PRESENTED TO THE BUDDHA CENTER ON AUGUST 17 AND 20, 2013, AND AGAIN TO THE NEW BUDDHA CENTRE ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2024.

The Buddha distinguished four fundamental degrees of spiritual attainment: stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arhantship. To these he added the practices leading to the realization of these fruits, a clear reference to moral causality and its effects. The stream is a metaphor the Buddha used for both the Eightfold Path and the world. The implication is that there is a relation or correlation between the four realizations and the eight steps of the path. Nevertheless, the exact relationship is subtle.

Stream-entry is, as the word suggests, the attainment of the path itself. As such, it is the fundamental attainment. The stream-enterer (or stream winner) is one who, having attained the path, has overcome the fetters of belief in the reality of a self, doubt, and attachment to rites and rituals. Expressed in positive terms, he has achieved selflessness, certainty, and non-attachment to actions. This person has achieved the dharma-eye.

The stream-enterer has achieved a “taste” of emancipation that results in a decisive awakening. This realization is the “breakthrough to the dharma.” This state is identical with the state of the disciple, the spiritual order, and Perfect View. A stream-enterer cannot be reborn as an animal, ghost, or hell-being.

According to the tradition, a stream-enterer will attain full, final, and complete enlightenment within no more than seven rebirths, say, 700 years give or take.

Concerning this attainment, the Buddha said, taking up a bit of soil under his fingernail, “for a noble disciple, a person accomplished in view who has made the breakthrough, the suffering that has been destroyed and eliminated is more, while what remains is trifling. The latter does not amount to a hundredth part, or a thousandth part, or a hundred thousandth part of the former mass of suffering that has been destroyed and eliminated, since there is a maximum of seven more lives. Of such great benefit … is the breakthrough to the Dharma, of such great benefit is it to obtain the vision of the Dharma.”

One may compare the term “breakthrough” with Padmasambhava’s concept of the “leap.” It implies that the attainment of stream-entry is a singular, momentary, even visionary experience. As we have already discussed, a stream-enterer is not necessarily a monastic or even celibate. Therefore, the “noble order” is not identical with the monastic order, as pointed out by Dr. Peter Masefield. The four factors for attaining stream-entry consist of associating with superior people, hearing the true teaching, clear awareness, and practising the teaching. A stream-enterer experiences an instantaneous transformation of being, an awakening characterized by directly knowing and seeing the truth.

The second developmental attainment is that of once-returner. In addition to the three fetters already mentioned, he has significantly, but not completely, weakened attachment and anger. As the name implies, the once-returner will experience only one more human rebirth. He will either be reborn as a divine being or attain emancipation. One can also attain this stage without embracing celibacy. Thus, this stage is available to a householder.

The third developmental attainment is that of non-returner. The non-returner has completely overcome all the foregoing fetters. In addition to the previous attainments, he has achieved indifference to sensual pleasures and perfect benevolence or loving-kindness. Non-returners are never reborn as human beings. They are reborn directly in one of the Five Pure Abodes of the Form World. From there they attain full enlightenment.

Therefore, neither a bodhisattva nor a future Buddha has ever achieved this stage, because, had they done so, they could never be reborn as a human being. This is one more confirmation of the difference between a bodhisattva and an arhant. Because he completely overcomes the fetter of attachment, a non-returner must be celibate. Still, he is not necessarily a monastic. The discourses represent this stage as an ideal stage for the laity to aspire to. The attainment of the stage of non-returner is equivalent to the attainment of the first meditative attainment.

Finally, the fourth developmental attainment is that of arhant. The arhant has overcome all the previous fetters plus five additional fetters, viz., desire for rebirth in any state, the ego-conceit, restlessness or agitation, and, finally, ignorance, the root of the chain of cause and effect. Thus, the arhant adds complete detachment, selflessness, tranquility, and wisdom to the attainment of the previous stages. In the Mahayana classification, this is the equivalent to the eighth stage of a bodhisattva.

According to tradition, a householder cannot remain in the state of arhantship. Either he will attain arhantship at death or he will become a monastic immediately upon achieving arhantship, due to this complete loss of interest in the world. Strictly speaking, therefore, all arhants are monastics, at least after the fact. This is not true of the previous stages. Thus, the common identification of the noble order with monasticism represents a conceptual confusion.

