Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Worldly competence and moral discernment are two separate eyes, and most people have at most one.
The two visions
The first is stated in commercial terms and taken entirely seriously: the vision needed to acquire more wealth or to increase the wealth one has. That is not a grudging concession. The verses that follow praise the two-eyed person specifically for wealth earned legitimately, money acquired by their own hard work.
The second is moral discernment: knowing the difference between qualities that are skillful and unskillful, blameworthy and blameless, inferior and superior, and those with a portion of dark or bright. Four pairs, and the last is the least familiar — the canon’s way of naming qualities that are mixed rather than one thing or the other.
So the discourse is not contrasting the worldly with the spiritual. It is naming two competences and observing that they come apart.
The missing cell
A two-by-two of two capacities has four cells: neither, first only, second only, both. The discourse gives three. There is no name here for the person who has moral discernment and no ability to make a living.
It would be reading too much in to say the discourse denies such a person exists. What can be said is that it does not name them, and that the numbering is by threes, which constrains what fits. But the absence is worth putting to a class, because the person in the missing cell is one most modern readers can picture immediately, and the discourse’s silence about them is more interesting than any answer would have been.
It is also worth noticing what the ordering assumes. The eye that is present in the one-eyed person is the commercial one, not the moral one. On the discourse’s own arrangement, the more commonly held of the two capacities is the ability to get on in the world.
What the one-eyed person does
The verses are much harsher than the prose, and they are worth reading for the specificity. The one-eyed person seeks wealth by methods good and bad; the verses name fraudulent and thieving deeds, and lies; and they add that this person is skilled at piling up money, and enjoying sensual pleasures. And then: from here they go to hell.
The prose said only that the one-eyed person lacks moral discernment. The verses assume that lacking it, they will use their one eye badly, and describe the result. That gap between prose and verse is common in the canon and worth flagging: the prose classifies, the verse moralizes, and they are not saying quite the same thing.
The closing advice
The blind and the one-eyed, you should avoid from afar. But you should keep the two-eyed close, the best individual.
Read after AN 3.26 and AN 3.27, this is the third consecutive discourse ending in advice about company, and the third to sort people for that purpose on a different axis: attainment, character, and now capacity. The Puggalavagga is a chapter about types of person, and it keeps arriving at the same practical question.
It is worth noting that this one, unlike AN 3.26, offers no exception for kindness. The verse says avoid from afar, and nothing qualifies it. A reader working through the chapter in order has been given the exception once and should probably carry it forward; the discourse itself does not.
Key terms
The text
The blind
§1“These three individuals are found in the world. What three? The blind, the one-eyed, and the two-eyed. Who is the blind individual? It’s someone who doesn’t have the kind of vision that’s needed to acquire more wealth or to increase the wealth they’ve already acquired. Nor do they have the kind of vision that’s needed to know the difference between qualities that are skillful and unskillful, blameworthy and blameless, inferior and superior, and those with a portion of dark or bright. This is called a blind individual.
The one-eyed
§2Who is the individual with one eye? It’s someone who has the kind of vision that’s needed to acquire more wealth and to increase the wealth they’ve already acquired. But they don’t have the kind of vision that’s needed to know the difference between qualities that are skillful and unskillful, blameworthy and blameless, inferior and superior, and those with a portion of dark or bright. This is called a one-eyed individual.
The two-eyed
§3Who is the individual with two eyes? It’s someone who has the kind of vision that’s needed to acquire more wealth and to increase the wealth they’ve already acquired. And they have the kind of vision that’s needed to know the difference between skillful and unskillful, blameworthy and blameless, inferior and superior, or qualities on the side of dark and bright. This is called a two-eyed individual. These are the three individuals found in the world.
In verse
§4–6Neither suitable wealth, nor merit do they make. They hold a losing hand on both counts, those who are blind, with ruined eyes. And now the one-eyed individual is explained. By methods good and bad, that devious person seeks wealth. Both by fraudulent, thieving deeds, and also by lies, the young man’s skilled at piling up money, and enjoying sensual pleasures. From here they go to hell—the one-eyed person is ruined.
§7–9And now the two-eyed is explained, the best individual. Their wealth is earned legitimately, money acquired by their own hard work. They give with best of intentions, that peaceful-hearted man. They go to a good place, where there is no sorrow. The blind and the one-eyed, you should avoid from afar. But you should keep the two-eyed close, the best individual.”
Self-check quiz
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