THE GRADUAL TRAINING

In the Majjhima Nikāya the Buddha often expounds the practice of the path as a gradual training (anupubbasikkhā), which unfolds in stages from the first step to the final goal. This gradual training is a finer subdivision of the threefold division of the path into virtue, concentration, and wisdom. Invariably in the suttas the sequence on the gradual training is shown to start with the going forth into homelessness and the adoption of the lifestyle of a bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk. This immediately calls attention to the importance of the monastic life in the Buddha's Dispensation. In principle the entire practice of the Noble Eightfold Path is open to people from any mode of life, monastic or lay, and the Buddha confirms that many among his lay followers were accomplished in the Dhamma and had attained the first three of the four supramundane stages (MN 68.18-23; MN 73.9-22; the Theravādin position is that lay followers can also attain the fourth stage, arahantship, but having done so they immediately seek the going forth or pass away). However, the fact remains that the household life inevitably tends to impede the singlehearted quest for deliverance by fostering a multitude of worldly concerns and personal attachments. Hence the Buddha himself went forth into homelessness as the preliminary step in his own noble quest, and after his enlightenment he established the Sangha, the order of bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs, as the resort for those who wish to devote themselves fully to the practice of his teaching undeflected by the cares of household life.

The main paradigm for the gradual training found in the Majjhima Nikāya is that laid out in MN 27 and MN 51; alternative versions are found at MN 38, MN 39, MN 53, MN 107, and MN 125, and some of the more important variations will be briefly noted. The sequence opens with the appearance of a Tathāgata in the world and his exposition of the Dhamma, hearing which the disciple acquires faith and follows the Teacher into homelessness. Having gone forth, he undertakes and observes the rules of discipline that promote the purification of conduct and livelihood. The next three steps - contentment, restraint of the sense faculties, and mindfulness and full awareness - are intended to internalise the process of purification and thereby bridge the transition from virtue to concentration. Alternative versions (MN 39, MN 53, MN 107, MN 125) insert two additional steps here, moderation in eating and devotion to wakefulness.

The direct training in concentration comes to prominence in the section on the abandonment of the five hindrances. The five hindrances - sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt - are the primary obstacles to meditative development and their removal is therefore essential for the mind to be brought to a state of calm and unification. In the sequence on the gradual training the overcoming of the hindrances is treated only schematically; other parts of the Canon provide more practical instruction, amplified still more in the commentaries. The passage on the hindrances is graced in MN 39 by a series of similes illustrating the contrast between the bondage imposed by the hindrances and the joyful sense of freedom that is won when they are abandoned.

The next stage in the sequence describes the attainment of the jhānas, profound states of concentration in which the mind becomes fully absorbed in its object. The Buddha enumerates four jhānas, named simply after their numerical position in the series, each more refined and elevated than its predecessor. The jhānas are always described by the same formulas, which in several suttas (MN 39, MN 77, MN 119) are augmented by similes of great beauty. Although in the Theravāda tradition the jhānas are not regarded as indispensable to the attainment of enlightenment, the Buddha invariably includes them in the full gradual training because of the contribution they make to the intrinsic perfection of the path and because the deep concentration they induce provides a solid base for the cultivation of insight. While still mundane the jhānas are the "footsteps of the Tathāgata" (MN 27.19-22) and foretokens of the bliss of Nibbāna that lies at the training's end.

From the fourth jhāna three alternative lines of further development become possible. In a number of passages outside the sequence on the gradual training (MN 8, MN 25, MN 26, MN 66, etc.) the Buddha mentions four meditative states that continue the mental unification established by the jhānas. These states, described as "the liberations that are peaceful and immaterial," are, like the jhānas, also mundane. Distinguished from the jhānas by their transcendence of the subtle mental image that forms the object in the jhānas, they are named after their own exalted objects: the base of infinite space, the base of infinite consciousness, the base of nothingness, and the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. In the Pali commentaries these states came to be called the immaterial or formless jhānas (arūpajjhāna).

A second line of development disclosed by the suttas is the acquisition of supernormal knowledge. The Buddha frequently mentions six types as a group, which come to be called the six kinds of direct knowledge (chaḷabhiñña; the expression does not occur in the Majjhima). The last of these, the knowledge of the destruction of the taints, is supramundane and thus properly belongs to the third line of development. But the other five are all mundane, products of the extraordinarily powerful degree of 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 divine eye (MN 6, MN 73, MN 77, MN 108).

The jhānas and the mundane types of direct knowledge by themselves do not issue in enlightenment and liberation. As lofty and peaceful as these attainments are, they can only suppress the defilements that sustain the round of rebirths but cannot eradicate them. To uproot the defilements at the most fundamental level, and thereby yield the fruits of enlightenment and deliverance, the meditative process must be redirected along a third line of development, one which does not necessarily presuppose the former two. This is the contemplation of "things as they actually 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 sequence on the gradual training, though he precedes it by descriptions of two of the direct knowledges, the recollection of past lives and the divine eye. The three together, which figured prominently in the Buddha's own enlightenment (MN 4.27-30), are collectively called the three true knowledges (tevijja). Although the first two among these are not essential to the realisation of arahantship, we may assume that the Buddha includes them here because they reveal the truly vast and profound dimensions of suffering in samsāra and thereby prepare the mind for the penetration of the Four Noble Truths, in which that suffering is diagnosed and surmounted.

The process of contemplation by which the meditator develops insight is not explicitly shown as such in the sequence on the gradual training. It is only implied by the exhibiting of its final fruit, here called the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. The āsavas or taints are a classification of defilements considered in their role of sustaining the samsāric round. The commentaries derive the word from a root $s u$ meaning "to flow." Scholars differ as to whether the flow implied by the prefix $\bar{a}$ 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 $\bar{a} s a v a s$ as states "that defile, bring renewal of being, give trouble, ripen in suffering, and lead to future birth, ageing, and death" (MN 36.47, etc.). Thus other translators, bypassing the literal meaning, have rendered it "cankers," "corruptions," or "taints," the latter being the choice of Ven. Nānamoli. The three taints mentioned in the suttas are virtual synonyms for craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and the ignorance that appears at the head of the formula for dependent origination. When the disciple's mind has been 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 holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being."