Situations

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Four conditions have to be in place for a life to prosper, and only three of them are yours to arrange.

Why ‘wheel’

Cakka is a wheel — the wheel of a cart, and by extension a turning, a condition, a state of affairs. Sujato’s ‘situations’ takes the extended sense; other translators have used ‘wheels’ and kept the image.

The image is worth keeping in view, because a cart needs all its wheels. That is the implicit logic of the list: these are not four contributing factors that add up, but four supports of which a missing one stops the vehicle. The discourse does not say this outright, and it is fair to say the reading comes from the word rather than from the argument.

The first three

Patirūpadesavāsa, living in a suitable region — the environment. Sappurisūpassaya, relying on true persons — the company. Attasammāpaṇidhi, being rightly resolved in oneself — the intention.

Read as a sequence they move from outside to inside: place, then people, then one’s own direction. That is a realistic ordering. A person can change their resolve most readily, their company with more effort, and their region least easily — but the discourse lists them in the order of dependence rather than of difficulty, since the outer conditions are what make the inner one sustainable.

‘Suitable region’ is not defined here. The commentarial tradition glosses it as a place where the teaching is available and the four assemblies are found, which is a reasonable reading of what would make a region suitable for the purposes this collection cares about.

The fourth

Pubbekatapuññatā, having done merit in the past. This is the item that a modern reader is most likely to want to remove, and it should not be removed quietly.

Taken at face value it says that some part of how a life goes was settled before the life began, and that no amount of good resolve or good company fully substitutes for it. That is a claim about luck, expressed in the vocabulary of rebirth, and the collection makes it without embarrassment.

There is something to be said for its honesty. A list of three would imply that outcomes follow reliably from choices, which is both false and cruel to people whose choices have not produced the outcomes. Including the fourth item concedes that the world contains conditions nobody in this life arranged. Whether one accounts for those conditions by past lives or by ordinary contingency, the structural point survives: three of the four are yours to work on, and it is a mistake to treat the fourth as if it were.

What is promised

The stated result is great and abundant wealth, and the verse expands it: grain, riches, fame, reputation, and happiness. This is a worldly discourse, addressed to gods and humans alike, and it does not mention the path.

The Aṅguttara contains a good deal of this material and it is better to read it as what it is than to spiritualize it. The collection addresses lay audiences with lay concerns and does not treat prosperity as shameful. What it does, consistently, is specify the conditions — and two of the four conditions here are moral ones.

Using it

As a diagnostic the list is unusually practical, and it works best asked in order. Is the place I am in one where the thing I am trying to do is possible? Are the people around me ones who are doing it? Is my own intention actually pointed at it?

Most people examining a stalled effort look only at the third question. This discourse puts two environmental conditions ahead of it, which is a corrective worth having: resolve applied in an unsuitable place among unsuitable company is being asked to do work that is not its own.

Key terms