Presented to the Buddha Center on Saturday, October 18, 2014

In his paper, “Arahants, Bodhisattvas and Buddhas,” Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses the paths of the arhant and the bodhisattva in relation to the Buddha and the idea of Buddhahood. Bodhi is perhaps the greatest living Pali-English translator. One-time Theravadin translator/scholar, he is now residing in a  Chinese Mahayana monastery and has even been seen at teachings given by the Dalai Lama of Tibet. In this talk I intend to explore these paths in the context of the Pali Canon for, contrary to popular misconception, it is not true that the path of the bodhisattva does not appear in the Pali texts, or that the path of the arhant is not relevant to the path of the bodhisattva. If one examines the Canon as a whole, one will see that these two paths are intricately interconnected, as one might expect in an interconnected world. Once again, we discover that Hinayana and Mahayana are not mutually exclusive, but that the essential axioms that underlie both are implicit in the original Pali sources.

The Pali word ‘arahant’ is derived from Sanskrit arhat, “worthy.” The word is used all through the Pali Canon to describe one who has achieved the goal of the path taught by Gotama, the Buddha. This goal posits the attainment of emancipation and the state of the Deathless, both in relation to the volitional formations and in relation to the arising of future causal potentialities through the extinction of desirous attachment. Like the Buddha, the Tathagata, he who has stood erect and gone this way, the arhant is not reborn. The moment the karmic potentiality is “cut off” in him, he is liberated. This is an essential change of state from which there is no returning. The arhant is perfected and wise. He exists in a state of perfect clarity of mind. He has no intentionality or bias. In other words, his intentionality is perfectly spontaneous, without attachment, like that of the Tibetan mahasiddha. He is utterly freed from all conditioning, all illusions, and all delusions.

When the Buddha awoke in northeast India about 445 BCE, he despaired of being able to teach the truth to people weighed down as they are by the dirt of ignorance and attachment. A divine being, Brahma Sahampati, inspired him to teach to save those who could be saved, the few whose coating of dust was least. Thus, even in its inception Buddhism was an esoteric teaching, lit. “for the few.” The Buddha knew his realization was unique in this age and yet rediscovered repeatedly in all ages as the ultimate realization of the nature of reality and emancipation itself. Therefore, his life represents the advent of a new Buddha age, characterized by the spread of dharma civilization surrounded by the darkness of proliferating suffering. The Buddhist philosophy is an expanding ontological bubble.

People pestered him with religious questions about the nature of the gods and the world, etc., but the Buddha discouraged speculation and taught the direct method of emancipation, the method of detachment from desire that leads to arhantship. He knew that this liberates the power of truth that in turn leads to wisdom, but he always intimated that this teaching was a mere fraction of the totality of his wisdom and spiritual knowledge. In fact, the teaching is so vast it can barely be discerned in the age of people who live barely 100 or 120 years, compared to the lifespan and intelligence of the divine beings.

So great was the charisma of the Buddha that many men and women too, those who were karmically able, became arhants either immediately or shortly after hearing the Buddha speak, followed by a brief period of meditation not shorter than a week. The Buddha taught that three things are necessary to become an arhant – understanding, discipline, and meditation, and that these things constitute the way. He also taught many individualized methods adapted to the particular needs of each person, based on their karmic context at any given time. Understanding is, however, the essential first step, and he who perfects his understanding through the juxtaposition of faith and/or critical inquiry becomes a “stream entrant” who will attain perfect emancipation within seven rebirths at most, depending on their karma. Volitional formations can also be destroyed by meditation, so the advent of emancipation can be accelerated through practice.

The Buddha was an arhant, but an arhant is not a Buddha. The incontestable difference between an arhant and a Buddha is that an arhant follows the path taught by a Buddha, but a Buddha is the (re)discoverer of that path. The powers of an arhant pertain to impermanence, desire, suffering, seclusion, renunciation, attention, aspiration, and spiritual empowerment, whereas those of a Buddha are far more numinous and abstract: possibilities and impossibilities, results of actions (i.e., karma), ways leading everywhere, the elements of the world, inclinations and dispositions of beings, emancipation and attainment, remembering past lives, the divine eye (perceiving karmic destinations), and the destruction of the taints (emancipation). The powers of a Buddha are more “cosmic”, ontically and karmically inclined, whereas those of an arhant are more psychological, ethical, and ascetic. The epithet “knower of the world” is one of a group of nine epithets unique to the Buddha. One might say that the arhant is the master of dispassion or detachment, whereas the Buddha is the master of wisdom and spiritual empowerment.

