A Delicate Ascetic of Ascetics (AN5.104)

Numbered Discourses 5.104

11. Living Comfortably

A Delicate Ascetic of Ascetics

“Mendicants, a mendicant with five qualities is a delicate ascetic of ascetics.

What five?

It’s when a mendicant usually uses only what they’ve been invited to accept—robes, almsfood, lodgings, and medicines and supplies for the sick—rarely using them without invitation.

When living with other spiritual practitioners, they usually find themselves treated agreeably by them by way of body, speech, and mind, and rarely disagreeably.

And they are usually presented with agreeable things by them, rarely with disagreeable ones.

They’re healthy, so the various unpleasant feelings—stemming from disorders of bile, phlegm, wind, or their conjunction; or caused by change in weather, by not taking care of themselves, by exertion, or as the result of past deeds—usually don’t come up.

They get the four absorptions—blissful meditations in this life that belong to the higher mind—when they want, without trouble or difficulty.

And they realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom. And they live having realized it with their own insight in this very life due to the ending of defilements.

A mendicant with these five qualities is a delicate ascetic of ascetics.

And if anyone should be rightly called a delicate ascetic of ascetics, it’s me.

For I usually use only what I’ve been invited to accept.

When living with other mendicants, I am usually treated agreeably by them.

And I usually present them with agreeable things.

I’m healthy.

I get the four absorptions when I want, without trouble or difficulty.

And I’ve realized the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom … in this very life …

So if anyone should be rightly called a delicate ascetic of ascetics, it’s me.”