In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [121]
A second line of development is the acquisition of supernormal knowledge. The Buddha frequently refers to a set of six types, which come to be called the six kinds of direct knowledge (chaḷabhiññā). The last of these, the knowledge of the destruction of the taints, is “supramundane” or world-transcending and thus marks the culmination of the third line of development. But the other five are all mundane, products of the extraordinarily powerful mental concentration achieved in the fourth jhāna: the supernormal powers, the divine ear, the ability to read the minds of others, the recollection of past lives, and the knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings (see Text VIII,4).
The jhānas and the formless attainments by themselves do not issue in enlightenment and liberation. Though lofty and peaceful, they can only silence the defilements that sustain the round of rebirths but cannot eradicate them. To uproot the defilements at the most fundamental level, and thereby arrive at enlightenment and liberation, the meditative process must be directed to a third line of development. This is the contemplation of “things as they really are,” which results in increasingly deeper insights into the nature of existence and culminates in the final goal, the attainment of arahantship.
This line of development is the one the Buddha pursues in the passage on the gradual training. He prefaces it with descriptions of two of the direct knowledges, the recollection of past lives and the knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings. The three together figured prominently in the Buddha’s own enlightenment—as we saw in Text II,3(2)—and are collectively called the three true knowledges (tevijjā). Although the first two are not essential to the realization of arahantship, the Buddha probably includes them here because they reveal the truly vast and profound dimensions of suffering in saṃsāra, thereby preparing the mind for the penetration of the Four Noble Truths by which that suffering is diagnosed and surmounted.
The passage on the gradual training does not explicitly show the process of contemplation by which the meditator develops insight. The whole process is only implied by the mention of its final fruit, called the knowledge of the destruction of the taints (āsavakkhayañāṇa). The āsavas or taints are a classification of defilements considered in their role of sustaining the forward movement of the process of birth and death. The commentaries derive the word from a root su meaning “to flow.” Scholars differ as to whether the flow implied by the prefix ā is inward or outward; hence some have rendered it as “influxes” or “influences,” others as “outflows” or “effluents.” A stock passage in the suttas indicates the term’s real significance independently of etymology when it describes the āsavas as states “that defile, bring renewal of existence, give trouble, ripen in suffering, and lead to future birth, aging, and death” (MN 36.47; I 250). Thus other translators, bypassing the literal meaning, have rendered it “cankers,” “corruptions,” or “taints.” The three taints mentioned in the Nikāyas are respectively synonyms for craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance. When the disciple’s mind is liberated from the taints by the completion of the path of arahantship, he reviews his newly won freedom and roars his lion’s roar: “Birth is destroyed, the spiritual life has been lived, what had to be done has been done; there is no more coming back to any state of being.”
VII. THE PATH TO LIBERATION
1. WHY DOES ONE ENTER THE PATH?
(1) The Arrow of Birth, Aging, and Death
1. Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Park.
2. Then, while the Venerable Māluṅkyāputta was alone in meditation, the following thought arose in his mind:
“These speculative views have been left undeclared by the Blessed One, set aside and rejected