Sutrasthana 2.23 — Help the Afflicted According to Capacity; See Even the Ant as Oneself

Those afflicted (ārta) by loss of livelihood (avṛtti), disease (vyādhi), or grief (śoka) — one should attend to them (anuvarteta) according to one's capacity (śaktitaḥ). One should always see (satataṃ paśyet) even insects and ants (kīṭa-pipīlikam) as oneself (ātmavat). (23)

Translation: Prof. K.R. Srīkaṇṭha Murthy, Ashtanga Hridayam Vol. I (Sūtrasthāna), Chowkhamba Krishnadas Academy, Varanasi. This verse is the single-śloka statement of classical Indian active compassion: three categories of suffering that deserve engagement, the realistic qualifier of personal capacity, and the boundary of moral concern drawn at the smallest living being.

Note: The compound ātmavat is not "love your neighbor as yourself" (simile) but rather "see them as yourself" (identity). The classical Indian formulation treats the other being as metaphysically continuous with the self, not merely as deserving of similar treatment. This is the Advaita-inflected compassion that the Upaniṣadic teachings develop and that Āyurveda here takes for granted.

Verse 23 gives the first specific prescription of the Sadvṛtta teaching following the two-verse ten-sins statement at verses 21 and 22. Having named what to renounce, Vāgbhaṭa now names what to cultivate: active attention to the afflicted, extended across the full range of living beings. The verse has two clauses that work together. The first specifies who deserves compassionate action and what the compassionate action looks like. The second specifies the breadth of moral concern: all the way down to the smallest living being. Taken together, the verse states classical Indian active compassion in one of its most compressed forms.

Avṛtti-vyādhi-śokārtān: three categories of affliction

The first compound names three specific categories of suffering. Avṛtti is the loss of livelihood, from a- (not) + vṛtti (profession, means of subsistence, way of earning). The word names the condition of not having the material means to support oneself: poverty, unemployment, destitution, the loss of a trade or position. Vyādhi is disease, the physical affliction that incapacitates the body and produces suffering both in itself and through the loss of capacity it causes. Śoka is grief, the inner affliction from loss of what one loved: the death of a relation, the failure of a cherished project, the rupture of a significant bond.

The three categories cover the main axes of human suffering. Material deprivation, bodily affliction, and the inner wound of loss are not the only human sufferings, but they are the large categories within which most acute suffering falls. A society that provides effective responses to these three significantly reduces the aggregate suffering of its members; a society that provides no effective response leaves those members to suffer alone.

Vāgbhaṭa's naming of exactly these three is therefore not random. He is pointing to the specific sites where compassionate action has the greatest effect. Help directed at those without livelihood addresses one category; help directed at those with disease addresses another; help directed at those in grief addresses the third. A practitioner who attends to all three is engaged with the full scope of human affliction; a practitioner who attends only to one has partial engagement, and should recognize that the others are legitimate sites of moral responsibility as well.

Anuvarteta śaktitaḥ: attend according to capacity

The verb anuvarteta comes from anu- (after, following) + vṛt- (to turn, move). Literally "to follow after" or "to move along with," the verb names the act of attending to someone — following their situation, moving alongside them in it, responding to what they need. The translation "help" is accurate but thin; the Sanskrit carries more: the practitioner is asked not merely to transfer resources but to engage with the afflicted person in a sustained relational way.

The qualifier śaktitaḥ, "according to capacity," is structurally crucial. Vāgbhaṭa does not prescribe that the practitioner exhaust themselves attempting to solve all suffering, which would produce its own pathology and burn out the practitioner's capacity to help anyone over time. The prescription is bounded: help within the range of what one can sustainably do. The boundary is at the practitioner's actual capacity, not at what the afflicted person might wish for or what an external moralism might demand.

This boundary serves several functions. It protects the helper from the exhaustion that unbounded helping produces. It keeps helping sustainable across the span of a lifetime rather than concentrated in an unsustainable burst. It prevents the development of messianic patterns in which the helper comes to see themselves as responsible for outcomes they do not control. And it respects the reality that the afflicted person's situation usually has causes and dynamics that no single helper can fully address; the helper's role is to contribute what they can, not to solve what only the larger system can solve.

