses spoken by the Realized One: deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness, are being recited. They won't actively listen or try to understand, nor will they think those teachings are worth learning and memorizing. But when discourses composed by poets: poetry, with fancy words and phrases, composed by outsiders or spoken by disciples, are being recited they will want to listen. … And that is how the discourses spoken by the Realized One: deep, profound, transcendent, dealing with emptiness, will disappear." | SN 20.7 | The disappearance-of-the-true-dhamma prophecy: the empty/existential discourses are abandoned in favor of poetical fluff. |
| 67 | "This transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving. … For a long time you've been cows … buffalo … sheep … goats … deer … chickens … pigs … bandits … The flow of blood you've shed when your head was chopped off … is more than the water in the four oceans. … For such a long time you have undergone suffering, agony, and disaster, swelling the cemeteries. This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions." | SN 15.13 | The oceans-of-blood simile: the length of saṃsāra and the futility of further existence. Dispassion as the only reasonable response. |
| 68 | "Suppose there was a green, sappy log, and it was lying in water. Then a person comes along with a drill-stick, thinking to light a fire and produce heat. … By drilling the stick against that green, sappy log lying in the water, could they light a fire and produce heat? … No, worthy Gotama. Why not? Because it's a green, sappy log, and it's lying in the water. That person will eventually get weary and frustrated. … In the same way, there are ascetics and brahmins who don't live withdrawn in body and mind from sensual pleasures. … they are incapable of knowledge and vision, of supreme awakening." | MN 36 | The wet-log simile: you cannot light a fire (attain jhāna/awakening) while still soaking in sensual indulgence. |
| 69 | "Mendicants, before my awakening, when I was still unawakened but intent on awakening (a bodhisatta), I too, being liable to be reborn, sought what is also liable to be reborn. … Then it occurred to me: 'Why do I, being liable to be reborn, grow old, fall sick, sorrow, die, and become corrupted, seek things that have the same nature? Why don't I seek that which is free of rebirth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, and corruption, the supreme sanctuary from the yoke, extinguishment?' Some time later, while still with pristine black hair, blessed with youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise, weeping with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, dressed in ocher robes, and went forth from the lay life to homelessness. Once I had gone forth I set out to discover what is skillful, seeking the supreme state of sublime peace." | MN 26 | The Buddha's pre-awakening reflection that triggered renunciation: the logic of leaving the home-life. |
| 70 | "Women spent too much time gazing at men, and men at women. They became lustful, and their bodies burned with fever. Due to this fever they had sex with each other. Those who saw them having sex pelted them with dirt, clods, or cow-dung, saying, 'Get lost, filth! Get lost, filth! How on earth can one being do that to another?' … What was deemed as unprincipled at that time, these days is deemed as principled. The beings who had sex together weren't allowed to enter a village or town for one or two months. Ever since they excessively threw themselves into immorality, they started to make buildings to hide their immoral deeds." | DN 27 | The Aggañña Sutta's account of the origin of sexual shame and privacy — the cultural "memory" of sex's original ignominy. |
| 71 | "It would be better for your penis to enter the mouth of a black snake than to enter a woman. It would be better for your penis to enter a blazing charcoal pit than to enter a woman. Why is that? For although it might cause death or death-like suffering, it would not cause you to be reborn in a bad destination. But this might. Foolish man, you've practiced what is contrary to the true Teaching, the common practice, the low practice, the coarse practice, that which ends with a wash, that which is done in private, that which is done wherever there are couples." | Tv Vi Bu Pj1 / pli-tv-bu-vb-pj1#5.11.20 | The strongest single indictment of sexual intercourse in the Pali vinaya. |
| 72 | "A mendicant who is perfected, with defilements ended, who has completed the celibate life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, achieved their heart's goal, utterly ended the fetter of continued existence, and is rightly freed through enlightenment, can't transgress in nine respects. A mendicant with defilements ended can't deliberately take the life of a living creature, take something with the intention to steal, have sex, tell a deliberate lie, or store up goods for their own enjoyment like they did as a layperson. And they can't make decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, or cowardice." | AN 9.7 | The arahant's nine impossibilities: the structural contrast of what the fully-purified mind cannot do. |
| 73 | "Take a mendicant who says: 'I've developed the heart's release by benevolence … compassion … contentment … equanimity. I've cultivated it, made it my vehicle and my basis, kept it up, consolidated it, and properly implemented it. Yet somehow ill will … thought of harming … discontent … desire still occupies my mind.' They should be told, 'Not so, venerable! Don't say that. Don't misrepresent the Buddha, for misrepresentation of the Buddha is not good. And the Buddha would not say that. It's impossible, reverend, it cannot happen that the heart's release by benevolence … compassion … contentment … equanimity has been developed and properly implemented, yet somehow ill will … thought of harming … discontent … desire still occupies the mind. For it is the heart's release by benevolence … compassion … contentment … equanimity that is the escape from ill will … thought of harming … discontent … desire.'" | AN 6.13 | The four Brahma-vihāras as actual escapes: if they are developed, the corresponding affliction must be gone. The categorical test against watered-down "compassion" rhetoric. |
| 74 | "For a long time those venerables have wanted to discredit the Buddha, his teaching, and his Saṅgha. They'll never stop misrepresenting the Buddha with their incorrect, hollow, false, untruthful claims. We would never deliberately take the life of a living creature, not even for life's sake." | AN 8.12 | The general Siha's declaration: lay followers hold the precepts as firmly as monastics. The credibility of the lay-stream-enterer's claim. |
