Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Learning the texts is making a shelter; understanding the truths is being sheltered, and the first is only for the sake of the second.
Why the hole is the better image
AN 4.101 and 4.102 used thunder and rain. That pair captures announcement and arrival, but thunder is not done in order to rain; the two are effects of one weather system.
A burrow is different. It is made by the animal, at cost, for a purpose, and the purpose is to live in it. A mouse that digs and does not occupy has wasted its own labour, and the waste is specifically of the thing that was supposed to pay off.
So the mouse simile carries a claim the cloud simile does not: that memorizing the teaching is instrumental. It is work undertaken for the sake of something else, and a person who does the work and does not get the something else has not merely fallen short. They have missed the point of what they did.
The second cell, and its oddity
Lives in a hole but does not make it. Someone who does not memorize the teaching but truly understands the four truths.
The mouse version of this is a squatter — an animal occupying a burrow dug by something else. That is a real thing mice do, and the simile does not treat it as illegitimate.
The implication is worth drawing out. If understanding is a hole somebody dug, then the person who understands without having learned is living in a shelter made by others — by the tradition, by their teachers, by the people who did memorize.
That is a more accurate picture of how understanding actually reaches most people than the cloud simile could give, and it quietly answers a question the learning discourses raise: if learning is not necessary, what was it for? On this image it was for the hole, and the hole is still there for whoever needs it.
The nine forms again
The content of the memorizing is the navaṅga — statements, mixed prose and verse, discussions, verses, inspired exclamations, legends, stories of past lives, amazing stories, elaborations.
This is its third appearance in the Fours, after AN 4.6 and AN 4.102, and in all three it fills the same role: the maximum of what learning can amount to, set against something else.
The consistency is worth noting. The collection never uses the ninefold list to describe the goal or the path. It uses it to describe what a person has learned, always as one half of a pair whose other half is understanding or practice.
Where the chapter turns
AN 4.107 is the last discourse of the chapter to use either of the two pairs that have run through it so far. From AN 4.108 the variables change: oxen and trees will pair a person with their followers, and vipers will measure anger two ways.
So the chapter divides three ways. Clouds and mice: learning against understanding. Pots, lakes, and mangoes: deportment against understanding. Oxen, trees, and vipers: something else entirely.
That is five discourses on how the visible fails to report the invisible, and three on other subjects, with one empty slot between the groups. Whatever the compilers were arranging by, it was not a single theme.
Using it
The mouse gives a usable question that the cloud does not: what was the digging for?
Anyone who has undertaken a large amount of study in this tradition can ask it, and the answer is not supposed to be that the study was the point. AN 4.6 said as much about learning generally; this says it with an image in which the wasted effort is visible.
The corresponding encouragement is in the fourth cell, and it is the ordinary one: dig and live in it. Nothing in the discourse suggests that making one’s own hole is worse than occupying another’s. It is listed last, which in this collection marks the best.
Key terms
The text
Four mice, four individuals
§1“Mendicants, there are these four kinds of mice. What four? One makes a hole but doesn’t live in it, one lives in a hole but doesn’t make it, one neither makes a hole nor lives in it, and one both makes a hole and lives in it. These are the four kinds of mice. In the same way, these four individuals similar to mice are found in the world. What four? One makes a hole but doesn’t live in it, one lives in a hole but doesn’t make it, one neither makes a hole nor lives in it, and one both makes a hole and lives in it.
Makes a hole but does not live in it
§2And how does an individual make a hole but not live in it? It’s when an individual memorizes the teaching—statements, mixed prose & verse, discussions, verses, inspired exclamations, legends, stories of past lives, amazing stories, and elaborations. But they don’t really understand: ‘This is suffering’ … ‘This is the origin of suffering’ … ‘This is the cessation of suffering’ … ‘This is the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering’. That’s how an individual makes a hole but doesn’t live in it. That individual is like a mouse that makes a hole but doesn’t live in it, I say.
Lives in a hole but does not make it
§3And how does an individual live in a hole but not make it? It’s when an individual doesn’t memorize the teaching … But they really understand: ‘This is suffering’ …
Neither
§4And how does an individual neither make a hole nor live in it? It’s when an individual doesn’t memorize the teaching … Nor do they really understand: ‘This is suffering’ …
Both
§5And how does an individual both make a hole and live in it? It’s when an individual memorizes the teaching … And they really understand: ‘This is suffering’ … These four individuals similar to mice are found in the world.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.