M B:
As a friend recently wrote to me, regarding a discussion we were having along these lines, not myself, "public claims to enlightenment can come accross as arrogant and raise red flags just as much as they may inspire or uplift others."
Indeed...and yet, on an internet forum such as this, there is very little personal profit or status that can come from such claims, which might change the calculation for whether or not it is skillful to make such claims.
You're only going to ever prove your attainment by touching the heart of someone else,
Or by guiding someone to the same attainment...
Reasons I can think of for using Pali titles:
* Indicating a linked set of changes to personality and experience, rather then enumerating them
* Trying to relate one's experience to the suttas, so as to benefit from the suttas' advice which is specific to various stages of enlightenment
* Treating the stages of enlightenment as real and attainable so as to support a practice aimed at attaining them
* Trying to link other attainments (e.g. jhanas) to what the suttas say in order to better understand what they are and what to do with them
I think there are additional complications involved in making public (non-internet) claims about one's meditative attainments, and so there can be reasons not to do it during the public question-and-answer period at the local sangha and yet to do it here.
In general, I suspect my opinion about the value of making those claims here will pretty much echo everyone else's here: if people describe their attainments explicitly, that can be a guide for others who are interested in attaining those things, and the requirement for "explicit description" keeps people clear on what precisely is involved in those attainments, and what isn't. Linking attainments to words for them (such as Pali names, or names from other traditions) is merely convenient.
I took up a formal meditation practice after reading such claims (in MCTB ), because precise and detailed claims about what is possible were good motivation for me, whereas vague claims would not have convinced me that meditation was likely to lead to anything useful...though claims made for meditation probably do not influence the effects of meditation, they influence the assessment that I made of the sort of effects that were likely.