---
title: Three Axes of Sīla — Sīla, Saṃvara, Vinaya, and the Word That English Cannot Quite Hold
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 4 — SĪLA: From the Pāli Vinaya to the Sign-less Precepts · Part I · Pāli Roots"
series_short: "SĪLA"
volume: 3
paper_id: "SILA-P01"
paper_number: 1
part: Part I · Pāli Roots
part_number: 1
date: 2026-05-16
version: "1.0"
license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
---

# Three Axes of *Sīla*
***Sīla*, *Saṃvara*, *Vinaya*, and the Word That English Cannot Quite Hold**

*中文主題：戒之三軸——sīla／saṃvara／vinaya 三詞辨義與漢譯傳統之多面向讀解框架*

**Abstract**

Contemporary Western readers translate *sīla* almost reflexively as "morality," "ethics," or "moral discipline" — three English options each carrying its own theological or philosophical sediment, and each, on closer reading, missing the word. This paper argues that the slippage is not a problem of word-choice alone. Early Pāli texts deploy a *three-term technical field* for what English typically collapses into a single category — *sīla* (character as a trained faculty), *saṃvara* (active sealing of the sense-doors as a *padhāna* operation), and *vinaya* (the case-based textual system of monastic regulation). Drawing on AN 4.14 *Saṁvarasutta*, AN 5.140 *Sotārasutta*, AN 11.1 *Kimatthiyasutta*, sample sections of the Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* (T1428) and *Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* (T1429), the Chinese parallels in *Dīrgha Āgama* (T0001) fascicles 13, 14, and 17, the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026) *Sūtra of Purposes* (fascicle 10, sūtra 42), and Buddhaghosa's *Sīla-niddesa* in *Visuddhimagga* I (paraphrased only, per the volume's licensing discipline), this paper shows how the three terms divide their work: *sīla* names what is trained at the level of character; *saṃvara* names what happens, moment by moment, at the sense-doors; *vinaya* names the living textual-and-judicial system through which a community of practitioners has, over centuries, accumulated case law. The Chinese tradition, far from compressing the three terms, mapped them onto three distinct words — *jiè* (戒), *lǜ* (律), and *lǜyí* (律儀) — and read *jiè* itself as a deliberately many-faceted term, as the *Lohicca*-parallel of T0001 fascicle 17 already shows. The classical *sīla* → *avippaṭisāra* → … → *vimuttiñāṇadassana* chain of AN 11.1, whose Chinese parallel closes with the phrase *this sīla approaches the highest* (*cǐ jiè qù zhì dì yī* 此戒趣至第一), is offered here as the anchor citation for the rest of the volume. Recognizing the three-axis structure is the entry ticket for reading the twenty-eight chapters that follow, from the five qualities of stream-enterer's *sīla*, through Nāgārjuna on *śīla-pāramitā*, through the threefold purity of the *Diamond Sūtra*, to the *Śūraṅgama*'s four pure precepts as the gateway to *samādhi*. *Sīla* in the Buddhist analysis was never the question of "what to obey." It was the question of how character, sense-restraint, and institutional case-law together constitute the first segment of the path to awakening.

**Keywords:** *sīla*, *saṃvara*, *vinaya*, *pātimokkha*, *sīla-khandha*, *indriya-saṃvara*, *cattāri padhānāni*, AN 11.1 / *Kimatthiyasutta*, *Madhyama Āgama* "What is the Purpose Sūtra" (《何義經》, T0026 fasc. 10 sūtra 42), Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* (T1428 / T1429), Buddhaghosa's *Visuddhimagga*, character ethics, living casuistic system, Chinese m-to-n translation mapping, the four marks of *sīla* (*lakkhaṇa* / *rasa* / *paccupaṭṭhāna* / *padaṭṭhāna*)

---

**Author:** Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡)
**Date:** May 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0
**Series:** SĪLA — *From the Pāli Vinaya to the Sign-less Precepts*

---

## I. Introduction

You're handed a list. Five lines: do not kill, do not take what is not given, do not engage in sexual misconduct, do not speak falsely, do not take intoxicants. Above the list, two words: *The Precepts*. You read down the list and find it reasonable. Sensible, even. You make a private mental note: *I follow most of these already*. So this — *this* — is what Buddhist ethics turns out to be. A reasonable list of five things not to do.

The word translated as "precepts" is *sīla*. And the reading you have just performed — five prohibitions to be obeyed — is precisely what *sīla*, in the Pāli technical sense, is not.

The first thing to be cleared, before this volume can begin, is the word. The English options on offer all carry baggage. *Morality* drags along the Christian-theological apparatus of sin, judgment, and obedience to a divine law. *Ethics* invokes the Greek philosophical tradition of virtue and the well-lived life. *Moral discipline* — perhaps the most common compound in dharma talks — quietly imports the picture of an external rule to which a person submits, and submission to an external rule is, on inspection, exactly what early Buddhism does *not* mean by *sīla*. Whichever option a reader picks, what arrives is not *sīla* but *sīla* refracted through a Western grammar.

The problem does not end with translation choice. The deeper difficulty is that, in early Pāli sources, *sīla* never operates alone. It moves alongside two technical neighbours — *saṃvara* and *vinaya* — and the three together form a three-axis structure. Western scholarship has tended to gather all three under the umbrella of "moral discipline" or "Buddhist ethics." That gathering is not an accidental sloppiness; it is a systematic conceptual flattening. Each of the three terms occupies a different conceptual register in the Pāli canon: *sīla* points toward *character as a trained faculty*, *saṃvara* toward *active sealing at the sense-doors*, and *vinaya* toward *the case-by-case textual system through which a monastic community accumulates regulatory wisdom*. Compress the three into one, and one loses both the internal structure of the path and the analytic precision with which the Chinese translators distributed the three Pāli terms across three different Chinese words — *jiè* (戒), *lǜ* (律), *lǜyí* (律儀) — keeping their distinct registers visible in a different language.

