In the Buddha's Words - Bhikkhu Bodhi [200]
The Buddha recognized differences in the approaches individuals take to achieving the final goal, and in Text X,3(2) he divides persons into four categories with respect to its attainment. The four are obtained through the permutations of two pairs. He first distinguishes disciples on the basis of the strength of their spiritual faculties. Those with strong faculties reach final Nibbāna in this very life. Those with relatively weak faculties attain final Nibbāna in the next life, and thus presumably expire as nonreturners. The other pair distinguishes disciples by their mode of development. One class takes the “difficult” approach, which uses meditation subjects that generate sharp wisdom and lead directly to disenchantment and dispassion. The other class takes the smoother and more pleasant route leading through the four jhānas. These two types correspond roughly to those who give emphasis to insight and those who give emphasis to serenity.
A short sutta in the Sotāpattisaṃyutta, Text X,3(3), relates the story of Dīghāvu, a youth who took the difficult route emphasizing insight to the stage of nonreturner. Dīghāvu was lying on his deathbed when the Buddha came to him and asked him to train in the four factors of stream-entry. Dīghāvu said that he was already endowed with these factors, indicating thereby that he was a stream-enterer. The Buddha then instructed him to develop “six things that partake of true knowledge.” He evidently heeded the Buddha’s advice, for shortly after he died the Buddha declared him to have expired as a nonreturner. Though it is possible that Dīghāvu had already gained the jhānas and thus did not need to be instructed in their practice, it is also possible that he attained the stage of nonreturner entirely through the power of the deep insight arisen from these six contemplations.
Text X,3(4) makes further distinctions among those who attain arahantship and the stage of nonreturner. Such suttas point to the great variety that can exist even among those at the same spiritual level. It is because he was able to make such distinctions that the Buddha was said to possess perfect understanding of the diversity in the faculties of sentient beings.
Since nonreturners have eradicated the five lower fetters, they are no longer bound to the sensual realm of existence. However, they are still not entirely liberated from the cycle of rebirths but are still bound by the five higher fetters: desire for existence in the form realm, desire for existence in the formless realm, the conceit “I am,” subtle restlessness, and ignorance. The conceit “I am” (asmim̄na) differs from identity view, the view of self (sakkāyadiṭṭhi), to which it is partly akin. The view of self affirms an enduring self existing in relation to the five aggregates, either as identical with them, or as their inner core, or as their owner and master. But the conceit “I am” lacks a clear conceptual content. It lurks at the base of the mind as a vague, shapeless, but imperious sense of the “I” as a concrete reality. Though the view of self is already eliminated at the stage of stream-entry, the conceit “I am” persists in noble disciples even up to the stage of nonreturner.