| 75 | "The ocean is consistent and doesn't overflow its boundaries. In the same way, when a training rule is laid down for my disciples they wouldn't break it even for the sake of their own life. This is the second thing the mendicants love about this teaching and training. The ocean doesn't accommodate a carcass, but quickly carries it to the shore and strands it on the beach. In the same way, the Saṅgha doesn't accommodate an individual who is immoral, of evil qualities, filthy, with suspicious behavior, underhand, no true ascetic or celibate practitioner: though claiming to be one, rotten inside, festering, and depraved. But they quickly gather and expel them." | KN Ud 5.5 | The "ocean simile" — the Saṅgha's training rules are non-negotiable, and corrupt members are expelled. The boundary-marker of community. |
| 76 | "Suppose there was a chicken with eight or ten or twelve eggs. And she properly sat on them to keep them warm and incubated. … In the same way, when a mendicant is committed to development, they might not wish: 'If only my mind were freed from the defilements by not grasping!' Even so, their mind is freed from defilements by not grasping. … Suppose a mason or their apprentice sees the marks of his fingers and thumb on the handle of his adze. They don't know how much of the handle was worn away today, how much yesterday, and how much previously. They just know what has been worn away. … Suppose there was a sea-faring ship bound together with ropes. For six months they deteriorated in the water. Then in the cold season it was hauled up on dry land, where the ropes were weathered by wind and sun. When the monsoon clouds soaked it with rain, the ropes would readily collapse and rot away." | SN 22.101 (fuller version cited in post 3) | Three similes of gradual development: the egg, the adze, the ship-rope. Liberation is not willed into being; it is the inevitable by-product of proper development. |
| 77 | "You can get to know a person's ethics by living with them. But only after a long time, not casually; only when attentive, not when inattentive; and only by the wise, not the witless. You can get to know a person's purity by dealing with them. … You can get to know a person's resilience in times of trouble. … You can get to know a person's wisdom by discussion. But only after a long time, not casually; only when attentive, not when inattentive; and only by the wise, not the witless." | AN 4.192 | The four tests of character — long time, attentiveness, by the wise. The antidote to "Dr. PhD, expert on Buddhism" with no real practice. |
| 78 | "It is impossible, mendicants, it cannot happen for an individual accomplished in view to take any condition as permanent. … to take any condition as pleasant. … to take anything as self. … It is impossible for two perfected ones, fully awakened Buddhas to arise in the same solar system at the same time." | AN 1.268-277 (also listed in Table 1) | The list of "impossibilities for the accomplished-in-view" — a second reference, used here to highlight the impossibility of certain wrong views. |
| 79 | "I've got a burning desire for pleasure; My mind is on fire! Please, out of compassion, Gotama, tell me how to quench the flames." … "Your mind is on fire because of a perversion of perception. Turn away from the feature of things that's attractive, provoking lust. See all conditioned phenomena as alien, as suffering and not-self. Extinguish the great fire of lust, don't burn up again and again. With mind unified and serene, meditate on the ugly aspects of the body. With mindfulness immersed in the body, be full of disillusionment. Meditate on the signless, give up the underlying tendency to conceit; and when you comprehend conceit, you will live at peace." | SN 8.4 | The fire-sermon: āsavā extinguished through seeing the unattractive, perceiving the three characteristics, the ugly, the signless, and the removal of conceit. |
| 80 | "Mendicants, I do not praise the wrong way, whether for a layperson or one gone forth. … What is the wrong way? It is: wrong view, wrong intention, …" | SN 45.24 | Wrong practice is the wrong N8P. The path-factor parallel of MN 117's list of wrong intentions. |
| 81 | "What is wrong intention? The intention of sensual desire, the intention of ill will, and the intention of cruelty: this is wrong intention." | MN 117 | The second path-factor (sammā sankappa) defined. |
| 82 | "Mendicants, it is said that no prior point of craving for continued existence is evident, before which there was no craving for continued existence, and afterwards it came to be. And yet it is evident that there is a specific condition for craving for continued existence. I say that craving for continued existence is fueled by something, it's not unfueled. And what is the fuel for craving for continued existence? You should say: 'Ignorance.' … what is the fuel for ignorance? You should say: 'The five hindrances.' … the fuel for the five hindrances? 'The three kinds of misconduct.' … the fuel for the three kinds of misconduct? 'Lack of sense restraint.' … the fuel for lack of sense restraint? 'Lack of mindfulness and situational awareness.' … the fuel for lack of mindfulness and situational awareness? 'Irrational application of mind.' … the fuel for irrational application of mind? 'Lack of faith.' … the fuel for lack of faith? 'Listening to a fake teaching.' … the fuel for listening to an fake teaching? You should say: 'Associating with fake people.' When the factor of associating with fake people is fulfilled, it fulfills the factor of listening to a fake teaching … irrational application of mind … lack of mindfulness and situational awareness … lack of sense restraint … the three kinds of misconduct … the five hindrances … ignorance. When ignorance is fulfilled, it fulfills craving for continued existence." | AN 10.62 | The full fuel-chain: bad company → fake teaching → lack of faith → irrational application → lack of mindfulness → lack of sense restraint → misconduct → hindrances → ignorance → craving. The reverse: good company → true teaching → … → wisdom → nibbidā → liberation. |
| 83 | "Reverends, the ascetic Gotama advocates the complete understanding of sensual pleasures, and so do we. … What, then, is the difference between the ascetic Gotama's teaching and instruction and ours?" … "But reverends, what's the gratification, the drawback, and the escape when it comes to sensual pleasures? … Questioned like this, the wanderers of other religions would be stumped, and, in addition, would get frustrated. Why is that? Because they're out of their element. … And what is the gratification of sensual pleasures? … The pleasure and happiness that arise from these five kinds of sensual stimulation: this is the gratification of sensual pleasures. And what is the drawback of sensual pleasures? … for the sake of sensual pleasures kings fight with kings … mother fights with her child, child with mother, father with child, and child with father. … they break into houses, plunder wealth … commit adultery. … they conduct themselves badly by way of body, speech, and mind. When their body breaks up, after death, they're reappear in a place of loss, an evil place, the underworld, hell. This is a drawback of sensual pleasures to do with lives to come, a mass of suffering caused by sensual pleasures. And what is the escape from sensual pleasures? Removing and giving up desire and greed for sensual pleasures: this is the escape from sensual pleasures." | MN 13 | The threefold analysis (assāda, Ādīnava, nissaraṇa) applied to sensuality. The post uses this to differentiate the Buddha's teaching from "other religions" that talk about "complete understanding" but cannot answer these three questions. |