Classical traditions of compassionate practice across civilizations encode this same bounded character. The Buddhist framework of the bodhisattva path, though it takes on unlimited compassion as its aspiration, prescribes that the individual practitioner work within the current measure of their capacity, extending capacity through practice rather than pretending to capacity they do not have. The Christian monastic traditions, though oriented toward radical charity, prescribed specific rules for how much of the monastery's resources could be given to alms so that the monastery itself would not collapse. Islamic zakāt is specified at 2.5% on monetary wealth per year (rates vary for other asset classes, from 5% or 10% on certain crops up to 20% on rikāz/minerals) — a defined portion, sustainable, expected of the ordinary believer.

Vāgbhaṭa's śaktitaḥ is the same structural move. The compassion is real and it is required; the scope is bounded by what the practitioner can sustainably do. A practitioner whose family is in financial difficulty cannot usefully give away their house to help a stranger with poverty; a practitioner who is themselves ill cannot usefully neglect their treatment to nurse another; a practitioner in acute grief cannot usefully immerse themselves in another's grief. The verse recognizes these limits and does not require the impossible.

Ātmavat satataṃ paśyed: see always as oneself

The second clause of the verse shifts register. Where the first clause prescribed an action (attend to the afflicted according to capacity), the second prescribes an inner orientation: see all beings as oneself. The verb paśyet is the optative of paś-, "to see, perceive, regard." The qualifier satataṃ means "always, continuously." The instrumental ātmavat means "as oneself" or "in the manner of oneself."

The classical Sanskrit construction is tighter than the common English rendering "love others as yourself" (which is the Biblical formulation, from Leviticus 19:18 and adopted in Christian teaching). The Sanskrit ātmavat paśyet does not ask the practitioner to love others like oneself but to see them as oneself, to perceive the continuity between what is at the core of oneself and what is at the core of another. This is the Upaniṣadic teaching of ātman as the deep self shared across beings, and it is the metaphysical background Vāgbhaṭa is taking for granted.

The practical consequence is sharper than the moral consequence. A practitioner who sees another being as simply different, but deserving of similar treatment, must make a moral effort to care about them. A practitioner who sees the other as continuous with themselves finds that the caring is not an effort but a recognition: harming the other is harming oneself; helping the other is helping oneself; the moral calculation of "self vs other" dissolves into the simpler recognition that there is no unbridgeable boundary between them. The teaching produces compassion not through moral exhortation but through correct perception.

Classical commentary traditions emphasize that this seeing must be satataṃ, always, continuously. It is not an occasional meditation or a special occasion exercise but a settled default of perception. The practitioner trains the seeing until it becomes automatic, and the automatic seeing then informs all subsequent action. The Sadvṛtta teaching that extends through this chapter and the general ethical orientation of Āyurveda both rest on this trained mode of perception.

Api kīṭa-pipīlikam: even the insect and the ant

The final words of the verse specify the scope of the seeing: api kīṭa-pipīlikam, "even insect (and) ant." The word api, "even," emphasizes that the extension goes all the way to the smallest visible living beings. The ant is included. The tiny crawling insect is included. The boundary of moral concern is not at the boundary of the obviously significant life but at the boundary of life as such.

Classical Indian ethical traditions, particularly the Jain, developed this all-the-way-down extension of concern to its most exacting form. Jain monastics famously sweep the path before them to avoid crushing insects, filter water to preserve microscopic life, and take extraordinary care in the practice of ahiṃsā toward even the beings too small to easily see. The Hindu mainstream does not take the injunction to this extreme, but it recognizes the principle: the smallest visible life is morally considerable, and the practitioner who habitually crushes ants is practicing a disposition that, extended, will extend to larger beings as well.

The Buddhist tradition formalizes the same extension. The first precept (pāṇātipātā veramaṇī, refraining from taking life) applies to all sentient beings, including the smallest. The Brahma-vihāras, especially mettā (loving-kindness), are to be radiated toward all beings, explicitly including those that are too small or too distant for direct relation.

