Greetings to all and my respectful salutations to the members of the Sangha 
I was reading the Aṅguttara Nikaya and as I approached the section on “to be associated with” AN 3.26, the following excerpt made me question (the emboldened words are of my making) :
“These three individuals are found in the world. What three? There is an individual you shouldn’t associate with, accompany, or attend. There is an individual you should associate with, accompany, and attend. There is an individual you should associate with, accompany, and attend with honor and respect.
Who is the individual you shouldn’t associate with, accompany, or attend? It’s an individual who is inferior in terms of ethics, immersion, and wisdom. You shouldn’t associate with, accompany, or attend such an individual, except out of kindness and sympathy."
What does associating with someone out of kindness and sympathy mean? Does it suggest that one could still deliberately seek out those not to be associated with out of kindness and sympathy, or that if one is requested to be seeing such a person would would accept but only out of kindness and sympathy?
The exact meaning is a bit blurry to me, I’d be grateful if someone could enlighten me in that regard.
I thank you greatly for reading me!
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I think the answer comes with the third person:
It’s an individual who is superior in terms of ethics, immersion, and wisdom. You should associate with, accompany, and attend such an individual with honor and respect.
From the perspective of this third person, the one who seeks their company is inferior in ethics etc. So, if they would not accept the company of this inferior person, there would be no learning or development for them. This is where kindness and sympathy come into play, to help others develop, help them take the steps the “higher” person has already taken.
That’s also the reason why we should attend to such a person “with honor and respect”: because of their kindness and sympathy, and the trouble they are taking to help us along.
That’s how I understand it.
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I can see why you take it that way, and I think that interpretation is quite plausible. Even so, I am inclined to see the phrase somewhat differently. “Except out of kindness and sympathy” seems to make sense on its own. On that view, the point is not that one should deliberately seek out close company with an inferior person simply to help them, but that the passage does not seem to rule out all contact. This would still mean not keeping such a person as a regular companion or looking to them for guidance, even though one may still help or respond when kindness and sympathy call for it. So the exception seems to allow limited contact motivated by goodwill, rather than the kind of settled association the passage warns against. But I may well be missing something.
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