In particular, the Buddha did not learn the teaching from anybody else. Thus, he is self-ordained, although it is clear from the story of Sumedha, below, that a bodhisattva can arise in the time of a Buddha and even be recognized by him.

After the enlightenment, on the way to Benares, near the Gaya River, before the Buddha had revealed himself to people, the ascetic Upaka came upon Gotama in the road. Upaka was an ascetic of the Ajivika sect, a popular spiritual philosophy of the time. The Ajivikas believed that the soul must pass through a predetermined series of states before it can achieve final liberation. Nothing can be done to change this necessity. Established volitional formations cannot be destroyed except by fruition. Thus, they were fatalists who denied the law of moral causality itself, but they also believed that asceticism could ameliorate future latent or potential effects. Upaka noticed the face of the Buddha, which was bright, clear, and serene – the Pali texts identify this as a by-product of meditation – and he asks the Buddha who his teacher is. The Buddha replies that he is self-ordained. This was, therefore, the first speech of the Buddha after his enlightenment. Upaka, however, was doubtful. Scratching his head, he muttered “Perhaps,” and continued on his way, clearly unconvinced. This story counters any suggestion that the Buddha used “psychic powers” to convince anyone of his attainment.

The Buddha is also referred to as a bodhisattva, “one whose essence is enlightenment,” prior to becoming a Buddha. The Buddha Dipankara, who lived thousands of ages ago, when he encounters Sumedha, predicted Gotama’s future Buddhahood. According to the Chronicle of Buddhas (Buddhavamsa), Sumedha was a wealthy Brahman 100,004 ages ago, an age being a huge but definite period, consisting of millions or even billions of years. Many universes never see a Buddha, resulting in an interminable dark age – a concept weirdly like the modern scientific idea of multiple universes in which many universes are simply dead, devoid of life.

Sumedha lived in the city of Amaravati and was a rich agriculturalist. He was also a Brahman who recited and knew the Vedas perfectly and understood the science of mantra. Having an intimation of the truth of  suffering, he formulated the intention to seek emancipation by developing detachment. Sumedha reasons from the existence and impermanence of the world that there must be a way leading to the transcendence of the world, and he resolves to experience it.

There is, there must be that Way; it is impossible for it not to be. I shall seek that Way for the utter release from becoming.

Thus, having formulated the intention, Sumedha created the karmic seed of realization that, in accordance with the law of moral causality, must culminate in enlightenment, for nothing can pass from the law of moral causality except through its fruition. Of course, the historical existence of Sumedha 24 ages ago is not the point of the story.

Sumedha abandoned his wealth and went to the mountain called Dhammaka in the Himalayas, initially building a leaf hut for himself. After a while, he makes bark clothing and dwells under a tree, living on fallen fruits. This description clearly associates the Buddha with the yakshi tree spirit cult of ancient India, often associated with goddesses or other female deities. This association reappears when the Buddha abandons asceticism because a local girl, believing him to be the tree god who has benefitted her, offers him a dish of rice gruel.

Hearing that a Buddha had arisen in the world, Sumedha travels with the throngs to where Dipankara is to generate merit for himself, chanting “Buddha, buddha.”  When he encounters Dipankara, he prostrates before him and lays his matted hair in the mud of the path, so that Dipankara can proceed without soiling his feet. Sumedha then mentally formulates his earnest wish to become a Buddha, in the first formal formulation of the bodhisattva vow in the canonical Pali literature.

While I was lying in the earth it was thus in my mind: If I so wished I could burn up my defilements today. What is the use while I remain unknown of realizing dhamma here? Having reached omniscience, I will cause the world together with the devas to cross over. By this act of merit of mine towards the supreme among men I will reach omniscience, I will cause many people to cross over. Cutting through the stream of samsara, shattering the three becomings, embarking in the ship of Dhamma, I will cause the world with its devas to cross over.

