Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Hurtful choices lead to a hurtful rebirth and feelings that are purely painful; pleasing choices lead to a pleasing rebirth and feelings of perfect happiness; mixed choices lead to a mixed rebirth and feelings of both; and the intention to give up all three kinds of choice is what ends the whole mechanism.
The mechanism, traced step by step
For each of the first three kinds, the discourse gives the same five-step chain: someone makes choices (abhisaṅkharoti) by body, speech, and mind of a particular character; having made them, they are reborn in a world that matches that character; in that world, contact of the same character strikes them; touched by that contact, they experience feeling of the same character; and the discourse names who lives that feeling.
This is worth reading as a description of causal fit rather than reward and punishment imposed from outside. Nothing intervenes between the choice and its consequence to judge or assign it; the world one is reborn into, the contact one meets there, and the feeling one experiences are simply what a choice of that character produces, the way a shape produces a matching shadow.
Three destinations, precisely named
Dark deeds lead to feelings ekantadukkhaṁ, exclusively painful, ‘like the beings in hell’. Bright deeds lead to feelings ekantasukhaṁ, of perfect happiness, ‘like the gods of universal beauty’, subhakiṇhā devā — a specific, named class of deity in the form realm, not heaven in a generic sense. Mixed deeds lead to feelings vokiṇṇasukhadukkhaṁ, a mixture of pleasure and pain, ‘like humans, some gods, and some beings in the underworld’, vinipātikā — a class occupying an unstable position between higher and lower rebirths.
The three similes are worth noting for their precision. This is not a vague gesture at good and bad fortune; it names specific classes of being at each of the three points on the scale, including the everyday observation that human life itself, mixed in its pleasures and pains, sits exactly where mixed deeds should place it.
The fourth kind: not a destination but a departure
The pivot of the whole discourse is here: yamidaṁ kammaṁ kaṇhaṁ kaṇhavipākaṁ tassa pahānāya yā cetanā — the fourth kind of deed is defined as the intention to give up each of the first three. Not a fourth choice alongside hurtful, pleasing, and mixed ones, and not a fourth world to be reborn into. It is the deliberate abandoning of the entire apparatus the first three describe.
This is a genuinely different kind of move than the other three make, and the discourse marks that difference by withholding the rebirth-contact-feeling chain from this fourth item entirely. There is no world named for it to lead to, because it does not lead to a world. It leads, in the discourse’s own word, to kammakkhaya, the ending of deeds — not a better rebirth but the cessation of the entire mechanism by which rebirths are produced.
Renunciation as intention, not inaction
It matters that the fourth kind is defined as an intention, cetanā — the same word that names the mental factor at the root of every kind of kamma, in the canon’s general account of what makes an action count as kamma at all. The path out of the kammic mechanism is not the absence of intention; it is a specific intention, aimed at the mechanism itself rather than at any particular hurtful, pleasing, or mixed act.
This point becomes explicit two discourses later, at AN 4.234, where the Buddha is reported to have been accused of teaching ‘non-doing of all deeds’. This discourse is the clearest evidence within the chapter of why that accusation misdescribes the teaching: the fourth kind of deed is still, unmistakably, a kind of deed.
Key terms
The text
The four, named
§1“Mendicants, I declare these four kinds of deeds, having realized them with my own insight. What four? There are dark deeds with dark results; bright deeds with bright results; dark and bright deeds with dark and bright results; and neither dark nor bright deeds with neither dark nor bright results, which lead to the ending of deeds.
Dark deeds with dark results
§2And what are dark deeds with dark results? It’s when someone makes hurtful choices by way of body, speech, and mind. Having made these choices, they’re reborn in a hurtful world, where hurtful contacts strike them. Touched by hurtful contacts, they experience hurtful feelings that are exclusively painful—like the beings in hell. These are called dark deeds with dark results.
Bright deeds with bright results
§3And what are bright deeds with bright results? It’s when someone makes pleasing choices by way of body, speech, and mind. Having made these choices, they’re reborn in a pleasing world, where pleasing contacts strike them. Touched by pleasing contacts, they experience pleasing feelings of perfect happiness—like the gods of universal beauty. These are called bright deeds with bright results.
Dark-and-bright deeds with dark-and-bright results
§4And what are dark and bright deeds with dark and bright results? It’s when someone makes both hurtful and pleasing choices by way of body, speech, and mind. Having made these choices, they are reborn in a world that is both hurtful and pleasing, where hurtful and pleasing contacts strike them. Touched by both hurtful and pleasing contacts, they experience both hurtful and pleasing feelings that are a mixture of pleasure and pain—like humans, some gods, and some beings in the underworld. These are called dark and bright deeds with dark and bright results.
Deeds that end deeds
§5And what are neither dark nor bright deeds with neither dark nor bright results, which lead to the ending of deeds? It’s the intention to give up dark deeds with dark results, bright deeds with bright results, and both dark and bright deeds with both dark and bright results. These are called neither dark nor bright deeds with neither dark nor bright results, which lead to the ending of deeds. These are the four kinds of deeds that I declare, having realized them with my own insight.”
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