Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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tiltbillings
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by tiltbillings »

Monkey Mind wrote:After I posted that, it occurred to me that I already know the answer... Rinpoches....
Yeah, like Steven Seagal.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Monkey Mind »

tiltbillings wrote:
Monkey Mind wrote:After I posted that, it occurred to me that I already know the answer... Rinpoches....
Yeah, like Steven Seagal.
:shrug: You have to admit, there was something particularly enlightened about his performance in "Under Siege".
"As I am, so are others;
as others are, so am I."
Having thus identified self and others,
harm no one nor have them harmed.

Sutta Nipāta 3.710
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Cittasanto
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Cittasanto »

Monkey Mind wrote:After I posted that, it occurred to me that I already know the answer... Rinpoches....
funny I wasn't refering to my root anything but a teacher I met, who just so happend to inspire me greatly, I don't consider him my teacher, rather someone I met.
My root teacher (to use your words) I do not consider to be on the path but deluded.
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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Monkey Mind
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Monkey Mind »

tiltbillings wrote:
Monkey Mind wrote:After I posted that, it occurred to me that I already know the answer... Rinpoches....
Yeah, like Steven Seagal.
Saw this on another board:
http://movies.msn.com/the-wrap/steve-se ... ?GT1=28101
"As I am, so are others;
as others are, so am I."
Having thus identified self and others,
harm no one nor have them harmed.

Sutta Nipāta 3.710
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retrofuturist
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings Monkey Mind,
Monkey Mind wrote:Yeah, I was wondering if the results of this informal poll would be similar or different if asked on the Mahayana forum: "Have you ever met a Bodhisattva?" I suspect that many practitioners believe their root teachers or Dharma masters to be fully enlightened. This is not a criticism, just an observation that on this side of the fence, people seem to be a lot more conservative about making such claims.
At one end of the spectrum you've got a devotional "guru" mentality, and on the other end you've got a "kalyana-mitta" (spiritual friend) mentality when it comes to those we take as teachers. Whilst Theravada isn't completely at one or the other (and is most realistically represented by a range, rather than an actual point) there's certainly a greater relative focus on kalyana-mitta with respect to the Mahayana, and even moreso with respect to Vajrayana. Sometimes in cross-tradition discussions this aspect is overlooked and some people supplant structures from one tradition, and are surprised (and sometimes even offended) when they find the hierarchial structures they are familiar with in their tradition or country, not being strictly adhered to, or acknowledged by other practitioners elsewhere.

Personally, the only people and things I'm inclined to "elevate", are the Buddha, the Dhamma and the noble Sangha (i.e. the Triple Gem). I find that to be the safest and most reliable approach.

Metta,
Retro. :)
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Ben
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Ben »

retrofuturist wrote:Personally, the only people and things I'm inclined to "elevate", are the Buddha, the Dhamma and the noble Sangha (i.e. the Triple Gem). I find that to be the safest and most reliable approach.
Well said, Retro.
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Tex
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Tex »

I suspect it doesn't matter.

I'm sure the Buddha had his reasons for requiring that monks not disclose attainments to the laity, and I also take that to indicate that I, as a layman, should refrain from speculating on others' attainments.

:anjali:
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Dan74
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Dan74 »

When I first met my teacher I thought she might've been enlightened. I am sure if I told her now she'd laugh her head off!

But what she did have is a quality of clarity and presence I had not encountered before. And like others have said what yardstick have we got to measure the degree of other people's enlightenment except for some standards in the scriptures that we may not be in the position to verify. So we might tend to think the most enlightened person we know is an arahat.

If that person is indeed close to arahatship, then placing your trust in him or her and worshiping them as a living embodiment of the ideal one is striving toward may actually be really helpful for practice (e.g. guru devotion).

(I don't know why I am the de facto Vajrayana advocate on this forum. Vajrayana seems to be the favourite whipping boy of Buddhist schools here and no one else seems to want to stand up for it.)
_/|\_
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by jcsuperstar »

how would i even know?
most people dont even have a firm grasp over the nature of their own mind from moment to moment how can they possibly be expected to know the quality of another's?
Last edited by jcsuperstar on Wed Apr 14, 2010 5:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ben
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Ben »

Dan74 wrote:If that person is indeed close to arahatship, then placing your trust in him or her and worshiping them as a living embodiment of the ideal one is striving toward may actually be really helpful for practice (e.g. guru devotion).
I'll have to disagree with you on that one Dan.
kind regards

Ben
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

e: [email protected]..
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BlackBird
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by BlackBird »

I think what I'm about to say is only partially on topic, so I apologise if isn't agreeable to you.