Sumedha’s reference to being able to “burn up” his defilements, besides being a clear reference to the doctrine that volitional formations can be destroyed, alludes to the Buddhist view of merit based on propitious acts. In the Buddhist view, the merit of moral acts accrues to the doer based on three conditions: the quality of the intention, the quality of the action, and the quality of the object of the action. Thus, a good act directed towards an evil object – say, an act of benevolence directed towards a thief – generates less “merit” – propitious karmic potential – than a good act directed towards a good object – e.g., a gift to a great person. So Sumedha realized that the combination of the personal merit that he has acquired due to his practice to this point, combined with the extraordinary merit of an actual Buddha, would be sufficient to destroy all his defilements and propel him into Buddhahood itself. Nonetheless, even with this exceptional opportunity, it took Sumedha 100,004 ages to realize his intention.

Dipankhara, seeing him, declares,

Do you see this very severe ascetic, a matted hair ascetic? Innumerable eons from now he will be a Buddha in the world. … he will be named Gotama.

The translator, I.B. Horner, adds,

His aspiration for Buddhahood was made therefore with the welfare of the world in view, beside which his own realization of Dhamma and his own crossing over faded into insignificance. Both had been accomplished without any instruction from a teacher.

Sumedha’s act of merit ultimately culminates in the enlightenment of Gotama under the Bodhi tree.

The self-realization of the bodhisattva and the self-realization of an arhant are definitely distinct, according to canonical sources, from the first expression of the Buddhist philosophy and remains a pervasive theme in all of the canonical sources right up until the Buddha’s passing, as Bhikkhu Bodhi acknowledges in his paper, “Arahants, Bodhisattvas, and Buddhas” (2010). Yet there is no less doubt that the Buddha taught the short path of the arhant to his immediate disciples, whereby an individual may, through the hearing of the teaching, cut off all attachment to rebirth, by interrupting the closed circuit of  “arising in dependence upon conditions.” The essential meaning is that causes and effects are inextricably interconnected. The Buddha compared it to a hairball of incredibly intricately interconnected fibres and told Ananda that it is his most perplexing idea, which leads to the realization of emptiness itself. He then applied this insight to the appearances  of birth, old age, suffering, and death, and showed the linkage of the causes and conditions as they develop out of ignorance, volitional formations, innate intelligence, mind/matter, the six sensory fields, contact, feeling, desirous attachment, and rebirth. The Buddha then realized that the karmic “arrow of time” has two directions, forward and reverse (as in modern quantum physics), and that all karmic constructs are inherently unstable and impermanent, and therefore liable to be converted into their opposite (like yin/yang in Chinese philosophy).

The Pali texts divide interconnectedness into different numbers of links, 12 being the most common, but the division into ten links highlights two points in the sequence that have special significance, being the beginning/end point and the midpoint, respectively.

If we look at this linkage or chain, one can see that will has little effect on volitional formations, innate intelligence, mind/matter, the senses, feeling/contact, rebirth – these are all “objective” processes that occur automatically or are “unconscious,” as we say. You can’t really “get at” any of them. However, between feeling/contact and grasping is desirous attachment, the primary attachment being the ego, atta or “self,” which “reflects” as it were the deep nescience of the unconscious, the primary “not-knowing” that is the radical ontological ignorance that is at the root of moral causality and reality itself. Each of these is accessible to the mind, the one through the cultivation of “dispassion,” also referred to as detachment, non-attachment, disinterest, non-grasping, etc., and the other – the deeper, more primary root of desire itself – through the cultivation of wisdom, knowledge, knowing, which also appears as the first principle of the path. The path of desirelessness is the path of the arhant. The path of the Buddha, which is the path of the bodhisattva, is the path of wisdom.

Some time after the “passing” of the Buddha, the issue of the wisdom of arhants became a sticking point in the order when Mahadeva set forth his Five Points on the fallibility and imperfection of arhants. The majority accepted the view that the wisdom of the arhants was imperfect, causing the split in the order that ultimately led to the division between the Hinayana and the Mahayana. The followers of the first took the pursuit of the goal of the arhant as taught by the Buddha to be the only legitimate goal. The followers of the Mahayana, on the other hand, took the pursuit of the goal of the bodhisattva, as followed by the Buddha, to be the higher path. The only Hinayana sect to survive today is the Theravada.

Although some scholars doubt the historicity of Mahadeva, the Five Points of Mahadeva are clear. They address a question that must have been on the minds of many since the First Buddhist Council of Mahakassapa.

