Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Establish the people close to you in confidence in the Buddha, the teaching, and the Saṅgha — and the instruction covers only those who would hear you.
The qualification
Sujato renders the opening as those who you have sympathy for, and those worth listening to — the Pāli behind the second phrase is a clause about people who would think what you say worth hearing.
That is a real restriction and it is the reason this discourse is not simply a warrant for pressing one’s religion on relatives. The instruction is scoped to two conditions at once: you must actually care about them, and they must be in a position to listen. Neither is satisfied by determination on the part of the speaker.
The rest of the list is worth noticing for its ordinariness: friends and colleagues, relatives and family. Not everyone, not strangers, and not an assigned territory. The scope of the instruction is the people already in your life.
Three things, and what kind of thing they are
Aveccappasāda is the term, and Sujato’s “experiential confidence” is a careful rendering. Avecca is from a verb meaning to have penetrated or understood; pasāda is clarity, brightness, confidence. So the compound is confidence that has been arrived at by understanding, not confidence adopted.
The three are given in their standard formulas — the Buddha as perfected and fully awakened, the teaching as apparent in the present life and inviting inspection, the Saṅgha as the four pairs and eight individuals and worthy of offerings.
It matters that the second of the three is the formula from AN 3.53, whose content was shown there to be checkable by anybody. Establishing somebody in experiential confidence in the teaching therefore cannot mean getting them to assent to it. On the discourse’s own vocabulary it means getting them to the point of having seen something.
The four elements, and what is being claimed
“There might be change in the four principal states — earth, water, air, and fire — but a noble disciple with experiential confidence in the Buddha would never change.”
And then the claim is defined, which prevents it from being read as a promise about steadfastness: in this context, ‘change’ means that such a noble disciple will be reborn in hell, the animal realm, or the ghost realm: this is quite impossible.
So the discourse is describing stream-entry, in the canon’s standard terms: somebody with the three confidences is no longer liable to the lower rebirths. It is not saying that a person of faith will never waver in their feelings, and it is worth heading off that reading, which is the natural one in English.
The comparison with the elements is the strongest form the canon has for impossibility. Earth, water, air, and fire were the constituents of the physical world; saying that they might change before this does is the ancient equivalent of saying the laws of physics would go first.
How to use an instruction like this honestly
A teacher handing this discourse to a class in a country where most families are not Buddhist should say what it is: an instruction to bring the people close to you into a religion. Softening that helps nobody.
What can be said alongside it is that the discourse specifies its own limits more than most such instructions do. The people are those you have sympathy for and who would listen. The object is a confidence arrived at through understanding, which cannot be produced by pressure. And the standard for the second of the three is a teaching that invites inspection, which means the method of establishing somebody in it is to let them inspect.
Read that way the instruction is demanding rather than expansive. It asks for a particular result in a particular kind of person by a method that excludes most of what religious persuasion usually consists of.
Using it
The practical version for a lay class is the scope question. Who are the people you have sympathy for, and which of them would actually think what you said was worth hearing? Most people find the second list is much shorter than the first, and the discourse is addressed to the intersection.
It is also the natural companion to AN 3.48, where a household grows on the visible conduct of the person at its head. That discourse says what happens without anyone being told anything; this one says what to do when telling is possible.
Key terms
The text
Those you have sympathy for
§1Then Venerable Ānanda went up to the Buddha, bowed, and sat down to one side. The Buddha said to him:
§2“Ānanda, those who you have sympathy for, and those worth listening to—friends and colleagues, relatives and family—should be encouraged, supported, and established in three things. What three? Experiential confidence in the Buddha: ‘That Blessed One is perfected, a fully awakened Buddha, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, holy, knower of the world, supreme guide for those fit for training, teacher of gods and humans, awakened, blessed.’ Experiential confidence in the teaching: ‘The teaching is well explained by the Buddha—apparent in the present life, immediately effective, inviting inspection, relevant, so that sensible people can know it for themselves.’ Experiential confidence in the Saṅgha: ‘The Saṅgha of the Buddha’s disciples is practicing the way that’s good, direct, systematic, and proper. It consists of the four pairs, the eight individual persons. This is the Saṅgha of the Buddha’s disciples that is worthy of offerings dedicated to the gods, worthy of hospitality, worthy of a religious donation, worthy of greeting with cupped palms, and is the supreme field of merit for the world.’
Sooner the elements would change
§3There might be change in the four principal states—earth, water, air, and fire—but a noble disciple with experiential confidence in the Buddha would never change. In this context, ‘change’ means that such a noble disciple will be reborn in hell, the animal realm, or the ghost realm: this is quite impossible.
§4There might be change in the four principal states—earth, water, air, and fire—but a noble disciple with experiential confidence in the teaching … or the Saṅgha would never change. In this context, ‘change’ means that such a noble disciple will be reborn in hell, the animal realm, or the ghost realm: this is quite impossible.
§5Those who you have sympathy for, and those worth listening to—friends and colleagues, relatives and family—should be encouraged, supported, and established by you in these three things.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.