The arhant has also perfected the five faculties of faith, energy, clear awareness, concentration, and wisdom. According to the Buddha, an arhant is incapable of nine actions: killing, stealing, sex, lying, sensuality, and wrong actions based on desire, hatred, delusion, and fear. Even if powerful sensory experiences were to enter his range of perception, they will not perturb his mind at all.

One can see there is a kind of correspondence between these four stages and the Eightfold Path. The stream-enterer has attained Perfect View. All the stages have attained some step of the Path. However, beyond that a simple one-to-one correspondence is hard to find. The ten fetters have no direct correspondence with the Eightfold Path. However, the faculties of energy, clear awareness, and concentration, mastered by the arhant, suggest the final three steps of the Path, viz., Right Effort, Right Awareness, and Right Concentration. Wisdom is the specific attainment of the first step of the path, viz., Right View or, in other views, the goal. An arhant has perfected all these. The Buddha says these five faculties are implicit in all the stages, but to different degrees. In the outsider or worldling, they are completely lacking. However, this begs the question of the nature of the attainment of the stream-enterer, who has achieved Perfect View, overcome doubt, and attained certainty in the truth of the teaching.

Two stages that precede the stage of stream-enterer consist of faith followers and dharma followers. The latter is higher than the former. Faith and dharma followers are stages of intermediate development between an ordinary worldling and a stream-winner. They consist of ordinary faith in the Buddha and wisdom, respectively. The Buddha says the faith follower will be reborn as a divine being in a spiritual world. Dharma followers will attain enlightenment after an unspecified number of rebirths. Both will attain stream-entry in their current life.

The wanderer Vacchagotta wonders whether the Buddha is the only one who has attained these states. The Buddha assures him others in the community have also attained them. He includes both male and female monastics, who have attained the highest stage of arhantship; celibate male and female lay followers, who have attained the third stage of non-returning; and non-celibate male and female lay followers, who have attained the first and second stages of stream-entry and once-returning. Thus, the Buddha clearly makes no fundamental distinction between the genders. However, he does say non-celibate practitioners cannot proceed beyond the second stage of once-returning, for the very practical karmic reason that the non-celibate person still attaches to sensual desire and rebirth. Nevertheless, once-returning is still a very advanced state of spiritual development.

A bodhisattva or future Buddha cannot attain any of these states since they all imply non-rebirth as a human being at some point in the future. The Buddha says he has been reborn many times as a Bodhisattva over countless eons. Thus, the path of the arhant is not the only possible spiritual path, but only one possible path, viz., the path taught by the Buddha in 5^th century BCE northeast India.

Seven Kinds of Person

According to another classification, the Buddha recognizes seven kinds of persons: the two-ways-liberated person, the wisdom-liberated person, the body-witness, one who has attained-to-view, the faith-liberated person, the dharma follower, and the faith follower. We have already discussed the concepts of liberation by wisdom and faith as well as the dharma and faith followers. We have also discussed tranquility (“quietude of the heart”) meditation and insight (“intuition”) meditation.

The practice of tranquility meditation results in the pacification of the physical body by means of the eight form and formless meditative attainments. The practice of insight meditation results in the pacification of the mental body through the destruction of the taints, viz., sensuality, lust for living, and ignorance, and the detachment induced by deeply understanding the nature of existence, especially change. Now this structure has been set up, one can see how these seven types of person fit in. As the name implies, one liberated-both-ways has mastered both quietude and insight. The one liberated by wisdom has not mastered quietude, but he has mastered insight. Both types of practice are, the Buddha says, sufficient to attain arhantship. Nothing to do remains. Thus, there are different paths to the same goal, suited to different aspirants.

The body-witness has mastered quietude but has only partial detachment. One who has attained-to-view has not mastered quietude, but has partly developed detachment, as well as an intellectual understanding of the teaching. The one attained-by-faith has not mastered quietude but has partly developed detachment and he has developed complete faith in the Buddha. The dharma follower has not mastered quietude or detachment, but he accepts the teaching intellectually and has acquired the five faculties of an arhant, viz., faith, energy, clear awareness, concentration, and wisdom, but only somewhat. Finally, the faith follower has not mastered quietude or detachment but has complete faith in the Buddha and has somewhat developed the five faculties. All these types of human being can reach enlightenment in this life, but not necessarily without further cultivation.

