Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A mendicant with a reputation encourages deeds and principles, and whether those are in line with good qualities decides whether their fame does harm or good on a very large scale.
The word that changes everything
Ñāta means known, famous, recognized. Strip it out and the discourse reads like any of the ten before it: someone who promotes bad conduct acts for the harm of the many. With it, the subject is different. The discourse is not about a fault; it is about a fault with reach.
The Aṅguttara is unusually attentive to this. AN 2.39 described what happens when bad mendicants are strong and the good-hearted fall silent. AN 2.44 described the assembly whose seniors are leaders in backsliding and whose juniors follow. Both are about influence rather than about individual conduct, and this discourse states the principle underlying them: a person whose words carry has a different relationship to their own faults than a person whose words do not.
Three things, and the third is odd
The three are deeds of body, deeds of speech, and principles — dhamma. The first two are the familiar list minus its third member; mental action has been replaced by something else.
That substitution is the discourse’s real content. What a well-known person encourages is not only how people behave but what they take to be true, and the discourse counts the second as a third kind of encouragement alongside the two kinds of conduct. A prominent teacher propagates a view whether or not they mean to.
It is worth setting this beside AN 3.2, where the three things were body, speech, and mind. For an ordinary person the third term is private — what they cultivate in thought. For a well-known person it has become public: the principles they encourage in others. Fame converts the inner term into an outer one.
Reading it now
The discourse assumes a world in which a well-known monastic’s reach was a district and a generation. That assumption no longer holds, and the arithmetic of the claim has changed accordingly rather than the claim itself.
It is also worth naming what the discourse does not offer, which is any advice about how to become or stay well-known, or any suggestion that a person should avoid prominence. It treats being known as a circumstance, like the shopkeeper’s capital two discourses later. What it asks is what is being multiplied.
Key terms
The text
A well-known mendicant, acting for harm
§1“Mendicants, a well-known mendicant who has three qualities is acting for the detriment and suffering of the people, against the people, for the harm, detriment, and suffering of gods and humans. What three? They encourage deeds of body and speech, as well as principles, that aren’t in line with good qualities. A well-known mendicant who possesses these three qualities is acting for the detriment and suffering of the people, against the people, for the harm, detriment, and suffering of gods and humans.
And for welfare
§2A well-known mendicant who has three qualities is acting for the welfare and happiness of the people, for the people, for the benefit, welfare, and happiness of gods and humans. What three? They encourage deeds of body and speech, as well as principles, that are in line with good qualities. A well-known mendicant who possesses these three qualities is acting for the welfare and happiness of the people, for the people, for the benefit, welfare, and happiness of gods and humans.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.