Good Conduct

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Speech goes right in four ways, and three of them are simply the four faults reversed.

Three negations and one addition

Saccavācā, true speech, is the opposite of musāvāda. Apisuṇā vācā, non-divisive speech, is literally the same word as the fault with a negative prefix. Saṇhā vācā, gentle or smooth speech, is the opposite of pharusā, rough.

Then the fourth. Against samphappalāpa, idle chatter, the Pāli does not put ‘non-chatter’. It puts mantabhāsā, speech made with mantā — a word for wisdom, counsel, considered judgment.

Sujato renders it ‘thoughtful’. The construction is worth pointing out because it changes what the item asks for. The other three can be satisfied by refraining. This one cannot: it requires something to be brought to the speech, not merely something to be kept out of it.

So the list has an asymmetry, and it is in the same position as the asymmetry in the list of faults. AN 4.148’s fourth item was the one that named no victim; AN 4.149’s fourth item is the one that names no fault. The two lists tilt in the same place.

Why the positive list is necessary

A prohibition can always be satisfied by doing nothing. Four rules against speaking badly are, taken alone, fully obeyed by anyone who says nothing at all, and a tradition that valued silence as much as this one does could easily have left it there.

It did not. The positive list requires speech that is true, that holds people together, that is gentle, and that has judgment in it — none of which is available to someone who has simply stopped talking.

That is the reason to teach these two discourses as one unit rather than as a pair of lists. The first says what to stop; the second makes clear that stopping is not the goal.

The Fours have made the same move elsewhere on a larger scale. AN 4.121’s four fears each end not with bad conduct given up but with bad conduct given up and good conduct developed. The pattern is consistent enough to be called a policy.

‘Harmonious’, and what it asks

The second item deserves a second look, because the English can sound weaker than the Pāli. Apisuṇā vācā is not merely speech that avoids gossip. Its counterpart was defined by an action — carrying what was said here to people there in order to divide them — so its negation is speech that does the reverse: it brings people together.

The standard fuller descriptions elsewhere say exactly that: hearing something here, the person does not repeat it there to divide; they reconcile those who have broken apart, encourage those who are united, and delight in concord.

None of that is in this discourse, which gives one word. But the word carries it, and a teacher can say so while being clear about where the detail comes from.

It is the one of the four whose scope is a group rather than an individual, and in a collection that spends this much time on community — four assemblies, the conditions for non-decline, the four ways of drawing people in — that is not incidental.

What is still absent

Two things this list does not include, both of which appear in fuller treatments elsewhere.

Timeliness. The standard description of a Realized One’s speech includes speaking at the right time, and there is nothing about timing here.

Benefit. The same fuller descriptions require speech to be connected with the goal, and mantabhāsā gestures at that without stating it.

Noting the absences is not a criticism of the discourse. It is a reminder of what a numbered collection is doing: preserving a set at the size the number allows. Four items are what fits in the Fours, and the additional qualifications are kept where there is room for them.

Where it sits

Ninth of the chapter’s ten, and the last of its three matched pairs.

AN 4.150 closes the Ābhāvagga with the four essentials, and closes it by returning to the four terms the whole nipāta began with at AN 4.1.

After that the Fours move to the Indriyavagga, the chapter of faculties, and to a run of discourses on faith, energy, mindfulness, and wisdom as the powers of a practicing life.

Key terms