36. Levels of Awakening

As we’ve noted, the triple training in heightened virtue, heightened mind (concentration), and heightened discernment lists the factors of the path in the order in which they’re mastered. Mastery occurs on the different levels of awakening.

Before we look at the differences among these levels, it’s good to look at what they have in common. All awakening experiences center on an experience of the unfabricated: deathless, unbinding (Mv 1.23.5; MN 1; MN 48), outside of space and time. All are attained by bringing the four determinations for discernment, truth, relinquishment, and calm to bear on the committed practice of the five faculties, and then on the reflection that follows the Buddha’s five-step program of seeing the origination, the passing away, the allure, the drawbacks, and the escape from those same faculties (SN 48:3­–4).

Where they differ is in the quality of each individual meditator’s powers of reflection on having the experience of the deathless. This is why the Buddha stressed the need for reflection from the very beginning of the path. The more practice you gain in reflection, the more likely you’ll be to reflect skillfully, in an all-around way, on the experience of the deathless when it occurs. As AN 9:36 notes, if you don’t detect the passion and delight you feel for the deathless or for the discernment that provided the opening to that dimension, your awakening won’t be total. Only if, on reflection, you can abandon that passion, too, will your awakening—and your release—be complete.

The discourses illustrate this point with a simile: Those who don’t attain full awakening on experiencing the deathless are like a person who stands by a well and sees that there’s water in the well, but hasn’t plunged into it. This is why they are said to have gained the Dhamma eye. Those who reach full awakening are like a person who has taken the plunge (SN 12:68; Sn 2:1).

What the Dhamma eye sees is often expressed as the realization, “Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation” (SN 56:11). This insight into causality occurs naturally and justifiably only to a mind that has seen what isn’t subject to origination and is not subject to cessation.

The Canon, in its standard discussion of the levels of awakening, lists four, distinguishing them in terms of the fetters that are cut at each level and in terms of their long-term consequences: the personal qualities of those who have attained each level, and the number of rebirths remaining to them.

MN 118 lists those who have achieved these four levels in descending order, starting with the fully awakened students of the Buddha, called arahants, who have cut through ten fetters and will never be reborn again.

Missing from this description are two important details. One, the fact that stream-enterers, in addition to being freed from rebirth on any level lower than the human, will be reborn at most seven more times (AN 3:88; Sn 2:1).

Two, this description doesn’t identify which fetters are cut at which level. This information can be gleaned from the list of fetters in AN 10:13:

Thus, stream-enterers have cut through the fetters of self-identification views, doubt, and grasping at habits & practices. These can be explained as follows:

• The fetter of self-identification views would be any view that identifies one’s self—“what I am”—

Because the aggregates don’t exist in the experience of the deathless, even though there is a consciousness that does not partake of any of the six senses (MN 49), stream-enterers see no reason to identify themselves as “I am this” in connection with any of the aggregates.

SN 22:89 points out that when the fetter of self-identification views has been cut, one no longer believes “I am this” in any way connected to the aggregates, but as long as one still hasn’t cut the higher fetter of conceit, there is still a lingering sense of “I am” around those aggregates. It illustrates this point with a simile: When you’ve washed a cloth in a cleaning agent, it’s clean and spotless, but it still has a lingering scent of the cleaning agent around it.

• The fetter of doubt is doubt in the fact that the Buddha is awakened, the Dhamma is well-taught, or that the Saṅgha of the Buddha’s noble disciples has practiced well. Stream-enterers, in seeing the deathless and realizing that it was attained through the path taught by the Buddha, have verified confidence that these things are, in fact, true.

• The fetter of grasping at habits & practices can be explained in two ways: (1) any sense that awakening can be attained simply through following rules; and (2) any sense of identity built around one’s habits and practices. MN 78 notes that those who have gone beyond this fetter are virtuous but not “made of virtue.” In other words, they don’t build any sense of conceit around their virtue, exalting themselves or disparaging others. As SN 55:26 notes:

What the noble ones find appealing in these virtues is that the precepts that are the rudiments of the holy life—against killing, stealing, illicit sex, lying, and taking intoxicants—are never intentionally broken, but at the same time are not grasped at: Stream-enterers observe them, not because of pride, but from having seen that their own unskillful actions were what prevented any previous experience of the deathless, so they wouldn’t want to delay their further awakening by behaving in unskillful ways ever again.