When one considers these classifications, one sees how deeply karmic the Buddha’s fundamental understanding is. Human beings are caught in a mirage, characterized by vast cycles of time and inevitable, infinitely proliferating causality, entropy and negentropy, driven by the real force of moral causality that is in turn actuated by intention based on ignorance and desirous attachment in an endless series of apparent existences that have no discernible beginning or end, characterized by selflessness, change, and suffering. However, human beings also have the innate capacity, through the quality of sentience, to “wake up,” to see the reality of their existence. Through the perfection of non-intention resulting from the cultivation of insight and tranquility, one can nullify moral causality, resulting in emancipation from the mirage, and the attainment of perfect wisdom and bliss in an ultimately immortal state that is beyond rational comprehension and transdual.

Non-intention itself is transdual, because it is not rooted in desire or revulsion, revulsion being just another sort of attachment. Non-intention is a state of perfect clarity of mind, without attachment to the dichotomies of thought, perception, or experience. The Buddhist path bases itself on the essential idea of universal and individual causation. Moral causality acts both as a glue and an energy that binds all together yet is essentially mysterious. Moral causality equates to volition in its primary, ignorant state. Moral causality is neither “good” nor “bad.” The same force that binds us is also the force that frees us, as the Tantra, says, “One rises by that by which one falls.” It is the essential dynamic of reality itself. Without this ultimate and essential dynamic, there would be neither becoming nor liberation, but simply the stasis of nothingness (in the ordinary sense).

Four Kinds of Persons

With respect to the goal, the Buddha further identifies four kinds of persons: those who attain emancipation through volitional exertion and those who attain it without volitional exertion, either during life or at death. Volitional exertion includes contemplating the unattractiveness of the body, change, perceiving the repulsiveness of food, discontent with the world, and strong awareness of death. This is the classical model of the renunciant or ascetic. Attaining emancipation without volitional exertion includes seclusion from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states and the mastery of tranquility meditation and the four meditative attainments. All these types of people must also cultivate the five powers of a trainee, viz., faith, shame, fear of wrongdoing, energy, and wisdom, and the five faculties of faith, energy, clear awareness, concentration, and wisdom.

The Eight Jhanas

One develops the renunciation of the five lower fetters, viz., self-view, doubt, attachment to rites and rituals, attachment, and anger, equivalent to the stage of the non-returner, by means of the four meditative attainments. One attains the first meditative attainment by giving up possessiveness, unwholesome states, and “tranquilizing the bodily inertia.” It is a cognitive state associated with rapture, happiness, and seclusion. He experiences existence as changeable, suffering, and empty of self. He turns his mind to the “deathless element,” emancipation, either experiencing the destruction of the taints or, if there is any attachment left, being reborn in the Pure Abodes. Thus, he experiences the stage of a non-returner.

With the subsiding of thought and examination, he experiences the second meditative attainment.

With the fading away of rapture, he experiences the third meditative attainment.

With the subsiding of pleasure and pain, he experiences the fourth meditative attainment. He experiences clear awareness and equanimity.

Upon the passing away of the perception of form and sensation, he realizes the first formless meditative attainment, called Infinite Space.

Upon transcending the perception of Infinite Space, he realizes Infinite Consciousness. This is the second formless meditative attainment.

Upon transcending Infinite Consciousness, he realizes Nothingness. This is the third formless meditative attainment.

Dying Consciously

The Buddha also taught the practice of yoga in conjunction with the process of dying. Dying consciously can be a powerful spiritual practice. When the lay follower Dighavu was dying, he asked his father, Jotika, to bring the Buddha. The Buddha came to Dighavu to offer him spiritual guidance. Once the Buddha confirmed Dighavu was dying, he advised Dighavu to cultivate faith in the Buddha, the Teaching, and Order. That the Buddha directed this advice to Dighavu’s rebirth is clear because of the Buddha’s recommendation that Dighavu resolve to cultivate the moral virtues – clearly not a recommendation that has much to do with someone who is in the final stages of life! These four factors are the standard list for stream-entry. The Buddha is clearly encouraging Dighavu to become a stream-enterer, either in this life or the next.

