Traditions: Pāli Majjhima Nikāya; Pāli Aṅguttara Nikāya Motif: Some speculative questions distract from an urgent task Connection verdict: Related caution against unproductive speculation, not a shared parable Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-10-29
Summary
MN 63 gives the poisoned-arrow simile amid unanswered cosmological questions; AN 4.77 names four matters that are not usefully pursued by speculative thought.
Read the two scenes
In MN 63, a wounded person who insists on knowing every detail of the arrow and archer before permitting treatment would die waiting. The story responds to a particular demand for speculative answers when the problem of suffering is urgent. AN 4.77 gives a separate list of subjects whose speculative pursuit is said to frustrate a person. Neither passage is a ban on all questioning or careful investigation. The useful distinction is between inquiries that aid a path of practice and inquiries that obstruct it in a particular setting.
What connects—and what does not
The simile concerns refusing treatment until irrelevant questions are answered; the numbered discourse lists specific domains such as a Buddha’s range and results of action.
The passages overlap in practical caution but differ in their questions and should not be represented as one list.
Why read them side by side?
The pair asks how to recognize when an interesting question has become a way of delaying necessary action.
Sources and reading notes
- MN 63, Shorter Discourse With Māluṅkyaputta — Pāli-canon translation; compare the wider discourse and Pāli terms.
- AN 4.77, Unthinkable — Pāli-canon translation; compare the wider discourse and Pāli terms.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.