Buddhaghosa, writing in the fifth century, opened the *Sīla-niddesa* (Description of Ethical Conduct) — the first chapter of the *Visuddhimagga* — with a four-question framework: *What is sīla? In what sense is it called sīla? What are its mark, function, manifestation, and proximate cause (lakkhaṇa-rasa-paccupaṭṭhāna-padaṭṭhāna)? And what are its benefits?*[^1] The framework is commentarial rather than canonical, but as a systematic point of entry it is useful: it signals that the meaning of *sīla* is not self-evident, and that the word must be located along several axes — functional, qualitative, operational, and consequentialist — before it can be properly read. The present chapter borrows the four-question structure as an entry-point but does not commit to Buddhaghosa's specific commentarial answers; throughout this volume, references to the *Visuddhimagga* are paraphrased rather than quoted, in order to keep the volume's CC BY-NC-SA license in clean separation from the GRETIL CC-BY-SA Pāli edition and from Ñāṇamoli's copyrighted English translation.

A Chinese reader entering *sīla* faces an additional layer of difficulty. The single Chinese character *jiè* (戒) carries at least four distinct Pāli senses: *sīla* (ethical conduct in the broad sense), *sikkhāpada* (a specific training-rule item in the disciplinary text), *sīla-saṃvara* (the sealing of conduct), and *sīla-khandha* (the ethics-aggregate of the path). To a reader untrained in Chinese exegetical conventions, this m-to-n mapping can look like translational imprecision. But T0001 fascicle 17 — the *Lohicca*-sūtra Chinese parallel — already unfolds *jiè* into a fourfold structure: *xiánshèng-jiè* (賢聖戒 noble ethics), *lǜ-jiè* (律戒 disciplinary regulation), *yí-jiè* (儀戒 comportment ethics), and *shí-jiè* (時戒 occasion-bound ethics). The Chinese tradition, in other words, built multi-aspect analysis into its own reading frame from the start. The m-to-n richness of *jiè* is not poverty of vocabulary; it is hermeneutic depth.

Three classes of contemporary reader typically enter *sīla* through three different doorways: comparative-religious scholars through "Buddhist ethics"; practice-oriented readers through the threefold training (*sīla / samādhi / paññā*) or the lay Five Precepts; translation-sensitive readers through the m-to-n problem of *jiè*. Each of these doorways gets part of the word and misses the rest. The argument of this chapter is that none of them is the frontal entrance. The frontal entrance is the three-axis distinction: *sīla* / *saṃvara* / *vinaya*.

The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. §II opens the Chinese axis: the m-to-n map of *jiè*, the threefold *sīla* framework (*cūḷa-sīla / majjhima-sīla / mahā-sīla*) preserved in the *Dīrgha Āgama* parallels of DN 1 and DN 3, and the *avippaṭisāra* chain of AN 11.1 with its Chinese parallel in T0026 fascicle 10. §III is the analytic core: each of the three terms is given its own boundaries — *sīla* as faculty, *saṃvara* as active sealing, *vinaya* as casuistic textual system. §IV brings three contemporary scholars into dialogue: Bhikkhu Bodhi (on the *abhidhammic* anchoring of *saṃvara*), Rupert Gethin (on *sīla* as character rather than morality), and Bhikkhu Anālayo (on *indriya-saṃvara* and *sati* as parallel rather than substitute disciplines). §IV also briefly locates *sikkhā* — a fourth, neighbouring term often used alongside *sīla* — and shows why it is not part of the three-axis cluster proper. §V clears four misreadings. §VI returns to AN 11.1 and the Chinese phrase *this sīla approaches the highest* (此戒趣至第一), and offers it as the closing anchor of this opening chapter and the cross-paper anchor for the *SĪLA* volume.

The Pāli and Chinese evidence comes next.

---

## II. Canonical Foundation

This section runs in two streams: discourses (the *sutta* layer) organized by which term is in focus, and the systematic exposition layer (the Pāli commentarial tradition, paraphrased). Each Pāli reference is paired with its Chinese-translation parallel where one exists, in keeping with the bilingual convention of this volume.

### 2.1 The m-to-n Mapping of *Jiè* (戒)

The single Chinese character *jiè* carries, at minimum, the following four Pāli technical senses:

| Chinese *jiè* (戒) | Corresponding Pāli term | Brief gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Ethical conduct in the broad sense | *sīla* | The trained capacity for wholesome action, encompassing both character and behaviour |
| Training-rule item | *sikkhāpada* | A specific clause in the disciplinary text, taken as a single unit of training |
| Ethical sealing | *sīla-saṃvara* | The active operation of *sīla* in sealing the sense-doors |
| Ethics-aggregate | *sīla-khandha* | *Sīla* as one of the constituent aggregates of the Eightfold Path or threefold training |

A reader inclined to fault the Chinese for imprecision should consult T0001 fascicle 17, the Chinese parallel to the *Lohicca-sutta* (DN 12).[^2] That fascicle already analyses *jiè* into four distinguishing types: *xiánshèng-jiè* (noble ethics, corresponding to *sīla* as cultivated by the ariyans), *lǜ-jiè* (disciplinary regulation, corresponding to *vinaya* statute), *yí-jiè* (comportment ethics, corresponding to the outward face of *saṃvara*), and *shí-jiè* (occasion-bound ethics, corresponding to time-specific training-rules such as those of *uposatha* days or the rains-retreat). The Chinese translator did not flatten the Pāli field into a single word; he kept four registers of analysis open within the single Chinese term, and let the qualifying compound do the disambiguation. The m-to-n richness is a translator's choice, not a translator's defect.

### 2.2 The Threefold *Sīla* Framework in the *Dīrgha Āgama*

A second important Chinese-axis structure is the threefold *sīla* (*cūḷa-sīla* / *majjhima-sīla* / *mahā-sīla*: small, middling, and great ethical conduct). This frame is carried in full by two parallel discourses preserved as the Chinese *Ambaṭṭha-sūtra* (T0001 fascicle 13, parallel to DN 3) and the Chinese *Brahmajāla-sūtra* (T0001 fascicle 14, parallel to DN 1).[^3] The small *sīla* lists basic training: the five precepts and the seven sets of *sekhiya*-type comportment rules. The middling *sīla* expands to abstention from wrong livelihood, wrong view, and wrong intention. The great *sīla* extends further to abstention from astrology, divination, spells, and similar arts deemed inappropriate for a renunciant. The Chinese parallel preserves a refrain marking the boundaries of each list — *as other ascetics and brahmins do, while eating the food given them in faith… one entering my teaching does not do thus*.

