Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson discusses the idea of a path and fruition in the context of the stages of awakening. He gives examples of people who attained arahatship through a teaching or reflection and explains that a practitioner can only judge their own attainment by observing changes in their personality and reactions over time.
Key points
- Attainment of a path can happen suddenly, as with Sariputta, Bahiya and Ananda, who each reached arahatship through listening, reflection or a short teaching.
- Stream entry can come through deep analysis of the Buddha's teaching, not only through a long gradual process.
- A cessation experience is overwhelming and brings a lot of energy into body and mind, and it can change visual and colour perception.
- Only a Buddha could confirm for a fact that someone is an arahant or anagami, so the practitioner must be their own judge.
- The practical test is to observe over weeks or months whether the personality and one's reactions to situations have changed, showing whether a fetter is destroyed, weakened or still present.
Questions in this session
Themes
Where this talk sits on the path
This talk speaks mostly to Arahant.
The path runs from Foundations to Arahant; read at any point along it.
Transcript
Path and fruition in the traditions
The idea that there's a path and a fruition, that's something a lot of different traditional schools talk about. I know, for example, if I'm not mistaken, the Sayadaw school has something similar to a path and fruition, entrance path, entry into the path and fruition of each stage of awakening. And it's not as explicit in the suttas, although I haven't found it, it could be there. A gradual path in the way that someone trains, but the ultimate awakening is arahatship. And so, as I was saying before, there is the example of Sariputta, who was listening to the Buddha while he was giving a discourse on the impersonal nature of feeling, on how feeling arises and how to perceive feeling when it arises from an impersonal standpoint, in the context of dependent origination.
And by listening to him, he then attained arahatship. In the same manner, there's also a man called Bahiya. There's a very short sutta called the Bahiya Sutta in which the Buddha basically gives him a very short understanding of how to have the cessation of suffering in being able to see not-self in everything that arises. He then attained arahatship.
Likewise, Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and his first counsel, needed to attain arahatship. And the understanding is that he reflected on the Buddha's words, meditated and then fell asleep. And before his head hit the pillow is what the understanding is: that he attained arahatship. So there are different circumstances in which one may enter a path. The same goes for stream entry: if you're able to analyze deeply enough, then you can. So, having said that, when you do have an experience like the cessation experience that you probably have experienced, and many others through the twin practice, you notice a change. You notice first of all that the experience itself is quite overwhelming. It creates a lot of energy in the body and in the mind.
And there is a shift in visual perception, in colour perception. I see a lot of things much clearer, for example. But the thing is, you have to be your own judge. You would require a Buddha to be able to tell you for a fact that you are an arahat or an anagami or a sotapanna or whatever it might be. To see over the matter of a few weeks, two months, how the personality has changed, how you respond to situations, and in those responses or those reactions, you are then able to know whether a fetter has been destroyed, weakened or is still present.