Part Five · No-More-Becoming and the Worthy · The Last Two Faces

The book comes to its gathering part. The inward faces of the arhat's mastery — substance, knowing, depth — the first four parts have seen; the two that remain face death and face the world.

The first chapter: pull the arrow first. The arhat attests "no further becoming," and the world presses straight on: then after death, does he exist, or not? On Vulture Peak, a band of wanderers cornered a monk with the four forms of this question; at Sāvatthī, Mālunkyāputta served the same question on the Blessed One as an ultimatum — answer me one way or the other, or I quit the training. The Buddha's reply was the figure of a poisoned arrow, and one clean line of demarcation: what does not tend to nirvāṇa, I do not declare one-sidedly; suffering, its arising, its cessation, and the way — these I declare. This chapter watches why the not-answering is the right answer, and why "no further becoming" closes the continuation of suffering, not the existence or non-existence of a "post-mortem self."

The second chapter: the field that seeks nothing. Liberation is an inward attainment — by what does the world see it? The answer hides first in the name itself: "arhat" means, by its very word, "worthy of offerings." This chapter watches the world read the seal — the three whom the world should honor, the fine horse a king would ride, the stūpa raised for the taint-exhausted — and the paradox that closes the book: precisely because he no longer wants anything, he becomes the world's best field. Five faces gathered to one seal; the book closes here.

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