Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Two of the four combinations decide themselves; the other two are what a person’s strength is for.
The two easy cells
Unpleasant to do and harmful: regarded as a thing that shouldn’t be done on both grounds. Pleasant to do and beneficial: should be done on both grounds.
The discourse spends two sentences on each and does not return to them. Nothing about them requires judgment, effort, or character; both grounds point the same way and the decision makes itself.
That dismissal is worth noticing as a piece of method. The discourse identifies which part of a problem is actually a problem and discards the rest, which is a habit the collection has and does not often display so plainly.
‘Human strength, energy, and vigor’
The phrase is purisathāme purisavīriye purisaparakkame — the strength, energy, and exertion that belong to a person. It appears twice, once for each hard cell.
What it names is the capacity to act against the pull of the moment: to do a thing one does not want to do because it will turn out well, or to refrain from a thing one wants to do because it will not.
The discourse says these two cells are where that capacity becomes visible — it is here that you can tell who is foolish and who is astute. Not in what someone believes, not in what they say, and not in the easy cases where preference and outcome agree.
The mechanism of failure
Both hard cells are described in the same way, and the description is precise about where the failure happens.
A fool doesn’t reflect: ‘Despite the fact that this thing is unpleasant to do, doing it still proves beneficial.’ They don’t do that thing, so that proves harmful.
The failure is located in the not-reflecting. The fool is not described as knowing the outcome and choosing badly; they are described as not running the thought at all. The astute person is defined by the same sentence in the positive: they do reflect, and then act accordingly.
That is a more forgiving and more useful account than a claim about willpower. What separates the two is whether a particular consideration gets raised, and raising it is something a person can practise.
The unpleasant-but-beneficial cell
This is the one most teaching draws on and the discourse handles it first. Something one does not want to do that will turn out well: the fool does not think it through and does not do it, and the not-doing is what proves harmful.
Note that the harm is attributed to the omission, not to the unpleasantness. The discourse is not saying that unpleasant things are good for you; it is saying that declining them without checking has consequences.
Nothing in the discourse recommends doing unpleasant things as such. The variable is always the outcome, and the unpleasantness is only what makes the outcome hard to attend to.
The pleasant-but-harmful cell
The mirror, and the discourse treats it with exactly the same words in the same order. The fool does not reflect, does it, and that proves harmful; the astute person reflects, does not do it, and that proves beneficial.
The symmetry is complete and it is worth pointing out, because the two cells are usually taught unequally. Discipline literature is full of the first — do the hard thing — and much lighter on the second, which requires declining something available and enjoyable with no immediate cost to declining it.
The discourse gives them the same weight and the same wording. Both are failures of reflection and both are visible at the same place.
Set beside AN 4.61’s definition of wisdom — recognizing the five hindrances as corruptions of the mind and giving them up, so that one no longer does what one shouldn’t and fails to do what one should — this discourse is the same claim in the vocabulary of ordinary decisions. AN 4.61 named the mechanism; this names the situations in which it operates.
Key terms
The text
Four things
§1“Mendicants, there are these four things. What four? There is a thing that’s unpleasant to do, and doing it proves harmful. There is a thing that’s unpleasant to do, but doing it proves beneficial. There is a thing that’s pleasant to do, but doing it proves harmful. There is a thing that’s pleasant to do, and doing it proves beneficial.
Unpleasant and harmful
§2Take the thing that’s unpleasant to do, and doing it proves harmful. This is regarded as a thing that shouldn’t be done on both grounds: because it’s unpleasant, and because doing it proves harmful. This is regarded as a thing that shouldn’t be done on both grounds.
Unpleasant but beneficial
§3Next, take the thing that’s unpleasant to do, but doing it proves beneficial. It is here that you can tell who is foolish and who is astute in regard to human strength, energy, and vigor. A fool doesn’t reflect: ‘Despite the fact that this thing is unpleasant to do, doing it still proves beneficial.’ They don’t do that thing, so that proves harmful. An astute person does reflect: ‘Even though this thing is unpleasant to do, doing it still proves beneficial.’ They do that thing, so that proves beneficial.
Pleasant but harmful
§4Next, take the thing that’s pleasant to do, but doing it proves harmful. It is here that you can tell who is foolish and who is astute in regard to human strength, energy, and vigor. A fool doesn’t reflect: ‘Even though this thing is pleasant to do, doing it still proves harmful.’ They do that thing, and so that proves harmful. An astute person does reflect: ‘Despite the fact that this thing is pleasant to do, doing it still proves harmful.’ They don’t do that thing, so that proves beneficial.
Pleasant and beneficial
§5Next, take the thing that’s pleasant to do, and doing it proves beneficial. This is regarded as a thing that should be done on both grounds: because it’s pleasant, and because doing it proves beneficial. This is regarded as a thing that should be done on both grounds. These are the four things.”
Self-check quiz
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