Vāgbhaṭa's placement of this extension in a medical text is pointed. Āyurvedic physiology treats the practitioner-physician as one who heals beings; the disposition toward the smallest beings sets the tone for the disposition toward larger ones. A physician who crushes insects without thought is training the inner state from which insensitivity toward human patients can subtly arise. The verse's extension to the smallest life is not an impractical moral maximalism but a trained disposition that maintains the practitioner's capacity for the care their role requires.

Why the verse appears in a medical text

A careful reader will notice that verse 23's teaching has no specifically medical content — it prescribes an ethical practice that any non-medical treatise on conduct would also prescribe. Its placement in the Aṣṭāṅga Hṛdayam is not accidental. Classical Āyurveda treats the physician's moral formation as a prerequisite for the physician's clinical competence, and the dinacaryā chapter's prescription of compassionate engagement is part of the continuous training that a vaidya undergoes across their life.

The specific connection is three-fold. First, the physician encounters daily all three categories of affliction verse 23 names (those lacking livelihood who cannot afford care, those with disease, those in grief over loss of health or loss of a relation). A physician whose inner disposition is not trained toward compassionate response will see these as clinical cases to be managed rather than as persons deserving engagement, and the clinical outcomes will be worse in the subtle ways that an engaged clinical relationship produces better outcomes. Second, the ātmavat perception — seeing the patient as continuous with oneself — directly supports the diagnostic attention that classical Āyurveda requires: the physician attuned to what the patient is experiencing reads the body-signs more accurately than one observing from detached distance. Third, the bounded capacity (śaktitaḥ) protects the physician from the specific burnout patterns that contemporary medicine has now documented extensively, in which clinicians who engage without limits exhaust their own capacity for the engagement that sustained practice requires.

For the non-physician practitioner studying the text, the same three points apply: the engagement with suffering benefits the one engaged with, the trained perception improves the specific attentional quality that any useful engagement requires, and the boundedness protects the practitioner from exhaustion. The medical tradition is prescribing here what the philosophical traditions also prescribe, but with the additional weight of the specifically medical recognition that compassionate engagement is also a form of health maintenance for the one who practices it.

The two clauses read together

The two clauses of verse 23 are structurally complementary. The first specifies action (help the afflicted according to capacity). The second specifies perception (see all beings as oneself). Action without perception is dutiful charity, which has its value but also its fatigue. Perception without action is private contemplation, which has its value but also its emptiness. The verse prescribes both, and the combination is what produces the classical ideal of the compassionate practitioner: one whose perception finds the continuity with the other, and whose action realizes that perception in actual help within sustainable bounds.

The verses that follow will specify further the practice of compassionate conduct: the worship of the worthy and the beggar in verse 24, the equanimity toward enemies in verse 25, the beneficial speech patterns in verse 26, and the specific qualities of mind that sustain the practice across the events of a life.

The teaching of verse 23 — help the afflicted according to capacity, and see all beings as oneself — appears with remarkable consistency across classical ethical traditions. The specific items and framings vary, but the underlying claim is continuous: moral life requires both bounded helping action and the trained perception that dissolves the rigid self-other boundary.

The Buddhist tradition develops this teaching most extensively through the brahma-vihāra (divine abidings) practices: mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (sympathetic joy), and upekkhā (equanimity). The Karaṇīya Metta Sutta (Sn 1.8) prescribes mettā radiated toward all beings, specifically including "whatever breathing beings there are — frail or strong, long, large, or medium, short, minute, or bulky" — a classical Buddhist formulation of the same all-the-way-down extension Vāgbhaṭa states in "even insect and ant." The Mahāyāna development takes this farther: the Bodhisattva vow commits the practitioner to the liberation of all beings without exception, and the Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva (8th century) develops the specific arguments for why the self-other distinction should be overcome in ethical consideration.

