The Path to Arahantship

　　The path to arahantship takes the fruition on nonreturning as its basis. In other words, those who are to become arahants gather all eight factors of the noble path and bring them to bear as before on physical and mental phenomena, but now they deal with a level of these phenomena more subtle than before, converged into a single point. Once they have gathered the factors of the path at the level of physical and mental phenomena, they make a focused examination, back and forth, using the power of their discernment, bringing this subtler level of physical and mental phenomena into a single point as stress, the cause of stress, the path, and disbanding, all four Noble Truths gathered into one. They focus on seeing how stress is one with the cause of stress, how the cause of stress is one with the path, how the path is one with the disbanding of stress. Once they have seen things rightly in this way, they make an investigation in terms of the three characteristics:

　　namarupam aniccam,

　　namarupam dukkham,

　　namarupam anatta:

　　"Physical and mental phenomena are inconstant, physical and mental phenomena are stressful, physical and mental phenomena are not-self." To investigate in this way is termed the path to arahantship.

　　Once clear insight arises right at the heart, physical and mental phenomena disband simultaneously with Right View, and in that instant one reaches the ultimate quality — the Unconditioned — which knows no arising or passing away. The ten fetters are shattered without leaving a trace. Starting with the sixth fetter, these are:

　　6. Passion for form (rupa-raga): attachment to the sense of form; contentment, for example, with the objects that can act as the basis of rupa jhana.

　　7. Passion for formless phenomena (arupa-raga): attachment to non-physical phenomena: contentment, for example, with feelings and moods of pleasure and well-being that one has previously experienced.

　　8. Conceit (mana): construing oneself to be this or that. Arahants have put such assumptions aside. (They don”t assume themselves).

　　9. Restlessness (uddhacca): obsessive thinking.

　　10. Unawareness (avijja): delusion, dullness, ignorance, immersed in physical and mental phenomena.

　　All ten of these fetters have been dispersed from the heart of an arahant.

　　To make a focused investigation using one”s discernment, seeing the disbanding and dissolution of physical and mental phenomena in the same terms as all fashioned things, i.e.,

　　sabbe sankhara anicca,

　　sabbe sankhara dukkha,

　　sabbe dhamma anatta:

　　"All fashionings (physical and mental phenomena) are inconstant, all fashionings are stressful, all qualities (physical and mental qualities) are not-self;" to focus on these things as the basic danger in all three levels of existence; to see the three levels of existence as masses of burning embers, incinerating all those who are engrossed in them; to bring virtue, concentration, and discernment to bear in this way exclusively on physical and mental phenomena: This is the path to arahantship. And at that very moment physical and mental phenomena disband along with the noble path — i.e., Right View — and the ten fetters are shattered: This is the fruition of arahantship.

　　The tasks of virtue, concentration, and discernment are completed, the teachings of the Lord Buddha fulfilled. There is no longer any attachment to the paths or their fruitions, nor is there any attachment to the Unconditioned. All that remains is what is there on its own: disbanding. That is to say, mental states involved with the five aggregates have disbanded; mental states involved with virtue, concentration, and discernment have disbanded — because when virtue, concentration, and discernment converge on the level of physical and mental phenomena the first ti…

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