“When a foolish, incompetent untrue person has four qualities they keep themselves broken and damaged. They deserve to be blamed and criticized by sensible people, and they create much wickedness. What four? Without examining or scrutinizing, they praise those deserving of criticism, and they criticize those deserving of praise. They arouse faith in things that are dubious, and they don’t arouse faith in things that are inspiring. When a foolish, incompetent untrue person has these four qualities they keep themselves broken and damaged. They deserve to be blamed and criticized by sensible people, and they create much wickedness.
When an astute, competent true person has four qualities they keep themselves intact and unscathed. They don’t deserve to be blamed and criticized by sensible people, and they create much merit. What four? After examining and scrutinizing, they criticize those deserving of criticism, and they praise those deserving of praise. They don’t arouse faith in things that are dubious, and they do arouse faith in things that are inspiring. When an astute, competent true person has these four qualities they keep themselves intact and unscathed. They don’t deserve to be blamed and criticized by sensible people, and they create much merit.
When you praise someone worthy of criticism,
or criticize someone worthy of praise,
you choose bad luck with your own mouth:
you’ll never find happiness that way.Bad luck at dice is a trivial thing,
if all you lose is your money
and all you own, even yourself.
What’s really terrible luck
is to hate the holy ones.For more than two quinquadecillion years,
and another five quattuordecillion years,
a slanderer of noble ones goes to hell,
having aimed bad words and thoughts at them.”
Read this translation of Aṅguttara Nikāya 4.3 Paṭhamakhatasutta: Broken (1st) by Bhikkhu Sujato on SuttaCentral.net. Or read a different translation on SuttaCentral.net. Or listen on PaliAudio.com or SC-Voice.net. Or explore the Pali on DigitalPaliReader.online.
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