Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 11/17/12 2:00 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/17/12 2:00 PM

Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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What do you think technical/MCTB 4th path maps on to in the Theravada system? Do you think their 2nd path (sakadagami) is our 4th path? Or do people think it's pointless to try to use the 10-fetters stuff at all?
Jason , modified 11 Years ago at 11/17/12 4:11 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/17/12 4:11 PM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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I have no clue, but it's a good question. I don't understand though how one set of paths could overlay another the way you suggest. The experience of attaining a path and review is so distinct and uncontrollable... I don't see how a model could just overlook it. If the classical map is talking about different attainments, my guess would be they're in the context of a different practice and different "path" altogether.

One purely speculative idea occurs to me: in a more traditional practice there would be a LOT more emphasis on Sila, and more community and cultural support for behaving in a fetter-free fashion. I've noticed with my own practice that behavioral change has become a lot easier. If I spend some time just focusing on something about my personality, it's usually pretty malleable. So, perhaps... we're not experiencing something closer to the fetter model because we're not "optimising" for it.
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Shashank Dixit, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 12:14 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 12:14 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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I think this will be best answered by experienced theravada monks who are into this exclusively day and night.
I don't think 10 fetter stuff is pointless..if there is experience of ill-will/lust , then suffering continues to arise
and in this way the fetter model is a great pointer to what is left to be done.

For instance , if you see a hot fellow of the opposite sex and if your heart races , this is clearly suffering
arising out of lust.
An Eternal Now, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 2:46 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 2:46 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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I think Daniel's stance on mctb fourth path is that it relates well with fetter model sotapanna in terms of eliminating first three fetters but its hard to relate to anything more than the first three fetters. So I suspect it is fetter model stream entry.
M N, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 3:57 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 3:55 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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I'm on Jason's speculation line.

Also, since the precepts (in relation to the limited action part of the theravada model) are just determinations, and determinations get stronger with the path progression, it's quite possible that, if some has the precepts, after some paths they just can't happen to do somehitng that they so strongly formally resolved not to.
Similar thing might happen with bad emotions, just in this case, I'm talking of unintentional magick: the fact that you think that you can't experience some things might be enought to prevent thoose things from arising...

By the way, It also seems to me that many of the fetters are not so well defined, wich makes me think that some of them might have been thought as approximations of a trend of change, rather than an absolute absence of something... On a similar line of thinking, a very kind person might say "I never get angry", and with that meaning not that he can't experience anger, just that it's a very very rare occurrence.

However, I think that if we stick with the traditional view, 4th path doesn't even math stream entry; if we consider only the fetters, sakadagami seems to me to be the best match.
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Nikolai , modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 4:45 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 4:42 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Mario Nistri:
I'm on Jason's speculation line.

Also, since the precepts (in relation to the limited action part of the theravada model) are just determinations, and determinations get stronger with the path progression, it's quite possible that, if some has the precepts, after some paths they just can't happen to do somehitng that they so strongly formally resolved not to.
Similar thing might happen with bad emotions, just in this case, I'm talking of unintentional magick: the fact that you think that you can't experience some things might be enought to prevent thoose things from arising...

By the way, It also seems to me that many of the fetters are not so well defined, wich makes me think that some of them might have been thought as approximations of a trend of change, rather than an absolute absence of something... On a similar line of thinking, a very kind person might say "I never get angry", and with that meaning not that he can't experience anger, just that it's a very very rare occurrence.

However, I think that if we stick with the traditional view, 4th path doesn't even math stream entry; if we consider only the fetters, sakadagami seems to me to be the best match.


And then you get further significant game changing baseline shifts where one has to reconsider previously held definitions of 'craving' and 'aversion', the subtly of fabrication, the notion of 'fabrication' itself, the notion of 'attenuated' as well. How attenuated? What does 50% play out like? Does 'anger' still arise in some muted form but not get expressed in anyway as Dipa Ma claimed anagami to be like? Or is it completely absent in any manifestation, muted, shadow or whatever?

It's all up for grabs. Though I will say you give less of a shit where you are the further you go down the track till it seems meaningless to debate and fuss over it and how it is namarupally conceptualised, at least thus it has been so far for myself.
M N, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 5:08 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 5:08 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Forgot to mention that I have no clue about post 4th path shift, so I was just thinking without them...
An Eternal Now, modified 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 2:00 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/18/12 1:57 PM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Mario Nistri:
Iand with that meaning not that he can't experience anger, just that it's a very very rare occurrence.
Certainly not the way that it is presented in the suttas though... it is uprooting the latent tendencies so that it is 'made like a stump' with no possibility of re-growth or re-emergence any time in the future. Such latent tendencies or fetters are progressively terminated through the four (fetter) paths. Wrote something on this some time back on the suttic perspective:

...Furthermore, in MN 64, the Buddha denounced the idea that enlightenment could be a temporary state by using the example of a toddler: “Malunkhyaputta, to whom do you know me preaching, the lower bonds of the sensual world in this manner. Wouldn’t the ascetics of other sects find fault with this foolish example. To a toddler, who moves about with difficulty, there is not even a self. How could a view arise about a self?”

In other words, if you say that enlightenment is simply a temporary state – without a sense of self, or without afflictions, or without thoughts, how is this any different from a baby? The baby would have been the most enlightened person in the world if this were the case, but it is not true.

The Buddha later goes on to say, “Ananda, the learned noble disciple who has seen noble ones, and Great Men, clever in their Teaching and trained in their Teaching abides with a mind not overcome with the view of a self. He knows the escape from the arisen view of a self, as it really is. His view of the self, fades together with the latent tendencies.”

