Foundation
The older manual
“Why is there a second manual beside the Visuddhimagga?”
The Vimuttimagga is probably the older of the two manuals. It treats the same three trainings in the same order, but is markedly shorter, sets out differently in some places — and is lost in Pāli. What lies here is the translation back from a Chinese version.
For reading
Editorial explanation — quotations are marked as Canonical text and linked.
In one sentence
The Vimuttimagga treats the same way as the Visuddhimagga, is probably older, markedly shorter — and survives only by a detour through Chinese.
In today's language
Two manuals, one subject. Both lead from the conduct of life by way of concentration to insight, both describe objects of practice, absorptions and insight knowledges, both end at the four truths.
The difference lies in extent and in ordering. The Visuddhimagga has twenty-three chapters and lays over the three trainings the additional grid of the seven purifications from MN 24. The Vimuttimagga has twelve chapters and manages without this second grid.
And it has an unusual history of transmission. The Pāli text is lost. What remained is a Chinese translation from the 6th century, made by Saṅghapāla. From it a translation back into English was made — the text that stands here. Two steps of language therefore lie between the author and this book, and one notices it: the version is brittle in some places, uncertain in a few, and the translator sets question marks there.
The book begins with a homage and a stanza — virtue, concentration, wisdom and the incomparable freedom — and then with the sentence that says for whom it is written: for the one who wishes to be released from all trouble.
After that it explains its own title. “Freedom” means five kinds of freedom: that by suppression, the partial, that by extirpation, that by tranquillity and that by release.
Why this matters
Because two independent manuals show something a single one cannot show.
Where both say the same, one has a double witness for what counted in the old transmission as the way of practice. Where they diverge — and they do so in several places, for instance in the number and treatment of the objects of practice — one sees which part comes from the canon and which from the arrangement of the particular author.
That is exactly what the older book is usable for, even though the younger one is fuller in almost every respect.
Canonical basis
The threefold division is AN 3.88: higher virtue, higher mind, higher wisdom. It is the grouping of the eightfold path (SN 45.8) and the ordering of both manuals.
MN 24 is the passage that marks the difference between the two books: it contains the seven purifications and the simile of the relay of chariots. The Visuddhimagga makes them its framework; the Vimuttimagga does not.
SN 56.11 is the goal of both: the discerning of the four truths. The Vimuttimagga ends with a chapter of exactly that name.
Components
- Twelve chapters: introduction — virtue — austerity — concentration — the good friend — behaviour — the objects of practice — entrance into meditation — the five higher kinds of knowledge — wisdom — the five methods — the discerning of truth.
- Five kinds of freedom, by which the book explains its title.
- Three trainings as the ordering, without the grid of the seven purifications.
- Two steps of language: Pāli (lost) → Chinese (preserved) → English.
Connection with other teachings
This book is the second transmitted answer to the same question the Visuddhimagga answers: how does all this hang together that lies scattered through the discourses? Both are commentarial works and present themselves as such. Neither is word of the Buddha, and neither claims to be.
Significance for practice
There is little that is practical about this stage — it places things. The one practical point is a caution: whoever reads a formulation here that departs from the accustomed one should first think of the chain of translation and only after that of a difference in doctrine.
Common misinterpretations
“The Vimuttimagga is the original text and the Visuddhimagga a falsification.” Both are commentarial works from the same tradition. That one is older does not make it more canonical.
“Because it came by way of Chinese, it is not Theravāda.” The text itself is Theravāda; only its route of transmission led through a Chinese version. The detour concerns the security of the text, not its belonging.
“The two books contradict each other.” In the main they do not. They weight and order differently — which is something else than a contradiction.
What you now have in hand
- say what a manual is and what it serves for beside the discourses
- recognise the three trainings as the ordering of both manuals
- name the five kinds of freedom by which the book explains its title
- explain through which languages the present text has come down
- state in what the two manuals differ — and in what they do not
Key terms of this stage
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Three trainings tisikkhā
The division of the path into virtue (sīla), immersion (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā): the way one lives carries the meditation, and meditation carries the insight.
Note for myself
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Serenity and insight samatha-vipassanā
The two sides of mental training: calming and collecting (samatha) and clear seeing (vipassanā). DN 34 names both as the two things that must be developed — not separate techniques, but qualities that belong together.
Note for myself
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Wisdom paññā
Wisdom, the liberating insight into the three characteristics.
Note for myself
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Immersion samādhi
One-pointed collectedness of mind.
Note for myself
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The unconditioned nibbāna
The unconditioned; the going out of the fuel.
Note for myself
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Path magga
Path (supramundane); the moment that cuts through the fetters.
Note for myself
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Further reading optional
Four noble truths cattāri ariyasaccāni Suffering, unsatisfactoriness dukkha Craving taṇhā Aggregate khandha
Source texts Canonical text
- AN 3.88 — The three trainings — higher virtue, higher mind, higher wisdom: the ordering both manuals follow
- MN 24 — The simile of the relay of chariots and the seven purifications — the framework the Visuddhimagga takes over and the Vimuttimagga precisely does not
- SN 45.8 — The eightfold path in its eight factors — the canonical form of what both books unfold
- SN 56.11 — The four truths, with the discerning of which the Vimuttimagga ends in its last chapter
In the book itself
“He who wishes to be released from all trouble, wishes to be unloosed from all attachment, wishes to gain the pre-eminent mind, wishes to be rid of birth, old age and death”
“What is the meaning of the Path of Freedom?”
The chapters this stage deals with — they are readable in full under Study on this site:
For reflection
Why is the Pāli text lost?
It was not copied on in Sri Lanka, presumably because the Visuddhimagga displaced it. What survived was a Chinese translation from the 6th century. Today's English version is translated back from that Chinese version — that is, across two steps of language.
Is the Vimuttimagga an abridgement of the Visuddhimagga?
No, and in time it would be the other way round. The Vimuttimagga is probably the older text; the Visuddhimagga treats the same subjects more fully and orders them anew along the seven purifications, which the Vimuttimagga does not use as a framework.
Is the older book worth reading when the fuller one exists?
It is worth it where the two diverge. Where two manuals order the same subject differently, one sees what depends on the canon and what on the arrangement of the particular author. That cannot be seen with one book alone.