The framing turn comes at the end of the *Brahmajāla* parallel, T0001 fascicle 14:

> These are but small comportment-ethical observances… There are further dhammas, deep, profound, and subtly luminous, which the Tathāgata knows directly and teaches to others.

This sentence is structurally decisive. It does not say that the precepts are unimportant; it says they are the *ground floor*. *Sīla*, in this canonical positioning, is neither the heart of the dharma nor a secondary moralism: it is the floor on which everything else stands. Reading *sīla* as "minor morality" misses the precision of the positioning entirely.

### 2.3 The *Avippaṭisāra* Chain — AN 11.1 and its Chinese Parallel

The third Chinese-axis foundation is the *purpose-chain* recorded in AN 11.1 *Kimatthiyasutta* and its Chinese parallel in T0026 fascicle 10, the *Sūtra of Purposes* (《何義經》, sūtra 42).[^4] In this discourse, Ānanda asks the Buddha: *what is the purpose of sīla?* The Buddha replies: *non-regret (avippaṭisāra) is its purpose*. Ānanda follows up with the same question of non-regret, and the chain unfolds eleven links deep:

*sīla* → *avippaṭisāra* (non-regret) → *pāmojja* (joy) → *pīti* (rapture) → *passaddhi* (tranquillity) → *sukha* (happiness) → *samādhi* (concentration) → *yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana* (knowledge and vision of things as they are) → *nibbidā* (disenchantment) → *virāga* (dispassion) → *vimuttiñāṇadassana* (knowledge and vision of liberation).

The Chinese parallel closes the sequence with a phrase that will serve as the closing anchor of this chapter:

> Dhamma supports dhamma, dhamma conditions dhamma; *this sīla thus approaches the highest* — that is, crossing this further shore and reaching the further bank. (T0026, fascicle 10, sūtra 42)

The Pāli closer, *iti kho, ānanda, kusalāni sīlāni anupubbena aggāya parentī* — "skillful ethical states progressively lead up to the highest," in Bhikkhu Sujato's SuttaCentral rendering[^5] — is rendered in the Chinese as *cǐ jiè qù zhì dì yī* (此戒趣至第一). The Chinese verb *qù zhì* (趣至, *approaches and arrives at*) corresponds to the Pāli *aggāya parenti*, both verbs of active locomotion. *Sīla* is not a static ground but the starting motion of a developmental chain. The chain itself anchors the *telos* of all three axes: whatever *saṃvara* does at the sense-doors, whatever *vinaya* does at the institutional level, both find their functional ground in this same eleven-link sequence.

This chapter takes the Chinese phrase *this sīla approaches the highest* as its closing anchor in §VI; subsequent papers in the *SĪLA* volume (P02 on the five qualities, P03 on *sīlānussati*, P07 on *uposatha*, P24 on *sīla*→*samādhi*) will return to this same eleven-link chain from their own angles. The Chinese-axis foundation having been laid out, §III now turns to each of the three terms in turn.

---

## III. The Three Axes

### 3.1 *Sīla*: Character as a Trained Faculty

The etymology of *sīla* is relatively clean. The root *√sīl* yields the senses of *habit*, *disposition*, *natural manner of behaving*. The word *sīla* points at *the trained shape of how a person tends to act*. It is, in modern terms, much closer to *character* — and to the technical sense of *faculty* in Aristotelian psychology — than to *moral law*.

Buddhaghosa's four-mark analysis in *Visuddhimagga* I (paraphrased here, not quoted) supplies the following characterizations:[^1] the *mark* (*lakkhaṇa*) of *sīla* is *the orderly composing of body, speech, and mind*; its *function* (*rasa*) is the dual function of *putting down unwholesome action* and *occasioning the praise of wholesome action*; its *manifestation* (*paccupaṭṭhāna*) is *the purity of bodily, verbal, and mental action*; its *proximate cause* (*padaṭṭhāna*) is the pair of psychological factors *hiri* (conscience) and *ottappa* (moral apprehension). The whole analysis is striking for what it does not say. It does not say that *sīla* is *a list of prohibitions*; it does not say that *sīla* is *the act of obeying a code*. It says that *sīla* is *the orderly composing of action* — a way of describing not a rule, but the inner organization of the agent.

Returning to AN 11.1, the Buddha's first answer is also structurally telling. *What is the purpose of sīla?* — *Non-regret is its purpose.*[^4] Notice what the Buddha did *not* answer. He did not say: *the purpose of sīla is to avoid bad rebirth*, nor: *the purpose of sīla is to obey the Tathāgata's law*. He said: *non-regret*. The purpose of *sīla* is a particular psychological state — the absence of self-reproach — which then opens onto a sequence of further psychological states, leading by stages to liberation. *Sīla* is here positioned not as a moral demand but as the launching condition of an inner developmental sequence.

To read *sīla* as a *trained faculty of character* rather than a *list of prohibitions* is the first thesis of this chapter. The word *faculty* is chosen deliberately. *Sīla*'s significance, in canonical positioning, is not exhausted by enumerating what is and is not prescribed; it lies in *the cultivated disposition that naturally inclines toward wholesome action and away from unwholesome action*. This reading converges, in §IV below, with Rupert Gethin's recovery of *sīla* as *skilful action issuing from a developed character*, and is consistent with the *Visuddhimagga*'s decision in chapter VII to include *sīlānussati* (recollection of one's own ethical conduct) among the six recollections — a meditation subject that takes one's own *sīla* as its object, which would be incoherent if *sīla* meant a list rather than an inwardly verifiable quality.

