What Mendicants Hold Most Dear

What Mendicants Hold Most Dear contains the Buddha’s answer to a question by Upāli, the Buddha’s foremost disciple in knowledge and mastery of the Vinaya. Upāli asks the Buddha to teach about the nature, types, and obligations of mendicants and about the meaning of this term. For the benefit of the assembled mendicants and mendicants in general, the Buddha explains that their nature is restraint, their obligations consist of disciplined conduct, and their types are the genuine mendicants who abide by disciplined conduct and those who are not genuine and thus do not so abide. When one of the Buddha’s answers given in similes seems obscure, he offers further clarification upon Upāli’s request. The Buddha explains the advantages of maintaining disciplined conduct, thus urging the mendicants to treasure it, and he warns against disregarding it while wearing the mendicant’s robes.