| 84 | "When the Realized One gets a person fit for training they first guide them like this: 'Come, mendicant, be ethical and restrained in the training principles, conducting yourself well and resorting for alms in suitable places. Seeing danger in the slightest fault, keep the rules you've undertaken.' When they have ethical conduct, the Realized One guides them further: 'Come, mendicant, guard your sense doors.' … eat in moderation … be committed to wakefulness … have mindfulness and situational awareness … frequent a secluded lodging … They abandon these five hindrances, corruptions of the heart that weaken wisdom. … Then, quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful qualities, they enter and remain in the first jhana, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion. … Though extinguishment is present, the path leading to extinguishment is present, and I am present to encourage them, still some of my disciples, instructed and advised like this, achieve the ultimate goal, extinguishment, while some of them fail. What can I do about that, brahmin? The Realized One is the one who shows the way. … There are those faithless individuals … They're devious, deceitful, and sneaky. … They do not guard their sense doors or eat in moderation, and they are not committed to wakefulness. They don't care about the ascetic life, and don't keenly respect the training. They're indulgent and slack, leaders in backsliding, neglecting seclusion, lazy, and lacking energy. They're unmindful, lacking situational awareness and immersion, with straying minds, witless and idiotic." | MN 107 | The graduated training (anupubba-sikkhā): ethics → sense restraint → moderation in eating → wakefulness → mindfulness → secluded lodging → abandoning the five hindrances → first jhāna … → nibbāna. The Buddha also explains why some fail despite his instruction. |
| 85 | "When a soldier strives and struggles in battle, their mind is already low, degraded, and misdirected as they think: 'May these sentient beings be killed, slaughtered, slain, destroyed, or annihilated!' … But if you have such a view: 'Suppose a soldier, while striving and struggling in battle, is killed and finished off by his foes. When his body breaks up, after death, he's reborn in the company of the gods of the fallen.' This is your wrong view. An individual with wrong view is reborn in one of two places, I say: hell or the animal realm." | SN 42.3 | The wrong view of "meritorious killing" — a soldier's profession is incompatible with right livelihood. |
| 86 | "When sentient beings are still not free of greed, and are still bound by greed, an actor in a stage or festival presents them with even more arousing things … But if you have such a view: 'Suppose an actor entertains and amuses people on a stage or at a festival with mixed truth and lies. When their body breaks up, after death, they're reborn in the company of laughing gods.' This is your wrong view. An individual with wrong view is reborn in one of two places, I say: hell or the animal realm." | SN 42.2 | The wrong view of "meritorious performance" — the actor's profession is also incompatible. The post extends this logic to: any profession that involves killing (medical complicity, etc.) is a wrong-livelihood abhidhamma analogue. |
| 87 | "These four fuels maintain sentient beings that have been born and help those about to be born. What four? Edible food, whether solid or subtle; contact is the second, mental intention the third, and consciousness the fourth. … Suppose a couple who were husband and wife set out to cross a desert, taking limited supplies. They had an only child, dear and beloved. … 'Our limited quantity of supplies has run out, and we still have the rest of the desert to cross. Why don't we kill our only child, so dear and beloved, and prepare dried and spiced meat? …' What do you think, mendicants? Would they eat that food for fun, indulgence, adornment, or decoration? … No, sir. … I say that this is how you should regard edible food. When edible food is completely understood, desire for the five kinds of sensual stimulation is completely understood. When desire for the five kinds of sensual stimulation is completely understood, a noble disciple is bound by no fetter that might return them again to this world." | SN 12.63 | The cannibal-child simile for nutriment: full understanding of food entails full understanding of sensual desire. The price of attachment is illustrated at its absolute limit. |
| 88 | "Suppose there was a pit of glowing coals deeper than a man's height, full of glowing coals that neither flamed nor smoked. Then a person would come along who wants to live and doesn't want to die, who wants to be happy and recoils from pain. Two strong men would grab them by the arms and drag them towards the pit of glowing coals. What do you think, householder? Wouldn't that person writhe and struggle to and fro? … Yes, sir. Why is that? For that person knows: 'If I fall in that pit of glowing coals, that'd result in my death or deadly pain.' …" … "In the same way, a noble disciple reflects: 'With the simile of the fruit tree the Buddha said that sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks.' Having truly seen this with right understanding, they shun equanimity based on diversity and develop only the equanimity based on unity, where all kinds of grasping to the worldly pleasures of the flesh cease without remainder." | MN 54 | The fruit-tree simile: sensual pleasure is the tree you must climb down from before it is felled. The structural argument for abandoning sensuality before it kills you. |
