Guarding

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Guard the mind in four places, and a mind guarded in all four does not shake.

The form of the instruction

In your own way you should practice diligence, mindfulness, and guarding of the mind in four situations. Then each situation is given as a wish in the first person: May my mind not be aroused by things that arouse greed.

Three things are asked for together — appamāda, sati, cetoārakkha. Diligence is not neglecting; mindfulness is holding in view; guarding is the active protection of the mind itself.

Sāmaṁ, in your own way or by oneself, qualifies the whole instruction. Nobody else can do this for the practitioner, and the discourse phrases the four as resolutions rather than as rules for that reason.

The objects, not the states

The wording is careful and worth reading slowly. Not ‘may I not be greedy’ but may my mind not be aroused by things that arouse greed — rajanīyesu dhammesu, things that are arousing.

So the discourse assumes there are objects with that property. Some things arouse greed; some provoke hate; some promote delusion; some intoxicate. The practice is not to deny that they have the property but to prevent the mind from doing what they invite.

That is consistent with the sense-restraint formula of AN 4.14 and AN 4.37, where the instruction is not to avoid sights but not to get caught up in their features and details. The collection is uniformly realistic about the objects and demanding about the response.

The fourth item

Greed, hate, and delusion are the three unwholesome roots. The fourth is madanīyesu dhammesu na majjeyya — may my mind not be intoxicated by things that intoxicate.

Mada is intoxication, and its range is wider than drink. The canon uses it of the three intoxications — with youth, with health, and with life — and of the intoxication with birth, wealth, learning, and following.

So the fourth object is not alcohol. It is the class of things that make a person careless by making them feel secure, which is a different mechanism from greed, hate, or delusion. A person intoxicated in this sense is not wanting, hating, or confused; they are unworried.

That the collection ranks that alongside the three roots is worth registering. AN 4.68 said gain, honor, and popularity destroyed Devadatta, and this discourse gives the general form: the things that make a person feel safe are as dangerous as the things that make them want.

The closing description

They don’t shake, tremble, quake, or get nervous, nor are they persuaded by the teachings of other ascetics.

Four verbs for instability and then a fifth clause about intellectual stability. The connection between them is the discourse’s claim: a mind that cannot be moved by greed, hate, delusion, or intoxication also cannot be talked out of its position.

That is a claim about the mechanism of persuasion, and it is not flattering to most changes of mind. It says that being argued out of something usually runs through one of the four — wanting what the new position offers, disliking what the old one costs, confusion, or complacency — rather than through the argument.

The parallel is AN 4.8, where the Buddha’s four assurances produce someone who lives secure, fearless, and self-assured because no charge could land. Here the same steadiness is produced by there being nothing in the mind for a persuasion to catch on.

Using it

The four resolutions can be used as they stand and their form is unusually practical. Each names a class of object rather than a state to avoid, which makes them checkable against a day: what did I encounter today that arouses, provokes, confuses, or reassures?

The fourth question is the one most people have never asked, and it is the one this discourse contributes. Greed, hate, and delusion are on everyone’s list. The things that make a person feel safe enough to stop paying attention are not, and they are named here in the same breath as the other three.

Key terms