The Jain tradition gives the most exacting form of the all-the-way-down extension. Jain ahiṃsā takes the protection of the smallest visible life as a non-negotiable baseline, and Jain ascetic practice includes the famous mukhapatti (mouth-cloth) to prevent inhalation of insects, the pinchī (peacock-feather whisk) to gently clear the ground before sitting, and filtered water to preserve microscopic life. The practical demands of this extension are so severe that lay Jains are not expected to meet them in full, but the underlying ethical claim is that the extension is in principle correct: all life is morally considerable, and the distinctions between "important" and "unimportant" life are concessions to practical necessity rather than moral truth.

The Hindu tradition beyond Āyurveda encodes the same teaching through multiple vocabularies. The Bhagavad Gītā 6.32 states the Upaniṣadic ground directly: "He is deemed a perfect yogin, O Arjuna, who, by the analogy of his own self, sees equality everywhere — whether pleasure or pain." The Īśā Upaniṣad 6 states that "the one who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, hates none." The Mahābhārata's Anuśāsana Parva repeatedly returns to the theme that dāna (giving to the afflicted) is the queen of virtues, and specifies the categories of recipients (including the three verse 23 names) who deserve priority.

The Christian tradition states the same twofold teaching through the commandments and the parables. "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18, quoted in Mark 12:31 as the second of the two great commandments) gives the perceptual dimension. The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) gives both the perceptual dimension (the Samaritan sees the wounded man not as an outsider but as someone to be cared for) and the action dimension (attending to the wounded according to the Samaritan's means, including transport, lodging, and payment of expenses). The Beatitudes (Matthew 5) and the "whatsoever you did to the least of these" teaching (Matthew 25) state the extension to the afflicted. The Christian tradition also developed the concept of the corporal works of mercy (feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, harbor the stranger, visit the sick, visit the imprisoned, bury the dead), which specifies the action dimension in practical form.

Islamic ethics integrates both dimensions through the concept of raḥma (compassion, mercy), named as the first of God's attributes in the basmala that opens nearly every Qur'anic chapter, and through the pillar of zakāt (obligatory almsgiving), which institutes the bounded-helping principle as a structural practice. Qur'an 2:177 specifies the recipients of righteous giving: "the relatives, the orphans, the needy, the wayfarer, those who ask, and for freeing slaves." The ḥadīth literature states the perceptual dimension directly: "None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself" (Bukhārī, Muslim). The Sufi development of these teachings, particularly in Rūmī and Ibn ʿArabī, extends the perceptual dimension toward the all-beings scope that the Indian traditions give.

The Confucian tradition uses the vocabulary of ren (humaneness) and extends it outward from family to community to all beings. The Analects 12.22 defines ren simply as "to love one's fellow human beings." Mencius develops the extension in the famous passage on the child about to fall into a well (Mencius 2A.6), where the spontaneous compassion that arises in any person witnessing the scene is taken as evidence that compassion (ce yin zhi xin, the heart of compassion) is native to the human nature. The neo-Confucian tradition, particularly Zhang Zai's Western Inscription, extends the scope to all beings: "Heaven is my father and Earth my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions."

Sub-Saharan African ethical traditions encode the same teaching through the concept of ubuntu (in Nguni Bantu languages), often summarized as "I am because we are." The perceptual dimension is that self and community are metaphysically interwoven, so that the harm or welfare of another is the harm or welfare of oneself. The action dimension is that one's well-being is expressed through the practice of helping the members of one's community.

Modern moral philosophy, particularly in the twentieth-century utilitarian tradition and the effective altruism movement, has worked to specify the action dimension of verse 23's teaching in quantitative form: how much should one give, to what causes, and with what efficiency. The modern specification is more precise than classical formulations but operates within the same ethical space. Peter Singer's argument in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" (1972) for the moral obligation of substantial giving to those in absolute poverty is, in effect, a modern technical specification of what śaktitaḥ requires in the global context. The effective altruism movement's research on cause prioritization extends this work.

The convergence across traditions is striking. The specific categories of the afflicted, the qualification by capacity, and the extension of moral concern to the smallest life appear across Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Christian, Islamic, Confucian, and African ethical frameworks that had limited or no historical contact. The convergence suggests that the teaching names a structural feature of human moral life rather than a culturally particular moral preference. The practitioner who cultivates both the perceptual and action dimensions of verse 23 is engaged in what the great ethical traditions of the world have independently identified as the core of moral life.