When Dighavu affirms he has already attained stream-entry, the Buddha recommends he cultivate six additional factors, viz., the progressive realization of change, suffering, selflessness, renunciation, “fading away,” and cessation. Dighavu declares he has already mastered these meditations too. By means of these meditations, the Buddha declares that Dighavu has achieved the stage of non-returning. He has overcome the five fetters and been born in a spiritual world.

One can influence one’s future rebirths through will or intention. It also suggests that the stage of dying itself is a valuable opportunity to develop the spiritual life. This view was greatly developed in the Tibetan system of the “transference of consciousness,” based on the cultivation of the post-mortem state. It also shows, through the cultivation of the six things that partake of true knowledge, how one may overcome the five fetters and attain the state of a non-returner.

Once again, wisdom takes priority in the practice of cultivation. 

Seven Factors of Enlightenment

The Buddha identifies seven factors of enlightenment attained by five kinds of non-returners, including one who attains arhantship early in this life, at death, in “the interval,” “upon landing,” without volitional exertion, with volitional exertion, or, finally, in the highest Pure Abode. This passage is exceptionally interesting, especially the references to attaining arhantship “in the interval,” “upon landing,” and “becoming one bound upstream.”

According to the orthodox Theravada interpretation, based on commentaries written hundreds of years later, these refer to emancipation attained at death, upon rebirth as a divine being, or during one’s lifespan in the Pure Abodes. This interpretation ignores both the meaning of the terms and the order. Even Bhikkhu Bodhi recognizes the artificiality of this interpretation on purely linguistic grounds. Both Bodhi and Dr. Peter Masefield take the obvious meaning of this passage, based also on the famous simile of the flaming chip in the Anguttara Nikaya, to refer to the current life, the moment of dying, the post-mortem state “in between” this life and the next rebirth, rebirth in the Pure Abodes, or finally during one’s life after having passed through the Five Pure Abodes. With and without volitional exertion thus become the two modes of attainment that apply to subsequent rebirths.

Bodhi’s interpretation is clearly the obvious meaning. However, it presents a grave problem for Theravadins. They deny the reality of an intermediate post-mortem state. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s support for this interpretation is even more remarkable for this reason. As an aside, Bodhi himself does seem to have changed his allegiances somewhat. He has left Sri Lanka and taken up residence in the Bodhi Monastery in New Jersey. Bodhi Monastery is a Chinese Mahayana monastery with a strong basis in the Pali discourses, very much along the lines I have taken in these talks. Apparently, Bodhi himself now teaches the Mahayana interpretation of the discourses in his classes, in addition to the Theravada view. In addition to recognizing the reality of an intermediate post-mortem state, Bodhi refers to the superiority of the path of a bodhisattva.

The post-mortem state is described in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The yoga of conscious dying bases itself on the teachings of the “second Buddha,” Padmasambhava. Padmasambhava recognized the reality of an intermediate post-mortem state called the “interval” or “the in between.” The Tibetan Book of the Dead develops an elaborate phenomenology and yoga of the intermediate state. The Tibetan Book of the Dead bases it on the vital significance of the moment of death. Finding this doctrine in the Pali Canon shows the degree to which the later Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions depend on a deep appreciation of the Pali discourses. The “interval” falls outside the ontological classification of the thirty-one planes of existence. Nevertheless, it is also a state from and within which one can attain emancipation. Tibetan Buddhism, Yogacara, and Pure Land seem to be the main schools that preserve this doctrine of the Pali tradition.

When the Venerable Khemaka is dying, he declares he has overcome the five aggregates subject to attachment, including ego-identification with the five aggregates, but he has not yet overcome the notion or conceit of a self. Thus, he makes a distinction between self and self-identity. Bodhi explains this as a residual conceit and desire associated with the “odour of subjectivity,” based on the metaphor of the flower’s scent, connected with the belief in personal identity. The self does not identify itself with any form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, or consciousness. I would explain it as an underlying belief in separation resulting from fundamental ignorance, still not overcome. Its root is the metaphysical underpinning of the delusion of self, detached from identification with objects but not from exclusive self-identity.

The exclusivity of a self is distinct from the idea of the mindstream. The mindstream is a “true self” not exclusive of anything and thus transdual. I regard the latter as the ontological underpinning of the illusory self still mired in ignorance. One can reconcile the doctrine of selflessness with the idea of a mindstream. It is necessary if one is to regard the world as a mirage and not merely a (nonexistent) “illusion.” Even an illusion is ontological.