| 89 | "There is a satisfaction that is apart from sensual pleasures and unskillful qualities, which even equals heavenly pleasure. Enjoying that satisfaction, I don't envy what is inferior, nor do I hope to enjoy it. … Suppose there was a person affected by leprosy, with sores and blisters on their limbs. Being devoured by worms, scratching with their nails at the opening of their wounds, they'd cauterize their body over a pit of glowing coals. … The surgeon would make medicine for them, and by using that they'd be cured of leprosy. They'd be healthy, happy, autonomous, master of themselves, able to go where they wanted. Two strong men would grab them by the arms and drag them towards the pit of glowing coals. What do you think, Māgaṇḍiya? Wouldn't that person writhe and struggle to and fro? … Is it only now that the fire is really painful to touch, fiercely burning and scorching, or was it painful previously as well? … That fire is painful now and it was also painful previously. … In the same way, sensual pleasures of the past, future, and present are painful to touch, fiercely burning and scorching. These sentient beings who are not free from sensual pleasures—being consumed by craving for sensual pleasures, burning with passion for sensual pleasures—have impaired sense faculties. So even though sensual pleasures are actually painful to touch, they have a distorted perception that they are pleasant." | MN 75 | The leper simile: sensual pleasure is the leper's cauterization; once the disease of passion is cured, the previous "pleasure" is recognized as torture. |
| 90 | "Mendicants, how could that futile man imagine that a mother cannot lust for her son, or that a son cannot lust for his mother? Compared to the sight of a woman, I do not see a single sight that is so arousing, sensuous, intoxicating, captivating, and infatuating, and such an obstacle to reaching the supreme sanctuary from the yoke. Sentient beings are lustful, greedy, tied, infatuated, and attached to the sight of a woman. They sorrow for a long time under the sway of a woman's sight. Compared to the sound … smell … taste … touch of a woman, I do not see a single touch that is so arousing, sensuous, intoxicating, captivating, and infatuating, and such an obstacle to reaching the supreme sanctuary from the yoke. … When a woman walks, she occupies a man's mind. … When a woman stands … sits … lies down … laughs … speaks … sings … cries … is injured, she occupies a man's mind. Even when a woman is dead, she occupies a man's mind. For if anyone should be rightly called 'an all-round snare of Māra', it's ladies." | AN 5.55 | Māra's snare: the strongest canonical text on the binding power of women for men, and (by the post's extension) of the corresponding snare for women. |
| 91 | "It's not the elements of earth, water, fire, or air that make the true teaching disappear. Rather, it's the futile people who appear right here that make the true teaching disappear. The true teaching doesn't disappear like a ship that sinks all at once." | SN 16.13 (fuller version cited) | Slow erosion by corrupt monastics/teachers — and the post's central reason for vigilant testing of the lineage. |
| 92 | "Gotamī, you might know that certain things lead to passion, not dispassion; to yoking, not to unyoking; to accumulation, not dispersal; to more desires, not fewer; to lack of contentment, not contentment; to crowding, not seclusion; to laziness, not energy; to being burdensome, not being unburdensome. Categorically, you should remember these things as not the teaching, not the training, and not the Teacher's instructions." | AN 8.53 (cited in post 3 — same content as AN 8.51) | The eight "marks of non-Dhamma" — the second instance. |
The three posts together form a single, internally consistent document whose spine is: Right View as a discriminator → Stream Entry as the attainable goal → The Practice Curriculum as the actual means. The 87 unique quotes do not sit in isolation; they reinforce each other, and when laid end-to-end in the order above, they describe a complete epistemology, soteriology, and training program that maps directly onto the lived patterns of the modern world.
The opening sequence of quotes (Table 1) is dominated by a single recurring concern: how to tell true Dhamma from counterfeit Dhamma. This is not a peripheral issue in the EBTs — it is, in many suttas, the first thing the Buddha insists upon. He does not ask the interlocutor to believe; he asks the interlocutor to test (as in AN 4.180, the "Great Standards": reject any alleged teaching that does not fit the suttas and is not exhibited in the training). He warns (SN 16.13, AN 1.316) that wrong-view individuals harm the many. He also states (AN 3.318) that wrong view is the most blameworthy thing of all — even blameworthy than killing, stealing, etc., because wrong view is the generative condition for all the rest.
The most striking feature of this section is the Buddha's rejection of doctrinal softening. He rebukes both Venerable Arittha (MN 22) and the bhikkhu Sāti (MN 38) for "misrepresenting" him by inferring that sensual pleasures are not obstructions and that consciousness is the transmigrating self. He uses the phrase "But still you misrepresent me by your wrong grasp, harm yourself, and brim with much evil. This will be for your lasting harm and suffering" — a phrase that is more severe than almost anything else in the EBTs. The reason this severity is structurally important is that the early Buddhist path begins with the rejection of a soothing but false metaphysics, not its embrace. SN 22.59, KN Snp 3.12, SN 5.2, and MN 56 all converge on the same point: identity-views, eternalist views of consciousness, and the Jain determinism are not minor mistakes — they are root-errors that the Buddha dispatches in language of considerable force.
This pattern connects immediately to the modern context the post draws out: "Dr." Buddhist-academic misreadings (the post's "Doctor with a Buddhist PhD" who claims "consciousness is not suffering and it's that very same consciousness that moves from lifetime to lifetime") are literally a 21st-century restatement of Sāti's wrong view (MN 38). The Buddha's rebuke to Sāti is a direct rebuttal that the modern reader can apply without translation. The connection is not merely analogical — it is the same conceptual error, addressed by the same teaching.
The right-view section also establishes the moral non-negotiability of the teaching. AN 3.69 names the three unskillful roots (greed, hate, delusion); AN 1.278-286 and AN 1.287-295 establish that bad conduct cannot produce pleasant results and cannot lead to heavenly rebirth. AN 3.163, AN 5.129, MN 26, MN 87, KN Ud 8.8, KN Snp 1.3, MN 22, and AN 4.159 all converge on the same observation: the family-and-property nexus is liable to corruption, is a source of sorrow, and the noble quest is to seek what is incorruptible by leaving it. This is not aesthetic; it is presented as the first noble truth applied to the household. The remarkable simile of the householder in MN 87 — who, upon being told "loved ones are a source of sorrow," goes off to find agreement with gamblers — is a precise case-study of the resistance that the right-view section must overcome. The reader is shown, in narrative form, exactly what happens when the right view is offered: it is rejected, and the rejector seeks out flatterers.
