Transition Three · From the Three Knowledges and Six Powers to the Attainment of Cessation

Part Three is walked; take the inventory.

One pivot: of the six powers, the first five are gained by worldlings and outside meditators too; only the sixth, the power of the exhaustion of taints, belongs to the noble ones — there is only one key to the inner room. The three knowledges fall under the same stroke: past lives cures the delusion of the prior bound, the divine eye the delusion of the posterior, and only the knowledge of exhaustion the delusion of the middle — the cord tightening now, only it can light through. And one account settled: on the summit of Gayā, the wonders performed drew only marvel, and "all is burning," once spoken, freed a thousand of the taints — what liberates is instruction, not transformation; at Kuśinagara, the foremost divine eye himself called the divine eye no wonder — the unsurpassed is the eye of wisdom alone. The powers cannot serve as the seal, cannot open the lock, and are not the ultimate.

Yet one thing remains, held back until now and not yet faced directly.

Part Two noted that the both-ways liberated arhat adds one signed line — "the eight liberations, traversed forward and in reverse, witnessed in one's own person." The eighth of that deep series bears the name: the attainment of cessation. Perception and feeling both extinguished; the activities of body, speech, and mind all stilled. Stilled to that degree — is the person still there? How does this differ from death? The canon answers: the life-faculty does not depart, the warmth does not depart, the sense-faculties are unbroken — it is the deepest of stillings, not annihilation. And further: only the noble ones can enter it — the worldling dares not, dreading annihilation; while the one who attains it is thereby named liberated both ways.

From this rises Part Four's question. The attainment of cessation is the deepest of the concentrations and gained by the noble alone — what, then, is it within the arhat's mastery? Is it "the highest freedom"? If so, the mastery has been tied back to a meditative state — exactly the account Part Three just cleared. Yet if not, this sovereignty — to enter the deepest stillness at will, and to come out again — is plainly a real freedom of some kind.

Part Four, in a single chapter, looks at this "freedom inside stillness": the deepest impression of the meditative mastery — while what the seal impresses remains, as ever, the exhaustion of taints.

First, go and see the place of stillness itself.