### 3.2 *Saṃvara*: Active Sealing at the Sense-Doors

The etymology of *saṃvara* is more dramatic. The Pāli root *saṁ-√vṛ* means *to enclose, to cover, to shield, to seal*; the verbal form *saṁvarati* combines protection and active maintenance. To render *saṃvara* simply as *restraint* is not wrong, but it badly underweights the active dimension and risks misleading the English reader into a picture of Puritan-style abstemiousness or Stoic emotional suppression. Neither picture is right. The classical Chinese translation — *lǜyí* (律儀) — is more accurate: *lǜ* (律) carries the sense of *ordering principle*, *yí* (儀) the sense of *comportment* or *outward bearing*. The Chinese compound preserves both the inner-regulatory and outer-manifest dimensions of *saṃvara* without committing to either alone.

The canonical positioning of *saṃvara* is most precisely stated in AN 4.14 *Saṁvarasutta*.[^6] This discourse lays out the *four right strivings* (*cattāri padhānāni*): the *striving of restraint* (*saṁvarappadhāna*), the *striving of abandoning* (*pahānappadhāna*), the *striving of developing* (*bhāvanāppadhāna*), and the *striving of guarding* (*anurakkhaṇāppadhāna*). The first of these, *saṁvarappadhāna*, is specified concretely as the *guarding of the six sense-doors*: on seeing a sight, one does not seize on the general sign (*nimitta*) nor on the particulars (*anubyañjana*); the same procedure is described for sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental objects. The technical action is *not seizing the sign* — a moment-by-moment refusal, at the point of sensory contact, to allow the chain of grasping and aversion to begin.

The active character of this operation is made vivid by the war-elephant simile of AN 5.140 *Sotārasutta*.[^7] The discourse compares the bhikkhu's *indriya-saṃvara* (sense-faculty sealing) to a war-elephant on the battlefield (*saṅgāmagato*) who simultaneously protects ten parts of his body — trunk, ears, eyes, neck, body, tail, tusks, feet, heart, and head — while still hearing, enduring, advancing, and acting. The point of the simile is *active engagement*. The elephant is not retreating; he is in the centre of the battle, fully present, with vigilance distributed across the whole of his form. *Saṃvara* is *active vigilance in active engagement*, not withdrawal. To read *saṃvara* as *abstention* or *holding back* loses the simile's structural force.

Two observations follow. First, the Chinese translation *lǜyí*, used continuously from Kumārajīva and Xuanzang onward across both the Āgama and the Mahāyāna treatise translations, preserves the dual dimension — regulatory and manifest — that the English *restraint* tends to compress into a single inhibitory register. Second, *saṃvara* is structurally distinct from *sīla* in the canonical layout: AN 4.14 does not list *saṁvarappadhāna* as a sub-item of *sīla*; it places it as the first of the four right-strivings, which is one of the standard formulations of *sammā-vāyāma* (right effort) on the Noble Eightfold Path. *Saṃvara*, in other words, is operationally an effort-category, not a character-category. It belongs to the path's effort segment even when its operations bear on the same sense-data that *sīla* organizes at the character level.

### 3.3 *Vinaya*: A Casuistic Textual System

*Vinaya* differs from the first two terms in a way that English readers often miss: it refers not to a psychological operation but to a *textual and institutional system*. The Pāli word literally means *leading away* (*vi-√nī*) — the practice of leading unwholesome conduct away from the community of practitioners. In the organization of the Pāli canon, *Vinaya* names the first of the three baskets, the *Vinaya-piṭaka*, which functions as the textual and judicial system of monastic regulation. The internal structure of this system — exhibited at its core in the *Suttavibhaṅga* (analysis of the *Pātimokkha* rules) — is a four-tier scheme: the *nidāna* (the occasioning story for the rule), the *sikkhāpada* (the training rule itself), the *pada-bhājanīya* (the word-by-word commentary), and the *vinīta-vatthu* (settled cases applying the rule to specific situations).[^8] Each training rule comes with all four tiers. *Vinaya* is not abstract moral legislation; it is a *casuistic* system — a system that reasons forward from cases.

The internal architecture of *vinaya* is most visible in the structure of the *Pātimokkha* (recitation-book of training rules), which is divided into eight classes. The Chinese-axis reality, anchored in the Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* (T1428) and the *Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* (T1429), is as follows: **four *pārājika*** (defeats), **thirteen *saṅghādisesa*** (formal-meeting offences), **two *aniyata*** (indefinite cases), **thirty *nissaggiya-pācittiya*** (relinquishment-and-confession offences), **ninety *pācittiya*** (confession offences), **four *pāṭidesanīya*** (offences to be confessed), **one hundred *sekhiya*** (training observances), **seven *adhikaraṇasamatha*** (procedures for settling disputes) — totalling 250 bhikkhu rules.[^9] T1429 closes with the school's own self-statement of the structure:

> Venerables, I have recited the introduction, the four *pārājika* dharmas, the thirteen *saṅghādisesa* dharmas, the two *aniyata* dharmas, the thirty *nissaggiya-pācittiya* dharmas, the ninety *pācittiya* dharmas, the four *pāṭidesanīya* dharmas, the *sekhiya* dharmas, and the seven *adhikaraṇasamatha* dharmas. (T1429 fasc. 1)

A cross-system note is required here, because it bears directly on the central thesis of this section. The Pāli Theravāda *Pātimokkha* uses the same eight classes, but the numerics of two of the classes differ: *pācittiya* is **92** and *sekhiya* is **75**, totalling **227** bhikkhu rules. The Mūlasarvāstivāda system, preserved chiefly in the Tibetan canon and in fragmentary Sanskrit, has approximately **263** bhikkhu rules. None of these three counts is mistaken. The numerical plurality is the natural product of *vinaya*'s casuistic character: monastic communities in different regions, accumulating different judicial precedents over different timeframes, produced slightly different aggregations of rules under the same eight-class architecture. The disagreement is the evidence that *vinaya* is a *living* system. A reader who cites "ninety-two *pācittiya* and seventy-five *sekhiya*" while using a Chinese Dharmaguptaka source has performed a cross-system misattribution — one of the four misreadings cleared in §V below. The present chapter uses the Dharmaguptaka 90/100 numerics throughout, because the chapter is grounded in the Chinese textual axis; readers consulting Pāli sources for the same rules should use the 92/75 count.