The real-world pattern this maps onto is what the post calls "Commercial Dharma": the mass of contemporary Western and Asian Buddhist institutions that present the Dhamma as compatible with sexual activity, wealth accumulation, family-life-as-spiritual-path, priestly intermediation, and emotional self-soothing. AN 8.51 (the "Gotamī" checklist of what is not the teaching) is the direct refutation of this entire category.
The middle sequence (Table 2) is short but extraordinarily dense. It begins with the bare behavioral marker (MN 8: "Others will have sex, but here we will not have sex") and ends with the full structural impossibility (AN 7.50: someone whose celibacy is impurely lived is "not freed from suffering"). The point is that stream entry is not a vague spiritual attainment — it is a determinate result with specific preconditions and a specific, demonstrable content.
SN 55.5 gives the most concise statement: the four factors (associating with true persons, listening to the true teaching, rational application of mind, practicing in line with the teaching) define the process; the noble eightfold path defines the stream itself; the sotāpanna is "anyone who possesses this noble eightfold path." SN 55.1 adds the four fruits (verifiable faith in the Triple Gem + ethical conduct "leading to samadhi"). These two suttas, read together, are the complete definition of stream entry — and the post's argument is that they have been systematically replaced, in popular discourse, by a vague "insight experience" that is taken to substitute for the structural conditions.
The Suppabuddha (KN Ud 5.3) and Visākha (AN 8.21) narratives are critical: both show that stream entry requires prior direct knowledge of the drawbacks of sensuality and the benefit of renunciation, and a mind without hindrances, before the four noble truths are even taught. This is the precise textual refutation of the modern claim that you can "have an insight experience" while remaining enmeshed in the sensual life. The post uses these two suttas in tandem to make the point: the leper Suppabuddha and the wealthy Visākha both went through the same progressive talk (giving → ethics → heaven → drawbacks of sensuality → benefit of renunciation → four noble truths), and both had minds described as "ready, supple, without hindrances, elated, and confident" before the four noble truths were taught. This is the structural pre-condition the post hammers on: the modern "stream entry while drinking" example (Sarakani, SN 55.24) is either a previous stream-enterer who fell into negligence (and is being used as a cope), or a category error — but in any case it is being used to excuse the very conditions (sensual indulgence, lack of sense restraint) that the canonical pre-conditions explicitly require to be absent.
SN 22.101 — the egg-incubation simile — is the master-quote for this entire section. The chick "might not wish" to break the shell; it just does, because the egg was properly incubated. The 37 factors of development (4 satipatthāna, 4 sammappadhāna, 4 iddhipāda, 5 indriya, 5 bala, 7 bojjhaṅga, N8P) are the incubation. There is no shortcut, no loophole, no "skill issue"-fix: results happen when conditions are met. The post's "the chick will break out of the shell if incubated properly, regardless of whether the hen wished for it or not" is a direct gloss of this.
The Visākha autobiographical quote (AN 8.21) is also the textual refutation of the claim that the laity cannot practice the celibate fifth precept. Visākha, a householder with four teenage wives, undertakes the five precepts with celibacy as the fifth, and immediately offers his wives the option to leave, return to families, or be given to another man. The post reads this as the canonical model for what a serious lay-stream-enterer does: celibacy is not a monastic-only option, and the laity who use "I'm just a layperson" as an excuse are misreading the texts.
AN 7.50 (the impure-celibacy simile) is the closing quotation of this group for a precise reason: it establishes the minimum of what the celibate life actually requires. Anointing, massage, bathing, rubbing by females, giggling, playing, gazing into a woman's eyes, listening through walls, recalling past fun with women, and even wishing to be reborn in a heavenly realm because of one's chastity — every one of these is "a break, taint, stain, or mar in celibacy." The modern reader is given a structural bar: it is not "no intercourse" but the comprehensive absence of any mental slavery to women/men.
The final and largest group (Table 3) covers the specific conditions, behaviors, and abhidhamma-level structures required for the right-view and stream-entry attainments to even be possible. The post's argument is that this group has been almost entirely replaced, in popular Dhamma, by a vague "meditation" recommendation — and that the canonical structure is much more comprehensive, much more demanding, and explicitly includes ethical, livelihood, doctrinal, and associational conditions that have nothing to do with sitting on a cushion.
The single most important text in this group is AN 10.62, the "fuel chain." The post cites it four times across the three posts, which is the textual signal of its centrality. The chain runs in both directions:
bad company → fake teaching → lack of faith → irrational application of mind → lack of mindfulness and situational awareness → lack of sense restraint → three kinds of misconduct → five hindrances → ignorance → craving for continued existence
The reverse chain (left unstated but evident) is the path: good company → true teaching → faith → rational application → mindfulness → sense restraint → non-misconduct → freedom from hindrances → knowledge → cessation. This is the whole paccaya-system of the practice in a single sutta. The post uses it specifically to argue that the modern "Dhamma lite" (jhana-by-shamatha-vipassana, vipassana-without-ethics) is impossible as a structural matter — not because of any one failure, but because the chain has been broken at multiple links.