The Buddha and the Arhant

Non-attachment liberates both the Buddha and an arhant. Their essential identity raises the question of the difference between them. The Buddha is self-realized; the wisdom resulting from the teaching discovered and taught by the Buddha liberates the arhant. In other words, it is a matter of seniority. Thus, the Buddha says,

so long as a Tathagata has not arisen in the world, an Arhant, a Perfectly Enlightened One, for just so long there is no manifestation of great light and radiance, but then blinding darkness prevails, a dense mass of darkness; for just so long there is no explaining, teaching, proclaiming, establishing, disclosing, analyzing, or elucidating of the Four Noble Truths. But … when a Tathagata arises in the world, an Arhant, a Perfectly Enlightened One, then there is the manifestation of great light and radiance; then no blinding darkness prevails, no dense mass of darkness; then there is the explaining, teaching, proclaiming, establishing, disclosing, analyzing, and elucidating of the Four Noble Truths.

In other words, time and history are intrinsically entropic, whereas the power of the truth of the teaching is inherently negentropic.

The Buddha identifies ten powers of the arhant and ten powers of the Buddha.

Ten Powers of an Arhant	Ten Powers of a Buddha
Impermanence	Possibility and impossibility
Craving and suffering	Results of actions
Seclusion and renunciation	Ways leading everywhere
Four establishments of mindfulness	Elements of the world
Four perfect kinds of striving	Inclinations of beings
Four bases of spiritual power	Disposition of beings
Five spiritual faculties	Process of emancipation and attainment
Five powers of an aspirant	Recalling past lives
Seven factors of enlightenment	Divine eye (karmic destinations)
Noble Eightfold Path	Emancipation (destruction of the taints)

Four establishments of awareness: contemplating the body, contemplating feelings, contemplating mind, contemplating phenomena

Four perfect kinds of aspiration: non-arising, abandonment, arising, maintenance (right effort)

Four foundations of spiritual power: intention, effort, consciousness, investigation

Five spiritual faculties: faith, energy, awareness, concentration, wisdom

Five powers of an aspirant: faith, shame, fear of wrongdoing, energy, wisdom

Seven factors of enlightenment: awareness, discrimination, energy, rapture, tranquility, concentration, equanimity

Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness,  right concentration

There is a rough correspondence between these terms. Nonetheless, they are not simply identical or equivalent. An essential difference is that all the powers of an arhant are primarily mental powers or realizations pertaining to the attainment of emancipation. These include various realizations concerning the nature of existence (change, attachment, suffering, etc.). However, the ten powers of a Buddha are primarily ontological. A significant number of these powers are associated with moral causality, viz., knowing what is possible and impossible; causes and possibilities; the types of conduct and future destinies to which they lead, including emancipation; the inclinations and dispositions of beings, amounting to a kind of clairvoyance; recalling past lives; and seeing the causal destinies of beings (the so-called “divine eye”).

The emancipation of an arhant appears to be exclusive of the world. The emancipation of a Buddha includes all this plus a deep understanding of the world, and not only from the perspective of the absolute. In the Tibetan view, the Buddha continues to be involved with the world. For example, the great the century adept Padmasambhava, who is credited with the conversion of the Tibetan nation to Buddhism, is held to be an emanation of the historical Buddha and was enlightened at birth. I suspect this comes about because of the difference between the path of the four stages of an arhant compared with the path of a bodhisattva in relation to the world: i.e., the arhant renounces the world, whereas the bodhisattva chooses to remain involved with the world for a long time, for the sake of the salvation of all beings. Thus, the realization of an arhant excludes the world; a Buddha includes it in a way the arhant cannot, including what one can only call psychic powers. Rooted in the attainment of an arhant, the attainment of a Buddha transcends that of an arhant, not only in relation to time but also in terms of the quality of his realization of moral causality and the nature of experience. This is characterized by the perfect awakening, detachment, and integrity of a Tathagata, whose speech and actions are in perfect accord with each other and with reality itself. The attainment of a Tathagata is also much rarer than the attainment of an arhant by what one can only describe as an astronomical order of magnitude. Thus, the realization of a Buddha encompasses the realization of an arhant but the realization of an arhant does not encompass the realization of a Buddha.

Revised May 11, 2025

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