A second feature of *vinaya* that distinguishes it from *sīla* and *saṃvara* is its *two-layer* structure. The broad *vinaya* (the *Vinaya-piṭaka*) preserves the full apparatus — occasioning narratives, training rules, word-by-word analysis, and case applications. The *Pātimokkha* is an independent extraction of the rule-clauses alone, used at the bi-monthly *uposatha* recitation by the assembled community. The Chinese tradition's parallel distinction between T1428 (the broad *vinaya*) and T1429 (the *Pātimokkha* extract) preserves the two-layer architecture cleanly. English renderings of *vinaya* as *monastic code* are not wrong, but the word *code* invites a static, legislative picture that misses the dynamic interplay between rules, cases, and judgments that *vinaya* in fact comprises. The Chinese threefold rendering — *lǜ* (律), *lǜzàng* (律藏), and *guǎnglǜ* (廣律) — names the text, the basket, and the broad living system, and is more precise than the single English term.

At this point each of the three axes has its own location: *sīla* is *faculty* (character-register), *saṃvara* is *operation* (effort-register), *vinaya* is *institution* (textual-and-judicial register). The three are not three kinds of "morality" laid in parallel. They are three dimensions — psychological, operational, institutional — of a single developmental chain. To compress them under the single English head of "moral discipline" is to erase the division of analytic labour the canonical texts so carefully maintained.

---

## IV. Western Scholarship in Dialogue

Three contemporary voices have each contributed something essential to the three-axis reading, and each has left something for the reading to complete.

### 4.1 Bhikkhu Bodhi: *Saṃvara* and the *Abhidhammic* Anchor

Bhikkhu Bodhi's 2012 translation of the *Aṅguttara Nikāya*, *The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha*, supplies the most influential contemporary reading of AN 4.14 and AN 11.1 in English.[^10] Bodhi translates *saṃvara* as *restraint* and pairs it with *guarding* across the four-strivings architecture, anchoring all four strivings firmly to the *abhidhammic* analysis of *sammā-vāyāma* (right effort) in the Noble Eightfold Path. His note on AN 11.1 is equally important. He makes clear that the eleven-link chain is *progressive-developmental* rather than *transactional*: one does not "perform *sīla*" in order to "receive *avippaṭisāra*" as a payment. The chain describes how, when *sīla* is genuinely present, *avippaṭisāra* naturally and structurally arises, and how each subsequent state naturally and structurally arises from the one before it. The relation is causally enabling, not contractual.

This reading is precise on both counts. The *abhidhammic* anchoring of the four strivings to right effort is exact. The progressive-developmental reading of AN 11.1 correctly avoids the mechanistic register that "moral discipline yields happiness" would import. The remaining issue is one of English register: *restraint* in modern English heavily connotes inhibition or refusal, and a reader who reads Bodhi's translation alone is likely to come away with a passive picture of *saṃvara*. The war-elephant simile of AN 5.140 — which Bodhi himself translates accurately — does not propagate strongly into the reader's intuitive image of *saṃvara* when *restraint* is the recurrent word. The supplement this chapter offers is structural: the *active-engagement* dimension of *saṃvara* needs to be foregrounded in commentary, lest the English reader settle into a withdrawal-picture inconsistent with the canonical simile.

### 4.2 Rupert Gethin: *Sīla* is Not Morality

Rupert Gethin's *The Foundations of Buddhism* (1998), in its first two chapters, mounts the most influential English-language critique of the translation *sīla = morality*.[^11] Gethin's argument runs: the English word *morality* is heavily Christian-theologically coded, dragging in obedience to divine command, the sin/virtue binary, and the conscience-as-tribunal picture; *sīla* in early Buddhism is not the rule that the practitioner obeys, but *skilful action issuing from a developed character*. The reading proposed is character-ethical: *sīla* is what a developed person *naturally does*, not what an undeveloped person is *told to do*.

The critique is precise, and converges on the present chapter's first thesis (§3.1). *Sīla*'s *lakkhaṇa* in *Visuddhimagga* I — the orderly composing of body, speech, and mind — is structurally consonant with Gethin's character-ethics framing. The slight under-emphasis in Gethin's reading is *saṃvara*: pushed onto the character axis, *sīla* alone cannot do the moment-by-moment operational work that AN 4.14 assigns to *saṁvarappadhāna*. A reader who reads only Gethin can end up with *sīla*-as-character but without an account of the active sense-door operation that, in canonical terms, makes the character work in the moment. The complement is the *padhāna* dimension: character is constituted, in part, through moment-by-moment effort at the sense-doors. The two readings are not in tension; the *padhāna* operation is what *progressively reshapes* the character. Gethin's frame needs the *saṃvara* axis to be operationally complete.

### 4.3 Bhikkhu Anālayo: *Indriya-Saṃvara* and *Sati* as Parallel Tracks

Bhikkhu Anālayo, in chapter four of *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path* (2003), contributes a careful structural observation: *indriya-saṃvara* and *satipaṭṭhāna* function in early Buddhist practice as *two parallel disciplines of sense-management*, not as one replacing the other.[^12] *Indriya-saṃvara* operates as *preventive sealing* — guarding the doors at the moment of contact, before the proliferation begins. *Satipaṭṭhāna* operates as *observational mindfulness* — recording the unfolding of experience with bare awareness. Anālayo reads them as complementary, not competing.

The reading is canonically accurate. AN 4.14 itself locates *saṃvara* in the first of the four strivings (the door-guarding striving) and locates *sati* in the third striving (the development striving, which includes the seven factors of awakening, *sati-sambojjhaṅga* among them). The two operations are explicitly placed on parallel rails in canonical inventory. Anālayo's framing preserves both registers cleanly: the preventive-sealing register of *saṃvara* is not collapsed into the observational register of *sati*, and vice versa.

The slight emphasis-shift this chapter offers is on the word *preventive*. In modern English, *preventive* tends toward the static-defensive (a wall built in advance, a measure taken before harm); the war-elephant simile of AN 5.140 indicates that *saṃvara* is *active-vigilant within ongoing engagement*. The dual-track structure Anālayo identifies should be refined as *active-engaged-preventive sealing* on one track, *receptive observational mindfulness* on the other. With that refinement, the structural pairing is fully clear.