In other words, it is not only the temporary fading away of the sense of self, but that the “latent tendencies that give rise to the sense of self” is uprooted permanently, never to allow the sense of self to arise again. Or in the words of the Buddha, it is “destroyed at the root, made like a palmyra stump, deprived of the conditions of development, not destined for future arising.” The Buddha explains that the removal of “fetters” is not merely the disappearance or absence of afflictions like ill will and so on. Fetter is defined by Buddha as such, "An untaught ordinary man who disregards noble ones … lives with his heart possessed and enslaved by the embodiment view, by uncertainty, by misapprehension of virtue and duty, by lust for sensuality, and by ill will, and he does not see how to escape from them when they arise; these, when they are habitual and remain uneradicated in him, are called the more immediate fetters." Therefore, fetter does not simply mean sense of self, ill will, desire, etc as manifested, but it is that it becomes “habitual” as a latent tendency in him – and such latent tendencies, though not manifested in infants, are present even in infants as a karmic potential waiting to ripen in future. This is why a baby, despite not having lust or even a sense of self, nonetheless cannot be said to be free from fetters.

The uprooting and permanent elimination of craving, aggression and delusion is the purpose of the dharma, and there are four progressive stages from stream entry to the state of an arahant where these afflictions are irreversibly removed by the uprooting of latent tendencies through real wisdom. When you cut off the leaves, it will still grow back, but when you uproot the plant from its roots, there is no possibility for future growth again. Likewise, afflictions and suffering may be temporarily suppressed in peak experiences or states of samadhi/absorption, but it is through awakening that they are burnt away from its foundations permanently...
M N, modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 1:02 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 1:02 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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I guess you are right...
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Ian And, modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 9:28 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 9:11 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Nikolai .:

It's all up for grabs. Though I will say you give less of a shit where you are the further you go down the track till it seems meaningless to debate and fuss over it and how it is namarupally conceptualised, at least thus it has been so far for myself.

Two thumbs up!!

In addition (or perhaps in conjunction), people's perception about such questions naturally changes over time. Especially once they are able to extract themselves from "religious conditioning" (philosophical bias, prejudice and dogmatic conditioning) and start paying attention only to their own first hand experience and common sense.


The uprooting and permanent elimination of craving, aggression and delusion is the purpose of the dharma, and there are four progressive stages from stream entry to the state of an arahant where these afflictions are irreversibly removed by the uprooting of latent tendencies through real wisdom. When you cut off the leaves, it will still grow back, but when you uproot the plant from its roots, there is no possibility for future growth again. Likewise, afflictions and suffering may be temporarily suppressed in peak experiences or states of samadhi/absorption, but it is through awakening that they are burnt away from its foundations permanently..
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 10:29 AM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 10:29 AM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

Posts: 487 Join Date: 1/23/12 Recent Posts
Nikolai .:
It's all up for grabs. Though I will say you give less of a shit where you are the further you go down the track till it seems meaningless to debate and fuss over it and how it is namarupally conceptualised, at least thus it has been so far for myself.


Hmmm. I wonder if that's true. I don't doubt that you care less about it, of course. But Kenneth still seems interested in mapping things at the higher levels. I know Daniel is still interested in mapping stuff. It could be that some personalities are more intrinsically interested in that stuff, and then some other personalities are only interested in it under certain circumstances, and some aren't interested in it at all. Maybe the degree to which one cares about mapping is contingent upon the particular body-mind in which the awakening is taking place.

Anyway, interesting stuff.
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Nikolai , modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 1:22 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 1:21 PM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

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Fitter Stoke:
Nikolai .:
It's all up for grabs. Though I will say you give less of a shit where you are the further you go down the track till it seems meaningless to debate and fuss over it and how it is namarupally conceptualised, at least thus it has been so far for myself.


Hmmm. I wonder if that's true.


We may all be at different places.

Though the notion was about debating and fussing. Do you see Kenneth doing much of that these days? Does Daniel? Best way is to find out for yourself, which no doubt you are aiming to do.
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Fitter Stoke, modified 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 2:22 PM
Created 11 Years ago at 11/19/12 2:22 PM

RE: Matching the MCTB paths up to the Theravada paths

Posts: 487 Join Date: 1/23/12 Recent Posts
Nikolai .:
Fitter Stoke:
Nikolai .:
It's all up for grabs. Though I will say you give less of a shit where you are the further you go down the track till it seems meaningless to debate and fuss over it and how it is namarupally conceptualised, at least thus it has been so far for myself.


Hmmm. I wonder if that's true.


We may all be at different places.

Though the notion was about debating and fussing. Do you see Kenneth doing much of that these days? Does Daniel? Best way is to find out for yourself, which no doubt you are aiming to do.


Right, sorry. My bad.

I think it is interesting to continue to map it, though. I understand that's not as interesting to everyone. Since Daniel wrote MCTB, we have a lot more data. Between here and KFD, there are a lot of people who have gotten 4th path (and beyond). Over time it should become somewhat clearer how these things match up. Though it's worth pointing out that what we have right now in terms of a description of the four "technical" paths is a lot more detailed than anything I've come across in the old literature on the subject of attainments. It's a lot more concrete. And the ability to just go up to someone and ask, "hey, what's your experience like now having done x, y, and z?" is overall probably a lot more useful than really nailing down for certain exactly what matches up with which path.

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