Aṇguttara Nikāya
Pañcaka-Nipāta
11. Phāsu-Vihāra Vagga
The Book of the Gradual Sayings
The book of the Fives
Chapter XI: The Abodes of Comfort
Sutta 110
Arañña Suttaṃ
The Forest
Translated by E. M. Hare
Copyright The Pali Text Society
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Once the Exalted One dwelt near Sāvatthī;
and there he addressed the monks, saying:
"Monks."
'Yes, lord,' they replied; and the Exalted One said:
"Monks, possessed of five things
a monk is fit to follow the ways of the forest-wildernesses,
the outland bed and seat'[1]
Of what five?
Herein, monks, a monk is virtuous,
abides restrained by the restraint of the Obligations,
is perfected in conduct and habit,
sees peril in the smallest fault,
accepts the training
and trains himself accordantly;
■
and he is learned,
with a retentive and well-stored mind,
and those things
lovely in the beginning,
lovely in the middle,
lovely in the end,
setting forth in spirit and letter
the godly life,
perfect in its entirety,
are learnt by him,
resolved upon,
made familiar by speech,
pondered over in the mind,
fully understood in theory;
■
herein, monks, the Ariyan disciple,
abiding in active energy,
puts away all wrong things
and takes to right things;
steadfast and strenuous,
he shirks not the burden of righteousness;[2]
■
and he obtains at will,
without trouble,
without difficulty,
both here and now,
the abodes of ease:
the fourfold musings,
highly mental;
■
and enters and abides
in the emancipation of the mind,
in the emancipation of insight,
which is free of the cankers,
realizing this state by his own knowledge
even in this life.
Verily, monks, possessed of these five things
a monk is fit to follow the ways of the forcst-wildernesses,
the outland bed and seat.'
Psalms of the Brethren, pg xxxix-xl: "The leaning of so many of our Theras, however, to prolonged spells of monachistic life in wild, or, at least, retired places, is perhaps not a safe guide by which to judge the early Buddhist Order generally. That Order gathered into itself every variety of temperament, every grade of religious capacity. Many of them were quite unfit for various reasons to make religious progress in solitude. And in one of Thera Subhūti's verses, not included in this collection, he summons the unfit to leave it:
'Infected as thou art by lust,
By ill-will and illusin's taint,
Come thou away and leave the wood!
This is the home of souls made pure,
Of stainless anchorites austere.
Defile not thou the purified;
Come thou away and leave the wood!'
In fact, only the Arahant is pronounced to be really fit to dwell in such solitudes. And even among the Theras themselves we find instances of unfitness for the monastic life, both through immaturity of training and through individual temperment."
— p.p.
[1] See Breath. p. xl. Comy. says a khīṇāsava is referred to.
[2] The text does net give in full; see above, § 2. Nyāṇatiloka renders besitzt Willenskraft, which gives India a term she did not possess, though Gotama used his best substitutes. Viriya, 'effort,' 'energy,' is a mode of using will.