### 4.4 Three Voices Together; *Sikkhā* as the Adjacent Fourth Term

Taken together, the three contemporary voices contribute three things: Bodhi supplies *abhidhammic* anchoring for *saṃvara*; Gethin recovers *sīla* from the *morality* misframe; Anālayo articulates the *saṃvara*-*sati* dual-track structure. The shared gap, which this chapter has addressed in §III, is the *active-engagement* dimension of *saṃvara* as canonically depicted in AN 5.140.

One terminological note before closing the section. The Pāli canon contains an adjacent fourth term often used alongside *sīla*: *sikkhā* (training) and its derivative *sikkhāpada* (training rule). The threefold training (*tisso sikkhā* — *sīla-sikkhā*, *citta-sikkhā*, *paññā-sikkhā*) is the standard locus where *sikkhā* operates as a register of its own. This chapter does not unfold the *sikkhā* axis, because within the three-axis frame of the present argument *sikkhā* functions as an adjacent rather than a constitutive term: it names the training-frame within which *sīla* is cultivated, but it is not itself one of the three structural axes of *sīla*'s analytic field. Chapter 6 of this volume, *Sīla as Training*, will take *sikkhā* as its primary subject and unfold it in full.

---

## V. Middle-Way Corrections

Four common misreadings can be cleared briefly, before the closing argument.

**First misreading: *saṃvara* = puritan abstention.** This reading translates *saṃvara* as *restraint* and then reads the English *restraint* as Puritan denial or Stoic suppression. The textual reality is otherwise. The Pāli root *saṁ-√vṛ* primarily means *to enclose and protect*, an active operation; the AN 5.140 war-elephant simile shows *saṃvara* as *active vigilance in active engagement*, not as withdrawal. The classical Chinese rendering *lǜyí* (律儀) preserves both the inner-regulatory and outer-manifest dimensions and avoids the Puritan-suppression register entirely.

**Second misreading: *jiè* = list of prohibitions.** This reading takes the single Chinese character *jiè* (戒) as carrying a single sense — obligatory prohibition — and reads the lay Five Precepts as the paradigm case. The textual reality is otherwise. The Chinese character carries at least four Pāli senses: *sīla*, *sikkhāpada*, *sīla-saṃvara*, and *sīla-khandha*; the *Lohicca*-parallel of T0001 fascicle 17 unfolds *jiè* into four analytic types (*xiánshèng* / *lǜ* / *yí* / *shí*); and the canonical centre of gravity for *sīla* itself is character-as-trained-faculty rather than prohibition-as-obligation. The m-to-n mapping is hermeneutic depth, not vocabulary poverty.

**Third misreading: cross-system *Pātimokkha* numerics.** This reading cites "ninety-two *pācittiya* and seventy-five *sekhiya*" as the universal *Pātimokkha* numerics for all schools. The textual reality is otherwise. The 92/75 numerics are Pāli Theravāda. The Chinese Dharmaguptaka self-statement (T1428 / T1429) is 90/100. The Mūlasarvāstivāda count is approximately 263 bhikkhu rules. None of these three is in error; the numerical plurality is the natural product of *vinaya*'s casuistic character. Mixing the numerics across schools is a cross-system mistake. The author of a citation should state which school's *Pātimokkha* the citation derives from.

**Fourth misreading: collapsing the commentarial expansion into the canonical layer.** This reading takes the *Visuddhimagga* I list of the *eight qualities* of *sīla* (*akhaṇḍa*, *acchidda*, *asabala*, *akammāsa*, *bhujissa*, *viññuppasattha*, *aparāmaṭṭha*, *samādhi-saṁvattanika*) as a canonical sutta-layer enumeration. The textual reality is otherwise. The Nikāya layer carries the five-quality list (the first five terms); the further three terms and the *samādhi-saṁvattanika* (concentration-conducing) augmentation are Buddhaghosa's commentarial expansion. The present chapter does not develop the *pañcaṅga-sīla* analysis, because chapter 2 of this volume is its principal location; the note here merely flags that *commentary-versus-canon* should be distinguished cleanly whenever the five-quality / eight-quality lists appear.

---

## VI. Conclusion

Return to AN 11.1 and its Chinese parallel in T0026 fascicle 10. Ānanda asks: *what is the purpose of sīla?* The Buddha answers: *non-regret*. Then, link by link: non-regret → joy → rapture → tranquillity → happiness → concentration → knowledge and vision of things as they are → disenchantment → dispassion → knowledge and vision of liberation. The Buddha closes with the line preserved in the Chinese as:

> Dhamma supports dhamma, dhamma conditions dhamma; *this sīla thus approaches the highest* — that is, crossing this further shore and reaching the further bank. (T0026 fasc. 10 sūtra 42)

The Pāli parallel — *iti kho, ānanda, kusalāni sīlāni anupubbena aggāya parentī*[^5] — uses the active verb *parenti* (*leads to, brings to*), governing the dative *aggāya* (*to the highest*). The Chinese translator selected *qù zhì* (趣至) — *approaches and arrives at* — a verbal compound of equal active locomotion. *Sīla* is not a static ground on which the path stands. *Sīla* is the *first motion* of the chain, the launching of a trajectory.

The closing line, taken as the anchor of this opening chapter, carries the central thesis. *Sīla*, *saṃvara*, and *vinaya* — three terms each with its own canonical register — converge on a single trajectory. *Sīla* as faculty supplies the initial conditions of the chain. *Saṃvara* as active sense-door sealing supplies the moment-by-moment operations that keep the chain in motion. *Vinaya* as casuistic textual system supplies the institutional maintenance under which the chain can be sustained across generations and across geographies. The three are not three competing kinds of "moral discipline." They are three dimensions — psychological, operational, institutional — of a single trajectory leading from the formation of character to the knowledge and vision of liberation. Pressed under the single English heading of *moral discipline*, the three-way analytic labour disappears. Distributed back onto the registers of *faculty*, *operation*, and *institution*, the canonical structure recovers its precision.

