The SignatureThe Two LiberationsThe Three Knowledges and Six PowersThe Eight Liberations and CessationNo-More-Becoming and the Worthy
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Part 5 · No-More-Becoming and the Worthy
Arhat’s Mastery · 2 papers
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 [ from the book's part intro ]
論Study the papersfootnotes · abstracts
07The Doctrine of No-More-BecomingThis paper opens Part 5, "The Worthy and No-More-Becoming," treating the doctrine of the last clause of the self-verification 定型句 — "no more becoming" (nāparaṃ itthattāya). The prior four parts have judged, of the arhat's mastery's several faces (the two liberations of mind and wisdom, the three knowledges and six powers, cessation-attainment), their relation to the pivot of exhaustion; this paper takes the dimension of the mastery of exhaustion in "the resolution of birth-and-death": what does the arhat's "no more becoming" mean? Is it annihilation (after death, nothing at all)? Scripture's answer is "the unanswered" — whether the Tathāgata / arhat exists after death, does not exist, both, or neither, all four are "declared unanswered by the World-Honored One." The thesis: "no more becoming" is the resolution of birth-and-death in the mastery of exhaustion, and its sense lies solely in "departing the two extremes of annihilation and eternalism" — it is not annihilationism (after death, cut off, nothing at all), nor eternalism (a deathless self surviving on); both extremes are conceptual proliferation, neither tending to nirvāṇa, and so are set aside and not answered. The not-answering is not from not-knowing (the World-Honored One is not without knowledge, not without vision) but because the question itself is misplaced — it presupposes a "self of the next becoming" whose existence can be asked, while the exhausted is already without this graspable self. The argument runs in three layers: the sense of "no more becoming" in the self-verification clause; the fourteen unanswered concerning existence-after-death and the śāstric definition of the set-aside answer; and the arrow simile (one who insists on settling this question before practicing is like one shot by a poisoned arrow demanding the shooter's name and lineage, certain to die in the interval of not-knowing) with only the four truths declared one-pointedly. Conclusion: holding to P01's frame — "no more becoming" is the signature of the mastery of exhaustion in the dimension of birth-and-death; what it resolves is "the suffering of receiving further becoming," not a resolution into "the nothing of annihilation"; departing the two extremes is precisely the unobstructedness of mastery in birth-and-death — neither grasping a self that survives (eternalism) nor falling into a self annihilated (annihilation), the bondage of birth-and-death thereby exhausted.08The WorthyThis is the closing paper of The Mastery of the Arhat, gathering up the whole division. The prior seven papers all treat the arhat's mastery's "inner" and "doctrinal" faces (the two liberations of mind and wisdom, the three knowledges and six powers, cessation-attainment, no-more-becoming); this paper turns to the last dimension — the social legibility of mastery: how the inner attainment of liberation of the exhaustion of taints becomes legible to the world, becoming the world's unsurpassed field of merit and the worthy of offerings (arahant). The thesis: "the worthy" is not an honorific added to the arhat from without but the signature by which the mastery of exhaustion presents itself to the world — just as the power of exhaustion is mastery's cognitive face (P04) and no-more-becoming is mastery's birth-and-death face (P07), the worthy is mastery's social face. Its doctrinal chain runs in three continuous sections: the etymological sense of the name "arhat" just is "worthy of the offerings of all the defiled" — the worthy is intrinsic to the name-and-meaning of arhat, plainly established by the śāstra; the arhat is "the world's unsurpassed field of merit" — having accomplished the adept's morality, concentration, wisdom, and liberation, the field of merit the world serves and offers to, the field-of-merit persons divided into trainees and adepts, the arhat subsumed under the adept field of merit; and the causal chain liberation → field of merit → the worthy: the taint-exhausted arhat "crosses birth-and-death, no more becoming, greed-hatred-delusion exhausted," and precisely for this is the world's field of merit, worthy that a stūpa be raised. Conclusion: holding to P01's frame — the worthy is the social signature of the mastery of exhaustion. Mastery is not a private realization suspended within; it is legible to the world: the world, seeing his greed-hatred-delusion exhausted, honors him as a field of merit and offers to him as the worthy. The "merit" of the field of merit is not sought by the arhat (the arhat seeks nothing, no more becoming) but is the merit the world generates in dependence on his virtue of liberation — so the legibility of the worthy rests precisely on the arhat's "seeking nothing" (exhausted, therefore without seeking; without seeking, therefore a pure field of merit). The division here closes: the exhaustion of taints is mastery (P01), and that mastery signs itself in the faces of the two liberations (P02–03), the three knowledges and six powers (P04–05), cessation-attainment (P06), no-more-becoming (P07), and the worthy (P08), all the faces turning about the single pivot of exhaustion.Same part, two ways in — papers keep the scholarly apparatus; the book is continuous prose for reading. Same source.