The chapters are titled by subject, the pairs, heedfulness, the mind, flowers, the fool, the wise, the arahant, the thousands, evil, punishment, old age, self, the world, the awakened one, happiness, the pleasant, anger, impurity, the just, the path, miscellaneous, hell, the elephant, craving, the monk, the brahmin, and the arrangement is loose enough that many verses would sit as well under a neighbouring heading. What holds it together is a single working assumption stated in the opening pair of verses: that mind precedes and shapes what a person becomes, so that action taken with a corrupted mind brings suffering after it as reliably as a cart follows the ox.
From that everything else is drawn out in concrete images rather than argument. The untrained mind is a fish flapping on dry land, a fletcher's arrow needing straightening, an elephant in rut that must be tethered. Appamada, usually rendered heedfulness or vigilance, is the practical virtue the collection returns to most often, and its opposite is not wickedness but inattention. The bala, the fool, is not stupid; he is the man who does not notice what he is doing and is therefore surprised by its consequences.
Two features make it unrepresentative of the canon as a whole. It says almost nothing technical, no elaborate meditation schemes, no Abhidhamma analysis, and it is aimed at conduct rather than metaphysics, which is why it travels so easily and why it has been read approvingly by people with no interest in Buddhist doctrine. The final chapter reclaims the word brahmana from birth, insisting the true brahmin is made by conduct and detachment, a polemical move against Vedic social claims that the surrounding tradition takes seriously and casual readers often miss.