Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The four prejudices and their negation, given in one breath so that the contrast is heard rather than reconstructed.
What the combined form does
Reading AN 4.17 and 4.18 in sequence, the listener holds the first list, hears a closing verse, and then starts again. Reading AN 4.19, the two lists arrive without an interruption between them, and only then do the verses come — both of them, one after the other.
The effect is different in a way that matters for oral teaching. In the combined form the moons are adjacent: waning immediately followed by waxing, one lunar month completed in eight lines. In the separate discourses each image stands alone and the pairing has to be supplied by the listener.
A reciter would use whichever form suited the occasion. That the collection preserves both is not redundancy in the sense of waste; it is the retention of two usable versions.
What this reveals about the collection
The Aṅguttara is a compilation, and discourses like this one make the seams visible. Somewhere behind AN 4.17–4.19 there is a single teaching about four ways of deciding badly, which has been transmitted in three arrangements, each preserved as its own numbered discourse.
This is worth knowing because it changes what a reader should expect. The numbering of the Aṅguttara counts units of recitation, not distinct teachings. A collection of 1,408 discourses in the Fours does not contain 1,408 different things to learn, and a reader who expects it to will find the collection maddening.
It also means that a page like this one, honestly written, has to be partly about the text’s history rather than only about its content. There is no third teaching here to find, and pretending otherwise would be a disservice.
The four, once more
For completeness: favoritism (chanda), hostility (dosa), stupidity (moha), and cowardice (bhaya). Partiality toward, partiality against, failure to understand, and fear of consequences.
The version worth memorizing is this combined one, precisely because it carries both directions. A list held only in the negative tends to become a list of accusations to make of other people; held in both directions it stays usable on oneself.
Where it goes next
AN 4.20 completes the group by applying the four to a named office — the mendicant who assigns meals — with consequences stated as hell and heaven rather than as reputation.
That escalation is worth watching. Across four short discourses the same list moves from an abstract statement, to its mirror, to the combined form, to a concrete official with a specific job and a stated destination. The group is arranged from the general to the particular, which is a common shape in this collection and a good one for teaching.
Key terms
The text
Prejudiced decisions
§1“Mendicants, there are these four ways of making prejudiced decisions. What four? Making decisions prejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. These are the four ways of making prejudiced decisions.
Unprejudiced decisions
§2There are these four ways of making unprejudiced decisions. What four? Making decisions unprejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. These are the four ways of making unprejudiced decisions.
The verses
§3If you act against the teaching out of favoritism, hostility, cowardice, or stupidity, your fame fades away, like the moon in the waning fortnight.
§4If you don’t act against the teaching out of favoritism, hostility, cowardice, and stupidity, your fame swells, like the moon in the waxing fortnight.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.