The first universal principle of verse 23 is that compassionate practice has two dimensions, and both are required. Perception without action is contemplative emptiness; action without perception is dutiful charity that burns out. The verse prescribes both: the trained seeing that finds continuity with the other, and the sustained helping that realizes the perception in actual engagement with the afflicted. A practice that exercises only one dimension is partial, and the partial version of the practice is substantially weaker than the integrated one. The practitioner develops both axes in parallel, not sequentially.

The second universal is the boundedness of compassionate action. The qualifier śaktitaḥ (according to capacity) is doing essential work in the verse's structure. It protects the practitioner from the exhaustion that unbounded helping produces; it makes the practice sustainable over a lifetime rather than concentrating it in unsustainable bursts; it respects the reality that the afflicted person's situation has causes and dynamics that no single helper can fully address. The classical traditions across civilizations encode this bounded character in specific institutional forms (Islamic zakāt, Christian monastic alms-rules, Buddhist dāna-pāramitā graded by capacity, Jain laypracticed ahiṃsā within householder limits). The boundedness is not a watering-down of compassion; it is the structural feature that allows compassion to be sustained.

The third universal is the three-category specification of affliction. Vāgbhaṭa's three (loss of livelihood, disease, grief) are not arbitrary; they name the major axes of acute human suffering. A society that responds effectively to all three substantially reduces aggregate suffering; a society that responds to none leaves its members to suffer alone. The practitioner as individual cannot address societal failure single-handedly but can contribute at the individual-to-individual level across all three categories, and the cumulative effect of many practitioners doing so transforms the society the practitioners collectively compose. The three categories also help the practitioner audit their own practice: am I engaged with all three sites of human affliction, or only with the one or two that feel natural to me?

The fourth universal is the metaphysical-perceptual basis of compassion. The verse's second clause (see all beings as oneself) treats compassion as arising from a trained mode of perception rather than from moral exhortation. This is a specific claim about how moral transformation works. Classical Indian tradition, and to a substantial degree the Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions as well, all hold that sustainable compassionate action does not come from rules one forces oneself to follow but from a seeing that makes the compassionate action feel natural. The training of the seeing (through contemplative practice, through specific exercises, through sustained attention to one's relational field) is therefore the primary practice, and the action is the downstream consequence of the trained perception.

Modern psychology supports this claim. Research on compassion training (including the extensive work of Paul Gilbert on compassion-focused therapy, Richard Davidson on meditation-based compassion cultivation, and the Max Planck ReSource project on the specific effects of compassion-trainings) shows that trained practitioners exhibit measurably different patterns of attention, emotional response, and behavioral engagement with the suffering of others. The training works at the perceptual level; the action follows.

The fifth universal is the all-the-way-down scope of moral concern. The extension of consideration to the smallest visible life is not, in the verse, a practical demand that the modern reader treat every insect with the care they treat their own family. It is a claim about the boundary of moral concern: that the boundary is not drawn at any particular species, size, or cognitive sophistication, but at the condition of being a living being. The practitioner who draws the boundary tighter than this is not practicing the full teaching; the practitioner who draws the boundary wider than necessary (extending care to non-living entities as if they were living) is not practicing it either. The boundary is at life as such.

A modern reader may find the implications of this scope uncomfortable, since it reaches into questions of diet, consumption, and the treatment of non-human animals in modern industrial systems. The classical tradition does not force a single answer to these questions; it provides the principle and asks the practitioner to apply it within their own situation. The test the verse implies is consistency rather than a specific diet. A practitioner whose stated scope and actual conduct align — at whatever boundary they have drawn — is engaged in the practice the verse describes. A practitioner whose stated scope is wider than their actual conduct is receiving information from the gap, and the information is useful for adjusting either the scope or the conduct until they match.

The last universal is the integration of the two dimensions. The verse's two clauses are not separate; they inform each other. The trained seeing makes the helping action feel natural rather than forced, and the sustained helping action gives the seeing something to act on rather than remaining a contemplative exercise. The practitioner who has both finds that each supports the other. The practitioner who has only one finds that the one is harder to sustain without the other. The teaching is a single integrated practice expressed in two clauses.

