This is a site-curated anthology gathered from the discourses of the Pāli Canon whose teaching turns on inquisitiveness — asking, testing, and investigating. It is not a published book, but a reading path of graduated progress: it begins with the questions no one can opt out of — aging, illness, death, and loss — and then turns to how to question at all, which questions to set aside, how to investigate experience and the mind, how the training unfolds step by step, and what is finally seen for oneself.

The English translations to the discourses are provided by WordsOfTheBuddha.org project and based on the Pali texts of the connected discourses from the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 Pali Tipiṭaka in Roman script edition as made available by SuttaCentral.net.

1. The Questions We Avoid

1. On Raṭṭhapāla - MN 82 — a young man of means questions his way to ordination, then tells the king the four summaries of the Dhamma
2. Unobtainable States - AN 5.48 — aging, illness, death, and loss: how the learned disciple meets what no one can prevent
3. Kosala - AN 5.49 — a king grieves his queen; the Buddha contrasts self-torment with the practice that brings peace
4. Subjects for Frequent Reflection - AN 5.57 — five subjects everyone shares, and one responsibility that is one’s own
5. Illness - AN 4.157 — rare even for a moment: freedom from mental illness, and how to train for it
6. Ageing - Snp 4.6 — all we call “mine” must be lost at death — the verse on not clinging

2. The Spirit of Inquiry

1. The Noble Quest - MN 26 — the Buddha recounts his own search, the model inquirer at work
2. Don’t Go by Authority Alone - AN 3.65 — the Kālāmas are told to test the teaching against their own experience
3. Investigating the Teacher - MN 95 — how to examine a teacher step by step, without blind faith or blind contempt
4. Examining - MN 47 — the Buddha himself lays out the method for investigating him: observe, question, and realize
5. Person of Integrity - AN 4.73 — the qualities that distinguish a person of integrity from one lacking it
6. Traits - AN 4.192 — a person’s true character is known only over time, to a wise and attentive observer
7. Fundamental Questions - AN 4.186 — a bhikkhu asks about the world, the mind, and wisdom, and receives a direct analysis

3. Questions and Answers

1. At Kaṇṇakatthala - MN 90 — King Pasenadi asks about omniscience, caste, and deities, and gets surprising answers
2. The Bāhitika Cloth - MN 88 — King Pasenadi asks Ānanda: is there any conduct of the Buddha the wise could criticize?
3. To Prince Abhaya - MN 58 — when does the Awakened One speak, and what makes speech worth hearing?
4. To Māgaṇḍiya - MN 75 — a critic calls sense restraint the destruction of spiritual growth; the Buddha dismantles the case
5. The Shorter Series of Questions and Answers - MN 44 — the layman Visākha and bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā trade subtle questions on identity, the path, and attainment
6. Fetter - SN 41.1 — elders debate what the “fetter” is; the layman Citta settles it with two yoked oxen
7. The Brahmin Uṇṇābha - SN 48.42 — the five senses converge in the mind, but where does the mind take recourse?
8. The Greater Discourse on the Full Moon Night - MN 109 — ten questions on the aggregates, and one very subtle correction
9. Encounters with Māra
   1. Delights - SN 4.8
   2. Kingship - SN 4.20

4. Questions the Buddha Set Aside

1. The Lesser Discourse to Mālukyaputta - MN 63 — the simile of the poisoned arrow: why some questions must wait for others
2. Discourse on Fire with Vacchagotta - MN 72 — where did the fire go? The undeclared points, and the fire gone out

5. Views That Divide

1. The Incontrovertible Teaching - MN 60 — a guide for the undecided: which positions are safe in both this life and the next
2. The Lesser Discourse on the Array of Views - Snp 4.12 — disputes arise not from diverse truths, but from clinging to views out of conceit
3. The Greater Discourse on the Array of Views - Snp 4.13 — among those insisting “This alone is truth,” the wise seek safety in non-dispute
4. Sublime - Snp 4.5 — esteeming one’s view as supreme, one cannot cross over dispute
5. Corrupt - Snp 4.3 — the nature of the corrupted mind and the cost of holding onto views
6. Cave - Snp 4.2 — eight verses on escaping the mire of delusion and the claim of “mine”
7. Root of Disputes - AN 6.36 — the six roots from which quarrels and contentions grow
8. Like minds flock together - Walking Back and Forth - SN 14.15, With Verses - SN 14.16
9. Brick House - SN 14.13 — Venerable Kaccāna traces how mistaken views about awakened beings arise