I think this whole "arahant" thing can be a source of doubt to many practitioners:


"They say Bhante X is an arahant. Is he really? What about when he did Y. Bhante A has been in the robes for 40 years and he's not an arahant, we know that for sure... Is there any arahants left at all? There are so many doubts! Can we still get enlightened? Maybe... Probably not. Oh, well why is that? Mustn't have enough parami...All the arahants are gone! What am I going to do? Well what's the point if I can't get enlightened, maybe I'll just keep the 5 precepts and meditate every so often and that will be okay!"


But this is just papanca, this is the mind wandering off and proliferating about unnecessary things. We know that life is Dukkha, that's self evident, we know that our suffering is caused by craving, that too we can see. So it must therefore follow that if these first two of the Four Noble Truths can be experienced by all humans, even on the superficial and conceptual level of our understanding, then the cessation of Dukkha (Nibbana) must be possible, and the way to reach it must also be possible.

Ajahn Jayasaro puts it like this:
The Buddha teaches us, that we don't really know what's what, but we do have the innate capacity to know what's what. The faith and the confidence that we have in the Buddha and his enlightenment is one and the same thing as our faith and confidence in our capacity to know what's what. This is because the Buddha was enlightened as a human being, and through his enlightenment he demonstrated and proved the capacity of human beings for enlightenment. We can say he became enlightened as a 'representative' of the human race, as it were. If we have faith in the Buddha's enlightenment, then we also by implication have faith in the human capacity for enlightenment. Therefore the next logical step is that we have faith in our own capacity for enlightenment. So faith in the Buddha means faith in ourselves, faith in our capacity to realize the truth of things. Not only can we realize the truth of things, but we should.
- Transcribed from 'Anatta and the sense of Self' - Ajahn Jayasaro, England (2005) emphasis partially mine.

So really we should put a side all of the questions about attainability, and who's got it and who doesn't and why not etc. Putting all the proliferations a side we should come to see things as they really are. The Buddha encourages us to put the Dhamma to the test, but so often people can't find an Arahant in their back yard and so they give up striving saying: "It's impossible". In fact, finding an ariyan isn't the point, what are you going to do when you find one anyway? You're going to practice the Dhamma. As Venerable Pesala pointed out a while back, the only person who can't reach nibbana is the lazy person.

metta
Jack
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Moggalana »

:goodpost:
Let it come. Let it be. Let it go.
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by PeterB »

Thai_Theravada wrote:Do you think you ever met Arahant?, and if you think you do.
Let's share your experience.

:smile:
I think that in the context of a Theravada forum this is a perfectly proper question to ask.
The fact that there may not be a clear cut answer, or hesitation at answering at all, not withstanding.
Even if the ulimate usefulfulness of the question is to turn us back to our practice, in never imo hurts to be reminded what is possible.
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by jcsuperstar »

PeterB wrote:
Thai_Theravada wrote:Do you think you ever met Arahant?, and if you think you do.
Let's share your experience.

:smile:
I think that in the context of a Theravada forum this is a perfectly proper question to ask.
The fact that there may not be a clear cut answer, or hesitation at answering at all, not withstanding.
Even if the ulimate usefulfulness of the question is to turn us back to our practice, in never imo hurts to be reminded what is possible.
of course it's a valid question because at some level it is really asking us if this practice we are involved with actually has the promised result, the only problem with the question IMO is there's no real way to answer it unless one is an arahant.
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the mountain may be heavy in and of itself, but if you're not trying to carry it it's not heavy to you- Ajaan Suwat
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Cittasanto
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Re: Do you think you ever met Arahant?

Post by Cittasanto »

jcsuperstar wrote:the only problem with the question IMO is there's no real way to answer it unless one is an arahant.
Hi JC,
I disagree, the subtect line is "do you think you ever met Arahant?" not 'are there arahants' so it is quite open to belief in the existence or a person being thought of as enlightened.

sure I do agree we don't know if who we think or believe to be an Arahant, is actually one, but it isn't if they actually are or aren't that is being asked.
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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