The modern application of verse 23 requires the practitioner to specify, in their own situation, what the three categories look like, what their capacity is, and what the training of ātmavat perception looks like in practice.

1. The three-category audit

Consider your current life. For each of the three categories the verse names, ask:

• Avṛtti (loss of livelihood). Who within your relational field, community, or broader circle of awareness is struggling with material subsistence? A neighbor whose hours were cut, a relative between jobs, a local person experiencing homelessness, a community organization serving those in material need. What engagement, within your capacity, would be appropriate?
• Vyādhi (disease). Who in your field is affected by illness (themselves or a close family member), and what sustained attention is available to you? Visiting a sick friend, providing meals to a family whose caregiver is ill, supporting someone through a chronic condition, offering skilled help in medical navigation if you have relevant expertise.
• Śoka (grief). Who has recently suffered loss? Bereavement, divorce, the loss of a career, the departure of a child, the death of a significant hope. Grief is often the least-attended affliction because its visibility is variable and its duration long. Sustained presence, even without heroic acts, is often the most valuable gift.

The audit typically surfaces that the practitioner is engaged with one category but under-engaged with the others. This is useful information. The verse is not asking the practitioner to become superhuman; it is asking for distributed attention across the three axes, calibrated to personal capacity.

2. The capacity honest conversation

The word śaktitaḥ requires an honest assessment of actual capacity. Several practical distinctions help.

Money. What portion of discretionary income can be sustainably given to those in material need? Classical traditions specify 2.5% on monetary wealth (Islamic zakāt, with different rates for other asset classes), 10% (Christian tithe), variable percentages in Hindu and Buddhist practice. The modern effective altruism movement has converged on 10% as a defensible default for those with average or above-average income. The specific number matters less than the principle of specifying a portion, committing to it consistently, and then adjusting as one's situation changes.

Time. What hours per week can be sustainably given to relational or community engagement with the afflicted? A few hours weekly, held consistently over years, produces more benefit than a much larger amount given in unsustainable bursts. Specific practices: regular visits to a housebound person, consistent volunteer hours at a community institution, sustained correspondence with someone in prison or difficult circumstances, regular contribution to a community of care.

Attention. The most available and often most valuable form of helping. Who in your life regularly needs sustained listening, and how often you are available for it? Attention is the only helping resource that does not deplete from being given; it can, however, be degraded by distracted or partial presence.

Skill. What specific skills do you have that are disproportionately valuable when applied to the categories the verse names? A physician's diagnostic skill applied to a relative's confusing illness; a lawyer's knowledge applied to a friend's housing situation; a teacher's skill applied to a child in difficulty; a listener's attention applied to someone in grief. Skills directed to those in need are often the highest-yield form of helping available to the skilled practitioner.

A worked example of the capacity matrix

An illustrative case makes the four dimensions concrete. Consider a practitioner with moderate professional income, a family, a demanding job, and standard modern obligations. Their actual capacity across the four dimensions might look like:

• Money: 8% of after-tax income allocated to sustained giving, split between a regular monthly contribution to one effective-altruism-recommended global-poverty organization and a monthly contribution to a local community institution (a food bank, a women's shelter, a hospice). Additional allocation of 1–2% to unscheduled requests (the friend's unexpected need, the GoFundMe link, the street encounter), held in a separate sub-account that is replenished each month.
• Time: 2–3 hours per week of direct engagement — one Saturday morning per month at a food-bank sort (~3 hours), plus weekly sustained contact with one specific person in their relational field who is in ongoing difficulty (an elderly parent, a grieving friend, a neighbor in declining health). Not more, because the demanding job and family obligations legitimately limit capacity; but consistently this much, held for years.
• Attention: the specific practice of undivided presence when encountering someone in difficulty. Phone down, body turned, questions asked that invite rather than close, the specific form of listening that takes the other's reality seriously. This dimension is always available, does not require scheduling, and is often what the afflicted person most needs.
• Skill: the practitioner's specific professional competence (say, accountancy, or law, or medicine, or teaching) offered a few hours a month to people in their relational field who need it — not as formal pro bono work but as the natural extension of the skill into the relational context. A lawyer who reviews a friend's housing situation for free once a quarter; a physician who helps a relative navigate a confusing specialist referral; a teacher who tutors a struggling neighborhood child for an hour a week.