6. Investigating Experience

1. Before Full Awakening - AN 3.103 — the Bodhisatta’s own investigation: the gratification in the world, its drawback, and the escape
2. In the world - Gratification (First) - AN 3.104, Gratification (Second) - AN 3.105
3. In the aggregates - Gratification (First) - SN 22.26, Gratification (Third) - SN 22.28
4. The Greater Discourse on the Mass of Suffering - MN 13 — a full accounting of sensual pleasures, form, and feeling
5. Why beings are infatuated - If There Were No - SN 14.33, Exclusively Unpleasant - SN 14.34
6. The chain of experience - Diversity of Perceptions - SN 14.7, Diversity of External Contacts - SN 14.9
7. Rooted - AN 10.58 — ten foundational dynamics: all phenomena rooted in desire, steered by attention, converging on feeling
8. Craving - AN 4.199 — the pervasive net: thirty-six modes of mental stirring dissected
9. Affection - AN 4.200 — how affection and aversion bind beings to the world
10. With a Basis - AN 2.77-86 — unwholesome qualities never arise out of nowhere; remove the basis, and they do not come to be
11. The roots of kamma - Cause (First) - AN 3.111, Cause (Second) - AN 3.112

7. Investigating the Mind

1. The Two Kinds of Thoughts - MN 19 — the Buddha’s pre-awakening practice of categorizing his own thoughts
2. How feelings work - Rooted in Contact - SN 36.10, The Dart - SN 36.6, Pleasant - SN 36.2
3. The hindrances examined - Obstructions - AN 5.51, With Saṅgārava - AN 5.193, Mentor - AN 5.56
4. Feeding and starving the mind - Serving as a Basis - SN 46.23, Nutriment - SN 46.51, Fire - SN 46.53, Wished For - AN 10.73
5. The eight worldly winds - Worldly Conditions - AN 8.5, Worldly Conditions (Second) - AN 8.6
6. Resentment and its remedies - Grounds for Resentment - AN 10.79, Removing Resentment - AN 10.80, Removing Resentment (Second) - AN 5.162

8. The Graduated Training

1. For What Purpose - AN 11.1 — Ānanda asks the point of wholesome conduct; the answer cascades step by step to liberation
2. The organic sequence - Deliberate Intention - AN 11.2, Proximate Cause - AN 11.3
3. With Kuṇḍaliya - SN 46.6 — asked the purpose of the spiritual life, the Buddha traces one gradual path from sense restraint to the deathless
4. Sense Restraint - AN 6.50 — the foundational proximate cause, planted like a tree
5. Restraint - AN 4.14 — the four right strivings: restraint, abandoning, cultivating, protecting
6. Sense of Right and Wrong and Fear of Wrongdoing - AN 7.65 — the two guardian qualities at the root of the path
7. Three Things - AN 10.76 — from shamelessness to suffering, from prudence to liberation: one causal chain in both directions
8. Ignorance - AN 10.61 — ignorance has nutriments, and so does true knowledge — which are you feeding?
9. At Sedaka - SN 47.19 — the acrobat’s parable: protecting oneself protects others, and vice versa
10. With Gaṇakamoggallāna - MN 107 — asked whether the training is gradual, the Buddha details it from virtue to the heights of meditation
11. Ground of Mastery - MN 125 — why a life of indulgence is blind to the training — the taming of the royal elephant
12. To Poṭṭhapāda - DN 9 — the structured ascent of meditative perception, question by question
13. First Jhāna (First) - AN 6.73 — six qualities to abandon to dwell in the first jhāna
14. Beyond fame and gains - With Nāgita - AN 5.30, To Nāgita - AN 6.42

9. Seeing Deeply

1. Six Sets of Six - MN 148 — sensory experience deconstructed into six sets of six, arising and passing at every contact
2. The Simile of the Lump of Foam - SN 22.95 — form as foam, feeling as a bubble, perception as a mirage
3. At Pālileyya - SN 22.81 — personal-existence views, dogmas, and doubt seen as transient constructs
4. Anxiety Through Clinging - SN 22.7 — where anxiety comes from, and the freedom of non-clinging
5. The practice of seeing - According to Dhamma - SN 22.39, The Adze Handle - SN 22.101
6. Beings - SN 23.2 — scattering attachment to the aggregates ends the very notion of a “being”
7. The Many Kinds of Elements - MN 115 — the four frameworks the wise practitioner masters
8. Exposition on the Elements - MN 140 — a chance meeting: the Buddha, unrecognized, dismantles experience into elements
9. At the six sense doors - Koṭṭhika - SN 35.232, Dwelling Negligently - SN 35.97, Sheaf of Barley - SN 35.248, Delight in Forms - SN 35.136
10. The fleeting mind - Uninstructed - SN 12.61, Uninstructed (Second) - SN 12.62
11. The Lesser Discourse on Emptiness - MN 121 — Ānanda asks about the Buddha’s abiding in emptiness, and receives a graded map of it
12. A single auspicious night - A Single Auspicious Night - MN 131, Ānanda and A Single Auspicious Night - MN 132, Lomasakaṅgiya and A Single Auspicious Night - MN 134

10. The Fruit of Inquiry

1. Directly Visible Dhamma - AN 9.46 — the Dhamma seen for oneself: provisionally in the attainments, definitively in cessation
2. Directly Visible Nibbāna - AN 9.47 — Nibbāna as something to be verified, not merely believed
3. Causes for Liberation - AN 5.26 — five ways inquiry matures into release — from hearing to reciting to reflecting
4. With Hatthaka - AN 3.35 — how can the Buddha sleep at ease in the open? The serene ease of the unburdened mind