👈🏼 previous note, 07.02. Can Dhamma Save the World?
The Buddha’s teachings do have an ultimate direction, a single aim, with a path leading only in that direction, and that is to liberate oneself from suffering. That is the ultimate destination, and to get there we’re going to need a map, the Four Noble Truths.
In MN 118 and MN 10 we have teachings that are very clear about the |potential for awakening, as well as in the Caṅkī Sutta. It might get to the point where I just need to list them, because another is, appropriately titled, AN 3.55 Nibbuta Sutta, ‘Nibbāna’.
The objective of Buddhism is to eliminate the suffering caused by the Three Poisons, greed, aversion, and delusion, by training our mind to see reality clearly, and it is possible to achieve this in this lifetime (AN 3.55 Nibbutasutta, ‘Nibbāna’). We do this be strengthening our concentration and using that clarity to investigate reality so that we cease conflating the impermanent with the permanent and suffering with happiness, by becoming awakened at the level of an arahant, who no longer filters reality through those defilements of greed, aversion, and delusions.
It can’t be described beyond that, as far as I know - the best we can do is treat it like a reverse-negative image: we describe it by describing what it isn’t - that is, awakening is the absence of greed, aversion, and delusion. It is the absence of suffering, that is the objective of Buddhism.
Buddha described a series of meaningful benchmarks along the Path from full-blown ignorant worldling through the four stages of awakening to fully awakened arahant, and learning to home in on what is required for the early stages has helped me to access a few small fruits from applying the method the Buddha described, which begets confidence.
Once a practitioner has faith arising from direct experience of the fruits of practice, they are empowered to embark on the Path with confidence, begetting energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom - the five faculties. Without knowing where we’re going, it can be hard to remain confident we can get there, so I find it helpful to check-in sometimes on the teaching that awakening is a real possibility, a genuine aspect of our human potential that is accessible to anyone who wants to make the effort.
Once a practitioner cracks into the four stages of awakening, as a sotāpanna it is said their faith becomes ‘unshakeable’ and they are destined ultimate awakening within the next seven years.
Reading from the Buddha such quantified statements around the subject and experience of awakening makes me a bit wary because elsewhere he talks about the maddening futility of trying to understand the internal mechanisms of kamma. But I remain inspired by the well-described and -trodden paths out of ignorance, and by low-hanging fruit on the path of meditation.
if one is experiencing doubt, it may be worthwhile reflecting on previous meditation progress, and on the teachings about the potential for awakening.
In this section, I would like to elaborate on the Path and stages as I understand them, the Eightfold Path from ignorant worldling through access concentration, and the Four Stages of Awakening up to the arahant, piece by piece in the fashion of a digital garden.
Awakening as Ultimate Service
liberation is for the benefit of many, gods and humans
A considerable source of saddhā would be understanding what Buddha taught about how awakening benefits others.
One place I thought I had found this was where Buddha teaches that the sangha are ‘a supreme field of merit in the world’, which I learnt is metaphor - the laity are able to sow and cultivate a lot of merit by helping to meet the material needs of the monastic sangha. This wasn’t quite the quantum-magic solution I was hoping for.
Are there other disciplines/domains of human thought and spiritual practice where it is understood that awakening is the highest ideal? Apart from Bob Marley. What do the Pragmatic Dharma people think about this?
MN 51 may be support for the argument ordination is the best way to do service by realising awakening for oneself and others, because the fourth person (one who mortifies neither themselves nor others) is one who ordains.
Stream-entry: The first stage of awakening
I can’t say much about this right now, but I have planted another seed in the form of essaying about going against the stream, ‘Out of the Mainstream. Cultivating the path to stream entry is the logical next step in my practice, because upon ‘seeing the dhamma’ one’s faith in the Path becomes ‘unshakeable’. I have also made a short note about this in the 06. Cultivating Saddhā section about pursuing stream entry, and may flesh these out as I develop the stream essay.
Faith is a natural precursor for the path of stream-entry, as understood from the teachings about dhammanusari or saddhanusari, a ‘wisdom follower’ and ‘faith follower’ respectively.
Dhammanusari and Saddhanusari
One becomes a dhammanusari or saddhanusari by bringing the five faculties to an unspecified maturity, and by doing so is called ‘one who has entered the path to stream-entry’, which I might call stream-aspirant for short. A stream-aspirant is no longer technically a puthujana, but also net yet a stream-winner, not yet an ariyasāvaka. It is said that by achieving such a state it is guaranteed that one will become a stream-enterer at least at the time of death.
Learning about the dhammanusari or saddhanusari was a turning point for me and, along with the Uttiya Sutta, the main reason I have been looking into faith ~ however, faith is just one of the faculties that need to cultivated or matured. Mindfulness and concentration are also essential, and the Buddha offers a few seminal suttas for working with thoughts 👉🏻 to support concentration especially.
Once I understood there is no way of discerning whether these faculties are sufficiently matured, I began to understand they are a path, the same as the Path, and as such must be co-developed. As a path, developing the faculties is called sotapatti-maggattha: “the path to stream-entry” So here we have another fork.
Faith plays a central role in dependent liberation as well, although this may not be the best place to just drop this.