Closely related is MN 107 (the graduated training). The post reads it as a checklist of the prerequisites of even the first jhāna: ethical conduct → sense restraint → moderation in eating → wakefulness → mindfulness-and-situational-awareness → secluded lodging → abandonment of the five hindrances → seclusion from sensuality → first jhāna. The post then notes that the Buddha also explains why some fail despite this instruction: they are "devious, deceitful, and sneaky … unmindful, lacking situational awareness and immersion, with straying minds, witless and idiotic." This is the canonical foundation for the post's argument that character (not merely "practice hours") is the discriminator.
The five precepts with celibacy as the fifth is the central lay training rule that the post returns to repeatedly (AN 8.21 Visākha; AN 5.180 Gavesī; MN 8 "Others will have sex, but here we will not have sex"; KN Snp 2.14 "Avoid the non-celibate life like a burning pit of glowing charcoals"; Tv Vi Bu Pj1 the black-snake and charcoal-pit similes; DN 27 the aggañña account of sex's original ignominy; AN 4.159 the four-fold genesis of the body; AN 5.55 Māra's snare; MN 22 the impossibility of "sex without desire"). The post argues that this is the minimum baseline for any practitioner, monastic or lay, and that the entire modern "I am a layperson" exception is a fabrication. The reasoning chain: MN 22 establishes that sex-without-sexual-desire is impossible → AN 7.50 establishes that impure celibacy is "yoked by the yoke of sex" and the practitioner is not freed from suffering → AN 5.177 and the post's extension to it establish that the five-trades list is non-exhaustive → SN 45.24 / MN 117 establish that wrong intention (sensual desire, ill will, cruelty) is the second of the wrong path-factors → the result is that no one practicing the wrong path can attain the stream.
The "drawbacks of sensuality" section is then deployed. MN 13's threefold analysis (gratification, drawback, escape) gives the structural distinction between the Buddha's teaching and "other religions" that also advocate "complete understanding" of sensuality but cannot articulate the drawback (the loss of wealth, family warfare, murder, robbery, adultery, and rebirth in hell) or the escape (removing and giving up desire and greed for sensuality). The post extends this logic to the modern world: any "Dhamma" that does not categorically teach the drawback and the escape is not the Buddha's Dhamma, even if it wears Buddhist clothing.
The wrong-livelihood section (AN 5.177; MN 51; SN 42.3 on soldiers; SN 42.2 on actors) is where the post is most novel. The post argues that the five forbidden trades (weapons, living beings, meat, intoxicants, poisons) are non-exhaustive — a list, not a closed set. The post extends the logic to medicine, vivisection-based professions, the military-industrial complex, abortion, euthanasia, the cosmetic-surgery industry, and any profession that structurally depends on violence. SN 42.3 and SN 42.2 are deployed because the Buddha explicitly names "soldier" and "actor" as wrong livelihoods even though they are not on the AN 5.177 list. The Buddha's reasoning — that any profession whose practitioners go to hell or the animal realm cannot be right livelihood — is then applied to modern medicine, which (the post argues) is institutionally bound to the blood-pact with the state (state licensing, dissection-based curricula, OB/GYN complicity with abortion, geriatric euthanasia, cosmetic-surgery vanity-fuel).
This is the most polemical and the most contestable part of the post. The textual basis is real — the Buddha does indeed single out soldiers and actors for rebirth in hell/animal realm. But the post is clearly extending the principle, and the reader must test the extension against AN 4.180. The reader who does so will see that the extension is consistent with the spirit of the texts, even if not literally quoted in the EBTs (which the post acknowledges by saying "AN 5.177 is far from exhaustive" and "the list is non-exhaustive").
The "right speech" and "true dhamma / counterfeit dhamma" sections (AN 8.10, SN 20.7, SN 16.13, AN 4.180, KN Iti 25, AN 1.319, AN 5.191) are the post's main weapon against the commercial-Dharma and performative-ethics phenomena. The recurring argument: the true teaching does not collapse suddenly; it is gradually eroded by the appearance of monastics/teachers who claim to teach it but who in fact accommodate the three unskillful roots, and who are smooth-voiced in public but corrupt in private. The post's reading of modern "Dhamma rockstars" — the endowed mega-temple monastics who advocate "just wars" or "abortion rights" — uses the AN 8.10 creep-and-liar diagnostic to identify them as exactly the "futile people who appear right here" of SN 16.13.
The "dependently originated consciousness / not-self" section (MN 38, SN 22.59, KN Snp 3.12) is the heart of the right-view-without-eternalism teaching. The post's argument: any "Buddhist" teaching that implies a transmigrating self, an eternal consciousness, or an inhering identity is literally the wrong view that the Buddha himself rebuked in MN 38 and SN 22.59. The Snp 3.12 formulation ("All the suffering that originates is caused by consciousness. With the cessation of consciousness, there is no origination of suffering") is the textual foundation for the position that consciousness itself is the proximate cause of suffering's origination — and therefore consciousness is not the self.
The three posts together make one large argument about the modern world: every major modern ideology (liberal progressivism, conservative nationalism, religious fundamentalism, secular capitalism, sectarian Buddhism, "spiritual bypassing" culture) maps onto one or more of the wrong views named in the EBTs. The post systematically lists these mappings:
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Capitalism / "Just work hard" / Meritocracy as meritocratic: maps onto AN 3.61 (past-karma determinism) and the wrong view that "things should and should not be done" is unknowable. The post notes that "the math ain't mathing" for the millions of surplus young males and for the working poor, and that the system's "just work hard" slogan is a structural denial of how wealth, genetics, and inheritance actually distribute opportunity.
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State power / government checks-and-balances / "least bad option" voting: maps onto AN 3.69 (the three unskillful roots apply to anyone who chooses to act by way of body, speech, or mind — including politicians, soldiers, police). The post's argument is that the Buddha's diagnosis of the unskillful roots is not susceptible to "voting your way out": the very mechanism of the state is extraction, and the people who run it are the same unskillful-rooted beings the suttas warn about.
