Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Four combinations of self-benefit and other-benefit, named and left open.
Why the bare version is placed here
The order of the group is: firebrand and ranking (4.95), definition by the three roots (4.96), definition by capacity (4.97), bare (4.98), definition by the precepts (4.99).
The bare statement sits fourth of five, not first and not last, which is worth noticing. If it were an introduction it would come first; if it were a summary it would come last. Placed in the middle, it functions as the frame being shown between two of its fillings.
That may be accident of compilation. But the effect on a reader working through in order is real: having been given two definitions and about to be given a third, one encounters the four cells with nothing in them and can see that the cells are the constant.
What a frame is good for
The four cells describe any pair of an activity done for oneself and the same activity extended to others. The group has already applied it to removing the unwholesome roots, to understanding and communicating the teaching, and will apply it to the precepts.
Nothing restricts it to those. Any practice that can be both undertaken and recommended fits the grid, and the four cells will always be occupied by someone.
That generality is why the collection bothers to state the frame bare. A definition teaches one application; the frame teaches the operation.
The two axes
It is worth restating what the two axes are, since without definitions the discourse does not.
The first is whether a person does the thing. The second is whether they get others to do it. They are independent, which is the only substantive claim a bare grid can make — and it is not trivial, since a good deal of ordinary thinking assumes that someone who advocates a practice does it, and that someone who does it advocates it.
Both assumptions are false and the grid says so by having four cells rather than two.
The ranking, carried over
AN 4.98 gives no ranking, and AN 4.95’s ranking is not repeated. A reader coming to this discourse alone would have four cells in the order self-only, others-only, neither, both — which is the order used in AN 4.96, 4.97, and 4.99 as well.
Note that this order is not AN 4.95’s. That discourse listed neither, others-only, self-only, both, and then ranked them from worst to best in that same sequence.
The four later discourses list self-only first. Since they give no ranking, the change is presumably expositional — the self side is defined first because the other side is defined in terms of it. A reader should not read the reordering as a revision of the ranking.
Reading a discourse that says nothing
It is fair to ask what a study guide can honestly do with four lines that define nothing.
What it can do is what this page has done: place the discourse in its group, say what the frame is for, restate the axes the bare version leaves implicit, and note the ordering.
What it should not do is invent content. There is no teaching in AN 4.98 that is not in AN 4.95 through AN 4.99 collectively, and a guide that manufactured one would be teaching a reader to find significance where the text has left a placeholder. The Aṅguttara contains a good many of these, and recognizing them is part of reading it.
Key terms
The text
Four individuals
§1“Mendicants, these four individuals are found in the world. What four? One who practices to benefit themselves, but not others; one who practices to benefit others, but not themselves; one who practices to benefit neither themselves nor others; and one who practices to benefit both themselves and others. These are the four individuals found in the world.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.