Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
What you lack, someone else has; go to them, and here is what to ask.
The two sets of questions
For discernment: Reverend, how should conditions be seen? How should they be comprehended? How should they be discerned?
For serenity: Reverend, how should the mind be stilled? How should it be settled? How should it be unified? How should it be immersed in samādhi?
Three questions and four questions, and both sets are entirely about method. Not what the goal is, not what the experience is like, not whether the person has attained anything — how it is done.
The person with neither quality asks both sets, one after the other, of a single person who has both. That is eight questions, and the discourse writes them all out.
‘From their own experience’
The answer in each case is given yathādiṭṭhaṁ yathāviditaṁ — as they have seen and known it.
That qualifier is the discourse’s condition on the advice. What is being sought is not information about serenity or discernment but an account from someone who has arrived at it by doing it. A person who has read about stilling the mind cannot supply what this discourse is asking for.
It also implies a criterion for choosing whom to ask, which the discourse states only obliquely: approach someone who has the quality. AN 4.65 said the grounds on which we form confidence in others are usually appearance, voice, or austerity, and that only principle is a measure. This discourse depends on a reader being able to tell who actually has serenity or discernment, and does not say how.
What is unusual about this instruction
The canon is full of teaching from the Buddha to disciples and of disciples teaching assemblies. Peer-to-peer consultation between practitioners, scripted, is rarer.
What makes it notable is the direction of the exchange. A person with strong serenity is being told to go and ask a person with strong discernment, who may have less serenity than they do, for instruction. Neither is superior; each has what the other lacks.
That is a specific and slightly awkward social arrangement, and the discourse treats it as ordinary. It is also, incidentally, a good argument for practising in a community: the grid guarantees that in any group of size, someone has what you are missing.
How the three discourses divide the work
AN 4.92 gives the four conditions. AN 4.93 says what each should practise. AN 4.94 says whom each should ask.
Those are three genuinely different answers to ‘what should I do?’ — a diagnosis, an individual practice, and a social step — and the collection gives all three rather than choosing.
The fourth cell gets the same instruction in AN 4.93 and AN 4.94: grounded on those qualities, practise further to end the defilements. The person who has both is not told to ask anyone anything, which is the one place the two discourses agree exactly.
The questions as a template
The seven questions are worth keeping as they stand, because they are unusually well formed.
Each asks how something should be done rather than what it is or whether the person has done it. Each is short. None of them invites a description of an experience, and none of them can be answered by a doctrinal statement.
For anyone in a position to ask an experienced practitioner a question, these are better than most of what gets asked. The discourse’s implicit teaching is that the useful question is about method, and that it is put to someone who has done the thing.
Key terms
The text
Four individuals
§1“Mendicants, these four individuals are found in the world. What four? One individual has internal serenity of heart, but not the higher wisdom of discernment of principles. One individual has the higher wisdom of discernment of principles, but not internal serenity of heart. One individual has neither internal serenity of heart, nor the higher wisdom of discernment of principles. One individual has both internal serenity of heart, and the higher wisdom of discernment of principles.
Serenity but not discernment
§2As for the individual who has serenity but not discernment: they should approach someone who has discernment and ask: ‘Reverend, how should conditions be seen? How should they be comprehended? How should they be discerned?’ They would answer from their own experience: ‘This is how conditions should be seen, comprehended, and discerned.’ After some time they have both serenity and discernment.
Discernment but not serenity
§3As for the individual who has discernment but not serenity: they should approach someone who has serenity and ask: ‘Reverend, how should the mind be stilled? How should it be settled? How should it be unified? How should it be immersed in samādhi?’ They would answer from their own experience: ‘Reverend, this is how the mind should be stilled, settled, unified, and immersed in samādhi.’ After some time they have both discernment and serenity.
Neither
§4As for the individual who has neither serenity nor discernment: they should approach someone who has serenity and discernment and ask: ‘Reverend, how should the mind be stilled? How should it be settled? How should it be unified? How should it be immersed in samādhi?’ How should conditions be seen? How should they be comprehended? How should they be discerned?’ They would answer as they’ve seen and known: ‘Reverend, this is how the mind should be stilled, settled, unified, and immersed in samādhi. And this is how conditions should be seen, comprehended, and discerned.’ After some time they have both serenity and discernment.
Both
§5As for the individual who has both serenity and discernment: grounded on those skillful qualities, they should practice meditation further to end the defilements. These are the four individuals found in the world.”
Self-check quiz
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