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"Compassionate killing" / Utilitarianism / Euthanasia / "Justified violence" / "Justified war": maps onto SN 42.3 (the soldier's wrong view) and SN 42.2 (the actor's wrong view). The post uses these suttas to argue that the consequentialist framework ("the end justifies the means") is precisely the wrong view that sends soldiers and actors to hell or the animal realm, and that no "good outcome" can rescue an act done with greed, hate, or delusion at its root.
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Modern medicine / vivisection / OB-GYN / cosmetic surgery / euthanasia: the post extends the AN 5.177 logic. The state-licensing blood-pact, the dissections, the contractual complicity with abortion and euthanasia, the cosmetic-surgery vanity-amplification, the OB/GYN role as "maintenance worker for the human breeding factory" — all of these are read as wrong-livelihood analogues to the soldier and actor.
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"Spiritual bypassing" / "Dhamma is all about kindness and compassion" / "Commercial Dharma" / "corporate mindfulness" / "tone policing": maps onto the AN 8.51 checklist of "what is not the teaching" (anything that leads to passion, not dispassion; to yoking, not unyoking; to more desires, not fewer; to crowding, not seclusion; to being burdensome, not being unburdensome). The post reads the entire popular "be kind" framing as the opposite of the EBTs, and uses AN 1.319, AN 5.191, and the Buddha's repeated harsh rebukes to argue that the historical Buddha was not "gentle" in the modern sense.
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Sexual liberation / marriage / childbearing / "intimate partnership" / "love": maps onto KN Ud 8.8 (loved ones are sorrow), MN 87 (loved ones are a source of sorrow), KN Snp 1.3 (live alone like a rhino), MN 26 (the ignoble vs noble quest), AN 5.55 (Māra's snare), MN 22 (sex without desire is impossible), AN 7.50 (impure celibacy is no celibacy), Tv Vi Bu Pj1 (the black-snake/charcoal similes), and AN 4.159 (sex is a generative condition to be broken off). The post reads the entire modern romantic-relationship complex as the structural opposite of the celibate-life-of-the-five-precepts-with-celibacy-as-fifth.
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Materialism / "Samsara is normal" / "Just live a normal life and practice": the post's response is the egg-incubation simile (SN 22.101) and the wet-log simile (MN 36). The result of stream entry is not compatible with continuing to soak the log in sensual indulgence.
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Worship of doctors / "deifying physicians" / "daddy issues" with state power: the post uses AN 3.31 ("'Divinity' is a term for your parents") and AN 2.33 (mother and father are the only ones who genuinely help; the way to "repay" them is to elevate them ethically, not financially) to redirect reverence away from priests, doctors, and politicians, and toward the actual cultivators of one's existence — the parents — and even then, only in the sense of helping them develop ethically.
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NDE / past-life / OBE / precognition claims: in Post 1, the post uses AN 5.34#7.9 (Siha's faith in the Buddha on matters of rebirth) to argue that the proper response to claims about rebirth/afterlife is not "show me the proof" cynicism, nor uncritical acceptance, but the faith-of-the-stream-enterer: the four paccayas are met, the Buddha is accepted as a fully-awakened teacher, and the matter is taken on verifiable confidence because the alternative (skepticism that leads to inaction) is also a wrong view. The post then uses AWARE-study data to argue that empirical "proof" of paranormal claims has not been delivered, but that this is not a reason to dismiss the rebirth doctrine — the verification comes through the practice, not through paranormal claims.
The practice curriculum, when the 87 quotes are laid end-to-end, reduces to a small number of structural conditions:
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Right View, tested and verified (AN 4.180) — discards the wrong views of eternal consciousness, soul-transmigration, past-kamma determinism, divine creation, and "the end justifies the means" (MN 38, SN 22.59, KN Snp 3.12, AN 3.61, SN 42.3, SN 42.2). The first noble truth is suffering; the second is craving; the third is the cessation of craving; the fourth is the eightfold path (SN 56.11, SN 22.101, KN Ud 5.3, AN 8.21).
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Four paccayas for stream entry (SN 55.5) — associating with true persons, listening to the true teaching, rational application of mind, practicing in line with the teaching. The reverse chain (bad company → fake teaching → no faith → no practice) is the AN 10.62 fuel-chain, and the antidote to it is the reverse: good company, true teaching, faith, rational application, mindfulness, sense restraint, ethical conduct, abandonment of the five hindrances, knowledge, liberation.
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The five precepts with celibacy as the fifth, strictly observed (AN 8.21, AN 5.180, MN 8) — the minimum lay baseline. The eight uposatha precepts are added on the lunar observances (AN 10.46). Celibacy is not a monastic-only option; it is the lay-stream-enterer's structural practice.
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Sense restraint, with the five hindrances recognized and abandoned (MN 107, AN 10.62) — the graduated training: ethics → sense restraint → moderation in eating → wakefulness → mindfulness-and-situational-awareness → secluded lodging → abandonment of the five hindrances → first jhāna.
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The noble eightfold path practiced in full (SN 56.11, SN 55.5, SN 22.101) — right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right samadhi. The 37 factors of development (4 satipatthāna, 4 sammappadhāna, 4 iddhipāda, 5 indriya, 5 bala, 7 bojjhaṅga, N8P) are the incubation of the egg.
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Right livelihood, with the AN 5.177 list as non-exhaustive (AN 5.177, SN 42.3, SN 42.2, MN 51) — no trade in weapons, living beings, meat, intoxicants, or poisons; no profession that structurally requires killing or lying; and by the soldier/actor extension, no profession whose practitioners are taught to go to hell or the animal realm.