Those are the fetters that stream-enterers have cut. As AN 3:87 notes, such people are fully accomplished in virtue, but only moderately accomplished in concentration and discernment. SN 55:5 adds that the stream itself is equal to the noble eightfold path, which includes the factors covering discernment and concentration along with those covering virtue. This means that stream-enterers have had some experience of jhāna and in seeing things in terms of right view, simply that they haven’t mastered these factors.

As the Canon notes in many places, it’s when you become a stream-enterer that you are now in training. Having gained the perspective that comes from experiencing the deathless, your sense of which pleasures are worth the effort and which ones are not worth the effort is informed by that experience. You may not yet be consummate in the discernment that comes from full mastery of the skills appropriate to the four noble truths, but you are consummate in view.

The fourth fetter is sensual passion. This, as we’ve noted before, would be any passion for sensual fantasies and plans.

The fifth fetter is ill will. Because ill will comes from thwarted sensuality, these two fetters are cut together.

These are the two extra fetters cut by non-returners. As AN 3:87 notes, such people are fully accomplished in virtue, fully accomplished in concentration, and moderately accomplished in discernment.

The sixth fetter is passion for form: the pleasures of the four jhānas.

The seventh fetter is passion for what is formless: the subtle pleasure of the equanimity in the formless states of concentration.

The eighth fetter is conceit, the lingering sense of “I am.” The Canon notes that those who have abandoned this fetter may still use the words “I” and “mine” in their conversation, but they don’t make any assumptions based on those words (SN 1:25).

The ninth fetter is restlessness—any “stirring up” of the mind—and the tenth is ignorance. As we’ve already noted, the word ignorance—avijjā—can also mean lack of skill. Ignorance on this level is ended when you’ve mastered all the skills required by the duties of the four noble truths.

These are the five higher fetters abandoned on the attainment of arahantship. They are extremely subtle, a point well-illustrated by the following exchange:

As MN 118 notes, arahants have cut the fetter of becoming. As you may remember from the introductory explanation of the four noble truths, there are three levels of becoming: on the level of sensuality, form, and formlessness. Similarly, three of the ten fetters are types of passion corresponding to the same three levels: Sensual passion is cut on the level of non-return; passion for form and for formlessness, on the level of arahantship. That covers all possible forms of passion that could lead to further becoming. That’s why, when arahants have cut these three fetters, there’s no possibility for them ever to be reborn again.

Such people are said to be asekha, beyond training. As far as the ending of suffering and stress is concerned, the Buddha has nothing more to teach them. At the same time, they have no more need for conviction in the Buddha’s awakening or in the path leading there, because—having followed that path with commitment and reflection—they’ve gained direct knowledge of the deathless for themselves.

Totally free of passion, arahants dwell with unrestricted awareness (AN 10:81). After their awakening, they return to the six senses, but with a sense of being disjoined from them (MN 140). They experience the results of old kamma, they practice mindfulness, concentration, and discernment, but again, the objects of their awareness make no inroads on the mind (MN 107; SN 22:122; SN 47:4). That’s because, being free from passion, they no longer take these things in by trying to feed on them.

The Canon illustrates this point with a vivid simile:

Arahants still have intentions and engage in purposeful actions, but because their actions are done without greed, aversion, or delusion, they bear no karmic fruit. The Buddha illustrates this point with the simile of a good seed that has been destroyed:

Arahants will experience death simply as “all this will grow cold right here”—“all,” here, standing for the six sense media (SN 35:23; Iti 49). Because the consciousness of awakening is not known through the six senses (MN 49), that consciousness will not be affected when the six senses grow cold. In the present life, arahants can’t be pinned down as to what they are, and after death they can’t be described as existing, not existing, both, neither, or in any other way (SN 22:85–86). Because they are free of the desires and passions that define people as beings, they are undefined and immeasurable, “like the great ocean” (MN 72).