Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A person with the ten wrong factors should not be associated with; a person with the ten right factors should be associated with.
A new Fifty, a familiar template
This discourse opens the Fourth Fifty (chapters 16–20) using the identical compact template established across chapters 13 through 15: a brief announcement, then the ten wrong and ten right factors under a new frame — here, not what the factors ARE or should be DONE with, but what kind of PERSON holds them.
Puggala, a term of individual identity
Puggala, “individual” or person, gives this chapter its name and marks a real shift in register from chapter 15's impersonal paths and practice-verbs: the ten factors now describe not an abstract teaching to realize but a person one might actually meet, and choose to associate with or avoid.
The first of a short run before this chapter's own peyyāla
Unlike chapters 13 through 15, which ran their word-pair variations as separate full discourses throughout, this chapter's remaining eleven discourses (AN 10.156–166) are compressed in the source into a single peyyāla passage — confirmed by checking bilara-data before writing, following the same convention already used for large compressed ranges elsewhere in this project, and presented here as one combined page.
Key terms
The text
Should not be associated with, and should be associated with
§1“Mendicants, you should not associate with an individual who has ten qualities. What ten? Wrong view, wrong purpose, wrong speech, wrong action, wrong livelihood, wrong effort, wrong mindfulness, wrong immersion, wrong knowledge, and wrong freedom. You should not associate with an individual who has these ten qualities.
§2You should associate with an individual who has ten qualities. What ten? Right view, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right immersion, right knowledge, and right freedom. You should associate with an individual who has these ten qualities.”
Self-check quiz
6 questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.