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Renunciation of the household, practiced in stages (MN 26, MN 87, KN Ud 8.8, KN Snp 1.3, AN 4.159, AN 5.55) — leaving the home-life is the structural choice, but the Visākha/Gavesī model shows it is also a lay option. Even remaining in the household, the noble disciple lives as one without loved ones (KN Ud 8.8), as the horned rhino (KN Snp 1.3), as one whose mind is "ready, supple, without hindrances" (KN Ud 5.3, AN 8.21).
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Recognizing the dhamma-test on the Saṅgha (KN Ud 5.5, AN 8.10, SN 16.13, SN 20.7) — the Saṅgha "doesn't accommodate" the immoral; the true teaching is not eroded by physical elements but by futile people; the discourses on emptiness are abandoned in favor of poetry. The serious practitioner tests the lineage by the four "AN 4.192" criteria: ethics (long-term, attentive, by the wise), purity (in dealing), resilience (in trouble), and wisdom (in discussion).
The post's central argument is that all of the world's major ideological formations are downstream of the three unskillful roots (AN 3.69): capitalism runs on greed, militarism runs on hate, dogmatism runs on delusion, and "Commercial Dharma" runs on all three. The post does not propose a political solution; it proposes a soteriological one. The Buddha's teaching, in the post's reading, is that the only effective response to the world's structural evils is the personal practice of the eightfold path. The only way to "exit" the engine of death is to become ariya — and the only way to become ariya is to follow the practice curriculum in full, with the right view as the foundation, stream entry as the proximate goal, and the eightfold path as the vehicle.
The post's most radical move is to argue that breeding is the engine of death (KN Ud 8.8, MN 26, AN 4.159, AN 5.55, MN 22, AN 7.50, MN 87, KN Snp 1.3, Tv Vi Bu Pj1). The argument is: the cycle of saṃsāra is propagated biologically; "loved ones" are the proximate cause of sorrow; the noble quest is to seek what is incorruptible; the household is the structure of suffering. Therefore, the only effective act of compassion is to not perpetuate the cycle. This is the textual foundation for the post's call to "stop breeding permanently," "exit samsara ASAP," and "follow the Aryan Eightfold Path" as the only anarchist life prefiguratively possible.
The post's most emotionally pointed move is to read the modern state, the medical-industrial complex, the corporate-Dharma industry, and the relationship-industrial complex as the structural manifestations of the three unskillful roots, and to read the EBTs as the only complete diagnosis and cure. The result is a reading of the Dhamma that is both deeply traditional (citing MN 22, AN 7.50, SN 22.101, AN 10.62) and radically contemporary (recognizing that the modern bureaucracies of medicine, war, finance, and family are the 21st-century versions of the structural conditions the Buddha diagnosed).
When the 87 quotes are read end-to-end, the picture is this:
- The Buddha taught one thing: suffering and the cessation of suffering (MN 22).
- The teaching is true, public, and complete (DN 16, SN 22.43).
- The teaching is a test, not a creed (AN 4.180, AN 8.51, KN Iti 25).
- The teaching is for the permanent cure of suffering, not for the perpetuation of saṃsāra (AN 1.328, MN 75, MN 54, SN 12.63).
- The proximate goal is stream entry, a determinate outcome with specific preconditions: verifiable faith in the Triple Gem, ethical conduct leading to samadhi, association with true persons, listening to the true teaching, rational application of mind, and practicing in line with the teaching (SN 55.1, SN 55.5).
- Stream entry requires, before the four noble truths are even taught, direct knowledge of the drawbacks of sensuality and the benefit of renunciation, and a mind without hindrances (KN Ud 5.3, AN 8.21).
- The vehicle is the noble eightfold path (SN 56.11, SN 22.101, SN 55.5).
- The path-factor of right intention specifically rejects sensual desire, ill will, and cruelty (MN 117).
- The path-factor of right livelihood specifically rejects trades in weapons, living beings, meat, intoxicants, and poisons — and by the soldier/actor extension, any profession that requires killing or that goes to hell (AN 5.177, SN 42.3, SN 42.2).
- The lay minimum is the five precepts with celibacy as the fifth, observed strictly; the eight uposatha precepts are added on the lunar observances (AN 8.21, AN 5.180, MN 8, AN 10.46).
- The practice curriculum, in full, is the graduated training (MN 107): ethics → sense restraint → moderation in eating → wakefulness → mindfulness-and-situational-awareness → secluded lodging → abandonment of the five hindrances → first jhāna.
- The fuel chain runs in both directions (AN 10.62): bad company → fake teaching → no faith → no practice → craving. The reverse: good company → true teaching → faith → rational application → mindfulness → sense restraint → ethical conduct → freedom from hindrances → knowledge → cessation.
- The result is irreversible: the arahant "can't transgress" in nine respects (AN 9.7), the sotāpanna "can't" do a list of wrongs (AN 1.268-277).
- The result is the only rational response to a world that is structurally the engine of death (MN 82, SN 15.13, KN Snp 1.3, KN Ud 8.8): exit saṃsāra by not perpetuating it, by living the celibate life of the noble path, and by "worshipping" (in the AN 3.31 sense) those who actually help — parents, true teachers, the Dhamma itself.
The post's argument is that this picture is not an "interpretation" or a "tradition" or a "school" — it is what the texts say, when read in order, and that anyone who reads them in this order and does not flinch will arrive at the same conclusion. The post's own contribution is to draw the explicit connections to the modern world (capitalism, the medical-industrial complex, the relationship-industrial complex, the corporate-Dharma industry, the NDE/superstition industry), and to argue that the modern world is precisely the set of conditions the EBTs diagnose. The reader is left to test the conclusion against the texts (AN 4.180) — and the post claims the conclusion will be confirmed.