The path of the bodhisattva described in the Pali tradition is essentially identical with the Mahayana conception. The path of the bodhisattva begins with the resolution to achieve Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, and proceeds through six perfections – generosity, morality, patience, energy, meditation, wisdom. This is not so different from the Noble Path, which consists of higher virtue (= generosity, morality, patience), higher wisdom (= wisdom), and higher mind (= energy, meditation). The Buddha says that the practice of these three things subsumes the entire Vinaya. There is no suggestion in the Pali texts that Gotama was the last in the series – there is no Buddhist “seal of the prophets.” Such an idea is incomprehensible in the light of Buddhist ontology. The Pali texts, therefore, refer to the next Buddha Metteyya, or Maitreya. There will be an indefinite number of Buddhas in the future as there were in the past. Therefore, there must be a path leading to Buddhahood and there must be those following this path, the bodhisattvas. Therefore, one cannot say that the path of arhantship is the only valid or solely efficacious path.

It appears that the Buddha taught the path of the arhant because in this age of degeneration the path of the bodhisattva is too hard. This is hinted at immediately after Gotama’s enlightenment. However, there is no escaping moral causality. Therefore, the bodhisattva seed is karmically efficacious whenever or wherever it is planted, provided it is watered by the power of truth.

The Mahayana path of the bodhisattva differs from the Pali description in one detail, however. A common but by no means universal interpretation states that the bodhisattva vows to postpone his own enlightenment until all other beings are enlightened and the world itself is routed. In the Pali account Sumedha vows to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all beings, and does so, thus passing out of worldly existence. He neither destroys nor redeems the world, but the “dharma bubble” continues to expand until its energy, the power of truth, is exhausted like all things and ignorance and suffering again reign together alone.

Note

1. “These two perspectives then define what the Buddha accomplished through his enlightenment. When we take the historical-realistic perspective, the Buddha became an arahant. However, though being an arahant, he was what we might call ‘an arahant with differences’; he was, moreover not simply an arahant with a few incidental differences, but an arahant whose differences eventually elevated him to a distinct level, the Bhagavā, a world teacher, one who towered above all the other arahants. These differences opened the door, so to speak, to the ‘cosmic-metaphysical perspective’ on the Buddha as a way to understand what accounted for these differences. Once this door was opened up, the Buddha was viewed as the one who brought to consummation the long bodhisattva career extending over countless eons, in which he sacrificed himself in various ways, many times, for the good of others: this is the cosmic aspect of that perspective. Again, he was viewed as the one who arrived at ultimate truth, the Tathāgata who has come from Suchness (tathā + āgata) and gone to Suchness (tathā + gata), and yet who abides nowhere: this is the metaphysical aspect of that perspective. This cosmic-metaphysical perspective then became characteristic of the Mahāyāna.” Note that the bodhisattva ideal is not an innovation of the Mahayana; it emerged within the Hinayana itself, as the difference between the Buddha and the arhants and the fallibility of the latter became clearer over time. Moreover, sectarians who take the alternative view to its logical conclusion and who aver that there is no difference between the Buddha and an arhant end up affirming the path of the bodhisattva surreptitiously, as it were, for, if there is no difference, the Buddha becomes unnecessary, just one of many teachers – one can follow the path of the arhant directly, as it were, without depending on the Buddha, just as Siddattha Gotama himself did, which is exactly what the path of the bodhisattva is all about ultimately. Thus, the difference becomes merely a matter of semantics. “The formula for the arahant reads thus: ‘Here a monk is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, who has lived the spiritual life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached his own goal, utterly destroyed the fetters of existence, one completely liberated through final knowledge.’ Now all these epithets are true for the Buddha as well, but the Buddha is not described in this way; for these terms emphasize the attainment of one’s own liberation, and the Buddha is extolled, not primarily as the one who has attained his own liberation, but as the one who opens the doors of liberation for others. That is, even in the archaic suttas of the Nikāyas, an ‘other-regarding’ significance is already being subtly ascribed to the Buddha’s status that is not ascribed to the arahant.”

Bibliography

Bodhi, Bhikhu (2010). “Arahants, Bhikhus and Buddhas.” http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/arahantsbodhisattvas.html.