The three doorways set out in §I can now be revisited. Comparative-religious scholars enter through "Buddhist ethics"; practice-oriented readers through the threefold training or the lay Five Precepts; translation-sensitive readers through the m-to-n problem of *jiè*. Each enters from a flank. The frontal entrance — the entrance that opens onto the full architecture — is the three-axis distinction itself, closing on the *avippaṭisāra* chain.

This closing also seeds the chapters that follow. Chapter 2 will unfold the five qualities of stream-enterer's *sīla*, drawing on the SN 55 sutta cluster and *Visuddhimagga* VII §4 (paraphrased). Chapter 3 will treat *sīlānussati* as the bridge between the *NIAN* volume and the *SĪLA* volume, applying the recollection technique developed in the first volume to the *sīla* object. Chapter 6 will give *sikkhā* and *sikkhāpada* their own primary treatment as the training-axis adjacent to the three structural axes. Chapter 9 will compare the three Vinaya schools in detail (Dharmaguptaka, Theravāda, Mūlasarvāstivāda), continuing the casuistic-plurality argument introduced here in §3.3. Chapter 23 — the *Śūraṅgama* paper — will take up the *sīla* → *samādhi* segment of the chain as the volume's handoff to the next volume (*SAMĀDHI*). All of these are anchored in the eleven-link chain that closes this chapter.

A final note on volume-anchoring. This chapter selects *this sīla approaches the highest* (此戒趣至第一) as the closing anchor of its own argument. The alternative candidate phrase — *sīla as the seedling-condition of nibbāna* (戒為涅槃之初緣), parallel to *NIAN*'s *mindfulness as the seedling-condition of nibbāna* (念為涅槃之初緣) and *DĀNA*'s *generosity as the seedling-condition of nibbāna* (檀為涅槃之初緣) — is held in reserve. As the opening chapter of the volume, this paper is not yet structurally weighted to carry a full volume-anchor; the five-quality argument of chapter 2 will provide firmer ground for the elevation, and the seedling-condition formula can be promoted there. *This sīla approaches the highest*, anchored in the eleven-link chain and verified across the Pāli and Chinese textual axes, is anchor enough for this opening.

The vocabulary cleared, the three axes located, the four misreadings set aside. The next chapter begins.

---

## Footnotes

[^1]: Buddhaghosa, *Visuddhimagga* I, *Sīla-niddesa*. PTS edition pp. 5–17. All references to the *Visuddhimagga* in this paper observe a paraphrase-only discipline, to keep this volume's CC BY-NC-SA license in clean separation from the GRETIL CC-BY-SA Pāli edition (share-alike incompatibility) and from Ñāṇamoli's copyrighted English translation. Short attributed renderings of Buddhaghosa's positions follow the standard four-question and four-mark schemata as presented in the *Sīla-niddesa*.

[^2]: *Dīrgha Āgama* (《長阿含經》), fascicle 17, *Lohicca-sūtra* Chinese parallel (parallel to DN 12 *Lohicca-sutta*), translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian (Later Qin), Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0001. The fourfold analysis of *jiè* (賢聖戒 / 律戒 / 儀戒 / 時戒) appears in the context of the discourse's response to the brahmin Lohicca.

[^3]: *Dīrgha Āgama* (《長阿含經》), fascicle 13 (*Ambaṭṭha-sūtra* Chinese parallel, parallel to DN 3) and fascicle 14 (*Brahmajāla-sūtra* Chinese parallel, parallel to DN 1), translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian, Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0001. The threefold *sīla* framework (*cūḷa-sīla* / *majjhima-sīla* / *mahā-sīla*) appears in both parallels with the characteristic refrain marking the boundaries of each list.

[^4]: AN 11.1 *Kimatthiyasutta*, *Aṅguttara Nikāya*. PTS edition v.1. Chinese parallel: *Madhyama Āgama* (《中阿含經》), fascicle 10, sūtra 42 (《何義經》), translated by Saṃghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0026.

[^5]: Sujato, Bhikkhu, trans. *Aṅguttara Nikāya* 11.1 *What's the Goal?*, SuttaCentral CC0 edition (Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500).

[^6]: AN 4.14 *Saṁvarasutta*, *Aṅguttara Nikāya*. PTS edition ii.16. The four right-strivings architecture (*cattāri padhānāni*) places *saṁvarappadhāna* as the first of the four, with *indriya-saṃvara* as its concrete content.

[^7]: AN 5.140 *Sotārasutta*, *Aṅguttara Nikāya*. PTS edition iii.162. The war-elephant simile pairs ten battlefield-protected sites of the war-elephant's body with the bhikkhu's sense-faculty sealing.

[^8]: The four-tier *Suttavibhaṅga* structure (*nidāna* → *sikkhāpada* → *pada-bhājanīya* → *vinīta-vatthu*) is the canonical analytical apparatus applied to each rule of the *Pātimokkha*. For the Pāli, see the *Vinaya-piṭaka, Suttavibhaṅga*, PTS edition. For the Chinese Dharmaguptaka realization, see T1428 fasc. 1–60.

[^9]: Dharmaguptaka *Vinaya* (《四分律》), T1428, and Dharmaguptaka *Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* (《四分比丘戒本》), T1429, translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian (Later Qin), Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22. The eight-class structure (4 / 13 / 2 / 30 / 90 / 4 / 100 / 7 = 250) is self-stated by the *Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* at the close of its recitation.

[^10]: Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012. The notes on AN 4.14 (*Saṁvarasutta*) and AN 11.1 (*Kimatthiyasutta*) supply the *abhidhammic*-anchoring and developmental-not-transactional readings referenced here.

[^11]: Gethin, Rupert. *The Foundations of Buddhism*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Chapters 1–2 carry the principal critique of *sīla = morality* and the proposal of the character-ethics framing.

[^12]: Anālayo, Bhikkhu. *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization*. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2003. Chapter 4 develops the *indriya-saṃvara* and *satipaṭṭhāna* parallel-track reading.

---

## References

### I. Primary Buddhist Sources

#### Pāli Canon

- *Aṅguttara Nikāya*. Pali Text Society edition.
- *Saṃyutta Nikāya*. Pali Text Society edition.
- *Dīgha Nikāya*. Pali Text Society edition.
- *Vinaya-piṭaka*. Pali Text Society edition.
- Buddhaghosa. *Visuddhimagga*. Pali Text Society edition (cited in paraphrase only).

