Paṭhamavohārapathasutta — Parisāvagga — the twenty-second chapter of the Fours
Setting
None stated; the Parisāvagga gives no location for this discourse, and it is addressed to the mendicants directly
Speakers
The Buddha alone, addressing the mendicants
Form
One elided line, naming four false claims about perception and cognition
Length
under a minute to read
Northern parallel
The diṭṭha-suta-muta-viññāta fourfold division of experience is widespread across the Nikāyas; this reading guide does not assert a specific matching sutra number
Difficulty
★★☆☆☆ — the vocabulary is familiar from AN 4.24, but the application here is new
Why this discourse
This discourse takes the chapter into new content: not conduct, and not the path, but truthfulness about one’s own experience. Claiming to have seen, heard, sensed, or known something one has not is enough, on its own, to be placed in hell as surely as any of the conduct failures named so far. The four terms it uses — seen, heard, sensed, known — are not new to this nipāta; they were named and defined at AN 4.24, many chapters back, in a very different context.
Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Claiming to have seen, heard, sensed, or known something one has not delivers a person to hell as if placed there; honestly denying what one has not experienced delivers them to heaven.
A new content, an old vocabulary
Adiṭṭhe diṭṭhavādī, asute sutavādī, amute mutavādī, aviññāte viññātavādī — saying one has seen what one has not seen, heard what one has not heard, sensed what one has not sensed, known what one has not known. The four terms underneath these claims, diṭṭha, suta, muta, viññāta, seen, heard, sensed, known, are the canonical fourfold division of everything that can be experienced — the same division already defined in this collection’s own reading guide at AN 4.24, on the Realized One as tādī, unaffected in the midst of things that ought to be seen, heard, sensed, and known.
That discourse used the fourfold division to describe a person unmoved by experience. This one uses the identical four terms for something much more ordinary: the ethics of reporting what one has or has not experienced. The vocabulary travels a long way between the two applications without changing shape.
A precise fault, not a vague one
The fault named is exact: claiming a specific kind of contact with the world — seeing, hearing, sensing, or knowing — that did not occur. This is narrower than lying in general, which AN 4.214 already covered a few discourses back; it is lying specifically about the sources of one’s own claims to knowledge, the kind of false testimony that corrupts not just a single statement but the credibility of everything a person later says they witnessed.
The dart, applied differently
AN 4.24’s closing image was of a dart others cling to: the assertion I know, I see, that’s how it is, taken up as a fixed position. That discourse criticized the overreach of asserting one’s own seeing as final, even when the seeing was real. This discourse names a plainer, more common failure standing just behind it: asserting seeing that was never real at all. Read together, the two discourses cover both ends of the same problem — overclaiming what one has genuinely experienced, and inventing experience one never had.
Setting up its own mirror
This discourse’s four claims all run one direction: saying yes about something that is actually no. The next discourse, AN 4.218, will run the identical four terms in the opposite direction — saying no about something that is actually yes — completing between the two of them all four ways experience and speech about it can come apart.
Key terms
diṭṭha suta muta viññāta — “seen, heard, sensed, known” — the canonical fourfold division of experience, first defined in this series at AN 4.24.
vohārapatha — “way of speaking, ground of expression” — the word that names this discourse and its pair, on the ethics of reporting experience truthfully.
adiṭṭhe diṭṭhavādī — “claiming to have seen what one has not seen” — the first of the four false claims named here.
musāvāda — “false speech”, named already at AN 4.214 — the general fault this discourse narrows to a specific, more corrosive form.
salla — “dart” — the image from AN 4.24 for the position taken up on one’s own seeing; this discourse names the plainer failure standing behind it, inventing the seeing itself.
The text
The discourse exactly as the source abridges it, ellipsis marks included. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
The elided discourse
§1“Someone with four qualities is placed in hell as if delivered there. … They say they’ve seen, heard, thought, or known something, but they haven’t. … Someone with four qualities is placed in heaven as if delivered there. … They say they haven’t seen, heard, thought, or known something, and they haven’t. …”
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Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
What four false claims does this discourse name?
Correct: B. False claims about one’s own experience across all four modes of contact.
Question 2 of 10
Where was the fourfold division diṭṭha-suta-muta-viññāta already defined in this series?
Correct: B. On the Realized One as tādī, unaffected amid things seen, heard, sensed, and known.
Question 3 of 10
How does this discourse’s use of the fourfold division differ from AN 4.24’s?
Correct: B. The same vocabulary applied to a much more ordinary concern.
Question 4 of 10
How does the guide distinguish this discourse’s fault from general lying, already named at AN 4.214?
Correct: B. Corrupting the credibility of everything a person later claims to have witnessed.
Question 5 of 10
How does the guide connect this discourse to AN 4.24’s closing image of the dart?
Correct: B. Two ends of the same problem: overclaiming real experience, and inventing false experience.
Question 6 of 10
What does the next discourse, AN 4.218, do with these same four terms?
Correct: B. Completing all four ways experience and speech about it can come apart, between the two discourses.
Question 7 of 10
What formula structures this discourse, continuing from AN 4.212?
Correct: B. Unchanged since it was introduced at AN 4.212.
Question 8 of 10
What is muta, the third of the four terms?
Correct: B. One quarter of the canonical fourfold division of experience.
Question 9 of 10
What does the guide say this discourse’s fault corrupts, beyond the single false statement?
Correct: B. A more corrosive form of false speech than an isolated lie.
Question 10 of 10
What form does this discourse take?
Correct: B. Continuing the chapter’s run of compressed discourses.