The total commitment is significant but sustainable: roughly 10% of income, 3–4 hours of direct engagement per week, and the distributed attention and skill that integrate with ordinary life rather than displacing it. A practitioner whose current engagement is substantially less has capacity they are not using; a practitioner whose current engagement is substantially more may be approaching unsustainability and should examine whether the pattern can be held across decades. The matrix is not a formula but a scaffold for the honest conversation the śaktitaḥ qualifier demands.

The combination of money, time, attention, and skill, allocated within actual capacity, specifies what anuvarteta śaktitaḥ looks like in practice.

3. The perceptual training

The second clause of the verse asks for more than occasional compassionate feeling; it asks for the trained default of seeing all beings as oneself. Specific practices that produce this training:

• Mettā (loving-kindness) practice — the classical Buddhist meditation beginning with well-wishing toward oneself, then a dear friend, then a neutral person, then a difficult person, then all beings. Twenty minutes daily produces measurable changes in compassionate response over weeks.
• The common-humanity pause — when encountering a stranger (in person, through media, in any context where "they" is the default frame), pause briefly and note specifically what you share: they, like you, want to be happy; they, like you, have suffered losses; they, like you, are mortal; they, like you, have people who love them. The pause redirects the perception from "different person" toward "common person," and with repetition it becomes automatic.
• Tonglen (Tibetan Buddhist practice) — on the in-breath, take in the suffering of another; on the out-breath, send relief and well-being. The practice is specifically designed to train the dissolution of self-other boundaries in the context of suffering.
• Prayer or contemplation on the ātmavat teaching — for theistic practitioners, the recognition that the same divine presence dwells in all beings. For non-theistic practitioners, the recognition that all sentient beings share the common structure of experience: preference for well-being, aversion to suffering, vulnerability to loss. The recognition, held consistently, trains the perception.

4. The scope question

The verse extends moral concern to the smallest living being. The modern practitioner must decide where they will draw the practical boundary, and this is a legitimate individual judgment within the principle's frame. Possible boundaries, ordered from narrower to wider:

• All humans — the minimum ethical consensus of most modern societies.
• All humans and the companion animals directly in one's relational field.
• All humans and all higher vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish) as sentient beings capable of suffering. This is the rough boundary of mainstream modern animal welfare ethics.
• All humans and all vertebrates plus invertebrates capable of pain-response (cephalopods, decapod crustaceans). This is the boundary some modern ethical arguments reach.
• All sentient life including insects — the classical Jain position.

The practitioner chooses a boundary they can hold consistently and then lives within it. The test is consistency: the practitioner who habitually crushes ants while claiming to care about larger animals is practicing partial consistency at best. The practitioner whose practice matches their stated boundary, whatever that boundary is, is practicing the teaching.

A reasonable default for a modern practitioner is the vertebrate-plus-companion-animal boundary, with specific concern for the treatment of animals in industrial production, careful attention to the unintended harms one causes through consumption choices, and avoidance of casual killing of smaller beings (insects in the home, beetles on the path) where avoidance costs little. This is not the classical Jain maximalism, but it represents a meaningful practice of the verse's extension in modern conditions.

5. The integration

Verse 23 is one verse and one practice, but the practice has two dimensions. The practitioner who allocates a specific portion of money, time, attention, and skill to the three categories of the afflicted, and who trains the perception of continuity with all beings through daily contemplative practice, is performing the verse's teaching in a form the modern context can accommodate. The two dimensions reinforce each other: the helping makes the perception concrete; the perception makes the helping feel less like self-sacrifice and more like the natural expression of what one sees.

Verse 24 turns to the specific social relationships the practitioner maintains: the worship of the worthy, the treatment of guests, and the response to those who ask.