#### Chinese Canonical Translations

- *Dīrgha Āgama* (《長阿含經》). Translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian, Later Qin. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0001.
- *Madhyama Āgama* (《中阿含經》). Translated by Saṃghadeva, Eastern Jin. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 1, no. 0026.
- *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* (《四分律》). Translated by Buddhayaśas and Zhu Fonian, Later Qin. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1428.
- *Dharmaguptaka Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* (《四分比丘戒本》). Translated by Buddhayaśas, Later Qin. Taishō Tripiṭaka vol. 22, no. 1429.

### II. Modern Scholarship

- Anālayo, Bhikkhu. *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization*. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2003.
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012.
- Gethin, Rupert. *The Foundations of Buddhism*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga*. Colombo: Semage, 1956; reprint BPS Pariyatti, 2010.
- Sujato, Bhikkhu, trans. *Aṅguttara Nikāya*, *Dīgha Nikāya*. SuttaCentral CC0 editions.

### III. Sūtra & Vinaya Index

| Abbrev. | Full Name | Edition / Tripiṭaka No. | Translator / Author |
|---------|-----------|-------------------------|---------------------|
| AN | *Aṅguttara Nikāya* | PTS edition | — |
| DN | *Dīgha Nikāya* | PTS edition | — |
| Vin | *Vinaya-piṭaka* | PTS edition | — |
| Vism | *Visuddhimagga* | PTS edition | Buddhaghosa |
| Cháng Āhán | *Dīrgha Āgama* | T 01 No. 0001 | Buddhayaśas & Zhu Fonian (Later Qin) |
| Zhōng Āhán | *Madhyama Āgama* | T 01 No. 0026 | Saṃghadeva (E. Jin) |
| Sìfēn Lǜ | *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* | T 22 No. 1428 | Buddhayaśas & Zhu Fonian (Later Qin) |
| Sìfēn Jièběn | *Dharmaguptaka Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* | T 22 No. 1429 | Buddhayaśas (Later Qin) |

---

## Cross-References to Other Papers in the Series

This is the opening paper of *SĪLA*, establishing the three-term vocabulary used throughout the volume. Subsequent chapters depend on it as follows:

- **Chapter 2, *The Five Qualities of Stream-Enterer's Sīla***: depends on §3.1's positioning of *sīla* as a trained faculty, and on §V's fourth correction (canonical five-quality / commentarial eight-quality distinction); develops the *pañcaṅga-sīla* analysis through the SN 55 cluster and *Visuddhimagga* VII §4 (paraphrased).
- **Chapter 3, *Sīlānussati: Recollection of One's Own Sīla***: depends on §3.1's reading of *sīla* as an inwardly verifiable faculty; bridges the *NIAN* and *SĪLA* volumes by applying the *anussati* mechanism developed in the first volume to a *sīla* object.
- **Chapter 6, *Sīla as Training (Sikkhā)***: depends on §4.4's identification of *sikkhā* as the adjacent fourth term; gives *sikkhā* and *sikkhāpada* their primary treatment, including the threefold training (*tisso sikkhā*) and the relation of training-rule items to character-faculty.
- **Chapter 7, *Uposatha and Time-Bound Sīla***: depends on §2.1's note on *shí-jiè* (時戒, occasion-bound ethics) in the *Lohicca*-parallel of T0001 fascicle 17.
- **Chapter 9, *The Three Vinaya Schools***: depends on §3.3's introduction of the casuistic-plurality argument (250 / 227 / 263 numerics); develops the Dharmaguptaka, Theravāda, and Mūlasarvāstivāda comparison in full.
- **Chapters 15–17, *Precept-Substance (Jiètǐ) Theories***: depend on §3.1's character-faculty reading and §3.3's case-based-system reading; develop the East Asian doctrinal question of what underlies a precept's binding force.
- **Chapter 20, *Vimalakīrti's Deconstructive Moves on Conventional Sīla***: depends on §I's three-doorway diagnosis; the Vimalakīrti text confronts the "list-of-prohibitions" reading from the Mahāyāna side.
- **Chapter 23, *The Four Pure Precepts of the Śūraṅgama***: depends on the *avippaṭisāra* chain anchored in §VI; takes up the *sīla* → *samādhi* segment as the volume's handoff to *SAMĀDHI*.

**Relation to volume one (*NIAN*)**: §3.1's reading of *sīla* as a faculty inwardly verifiable through recollection (*sīlānussati*) is consistent with the *anussati* boundary established in *NIAN* chapter 1; the *anussati* mechanism developed there is what chapter 3 of this volume applies to the *sīla* object.

**Relation to volume two (*DĀNA*)**: this chapter's three-axis approach (*sīla* / *saṃvara* / *vinaya*) parallels the three-term semantic-field approach of *DĀNA* chapter 1 (*dāna* / *cāga* / *yāga*). The shared methodological commitment — that English compression of a multi-term Pāli technical field is the entry-level error of the Western reception — runs through both volumes.

**Relation to the *Pointing-at-the-Moon Octalogy***: this chapter's *sīla*-as-faculty analysis resonates structurally with the Octalogy's S3 series (*The Hundred Dharmas Treatise*) on the wholesome mental factors *hiri* (conscience) and *ottappa* (moral apprehension) — these two factors, in *Visuddhimagga* I's four-mark analysis, are named as the *padaṭṭhāna* (proximate cause) of *sīla*. A full mental-factor cross-reference appears in chapter 15.

---

*Paper:* SILA-P01 · *Three Axes of Sīla* · **SĪLA · Part I · Pāli Roots**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates (六行門)
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Dīrgha Āgama* (T0001 fascicles 13 / 14 / 17), the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026 fascicle 10), the *Dharmaguptaka Vinaya* (T1428), and the *Dharmaguptaka Bhikṣu Prātimokṣa* (T1429) verified against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition. Pāli references follow SuttaCentral Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (AN 4.14 / AN 5.140 / AN 11.1) with dual PTS numbering.
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates