{"collection":"Anguttara Nikaya","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/suttacentral_an4.14/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/suttacentral_an4.14","id":"suttacentral_an4.14","license":"CC0","rights_basis":"suttacentral_bilara_data_cc0","source":"suttacentral","source_url":"https://suttacentral.net/an4.14/en/sujato","summary":null,"tags":["Anguttara Nikaya","Early Buddhist Texts"],"text":"\u201cMendicants, there are these four efforts. What four? The efforts to restrain, to give up, to develop, and to preserve. And what, mendicants, is the effort to restrain? When a mendicant sees a sight with their eyes, they don\u2019t get caught up in the features and details. If the faculty of sight were left unrestrained, bad unskillful qualities of covetousness and displeasure would become overwhelming. For this reason, they practice restraint, protecting the faculty of sight, and achieving its restraint. When they hear a sound with their ears \u2026 When they smell an odor with their nose \u2026 When they taste a flavor with their tongue \u2026 When they feel a touch with their body \u2026 When they know an idea with their mind, they don\u2019t get caught up in the features and details. If the faculty of mind were left unrestrained, bad unskillful qualities of covetousness and displeasure would become overwhelming. For this reason, they practice restraint, protecting the faculty of mind, and achieving its restraint. This is called the effort to restrain. And what, mendicants, is the effort to give up? It\u2019s when a mendicant doesn\u2019t tolerate a sensual, malicious, or cruel thought that\u2019s arisen, but gives it up, dispels it, eliminates it, and obliterates it. They don\u2019t tolerate any bad, unskillful qualities that have arisen, but give them up, dispel them, eliminate them, and obliterate them. This is called the effort to give up. And what, mendicants, is the effort to develop? It\u2019s when a mendicant develops the awakening factors of mindfulness, investigation of principles, energy, rapture, tranquility, immersion, and equanimity, which rely on seclusion, fading away, and cessation, and ripen as letting go. This is called the effort to develop. And what, mendicants, is the effort to preserve? It\u2019s when a mendicant preserves a meditation subject that\u2019s a fine basis of immersion: the perception of a skeleton, a worm-infested corpse, a livid corpse, a split open corpse, or a bloated corpse. This is called the effort to preserve. These are the four efforts. Restraint and giving up, development and preservation: these are the four efforts taught by the Kinsman of the Sun. Any mendicant who keenly applies these may attain the ending of suffering.\u201d","title":"Restraint","tradition":"Anguttara Nikaya","translated_text":null,"word_count":368}