The Fourth Factor of Entering the Stream

1.2 The Fourth Factor of Entering the Stream

Kapilavatthu, the Nigrodha Grove—the Buddha's home country, the city of the Sakyans.

In that city, two Sakyans fell into a quarrel. One was named Sāḷha, the other Mahānāma. What they quarreled over was not fields, not family affairs, but a question of doctrine: the Blessed One says that a person who has entered the stream—a stream-enterer, a noble one of the first fruit who from then on never falls back—is accomplished in how many things?

Mahānāma said: four—experiential confidence in the Buddha, experiential confidence in the Dharma and the Saṅgha, and accomplishment in the noble ethical conduct.

Sāḷha said no, three: "Do not say so! Do not say that the Blessed One says the stream-enterer is accomplished in four factors. The stream-enterer is accomplished in three factors. What are the three? Experiential confidence in the Buddha, experiential confidence in the Dharma, experiential confidence in the Saṅgha."

"Experiential confidence"—the old Chinese rendering reads, literally, an indestructible purity—is faith that has seen all the way through, faith that cannot be broken. The three confidences—in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha—both men accepted; the quarrel was over the fourth: does the precept count? One said three, one said four; back and forth three rounds, and neither could persuade the other. The thirty-third fascicle of the Saṃyukta Āgama records this dispute, and at this point in the record comes a most matter-of-fact line: Mahānāma could not bring Sāḷha to accept the four, Sāḷha could not bring Mahānāma to accept the three—"together they went to where the Buddha was." When talk fails, go find the teacher.

The Buddha's Own Ruling

Before the Buddha, Mahānāma laid out the whole course of the dispute from its beginning. Then it was Sāḷha's turn. He rose from his seat, joined his palms toward the Buddha, and spoke words that ring like struck metal:

World-Honored One! Should matters of this kind arise—on one side the World-Honored One, on the other the Saṅgha of bhikkhus—I would rather follow the World-Honored One, and not the Saṅgha of bhikkhus.

Should such a thing arise again—on one side the World-Honored One, on the other the Saṅgha; nay, on the other side devas, Māra, Brahmā, all ascetics and brahmins—I would rather follow the World-Honored One than any of the rest. Meaning: however the ruling falls today, I accept it.

The Buddha did not rule at once. He turned and asked Mahānāma: Sāḷha has declared himself thus—what do you say? Mahānāma answered: when he speaks so, I can only call it good, only call it true. Both parties had handed themselves over; only then did the Buddha let the ruling fall:

Therefore, know that the stream-enterer is accomplished in four factors: experiential confidence in the Buddha; experiential confidence in the Dharma and the Saṅgha; accomplishment in the noble ethical conduct. Receive and hold this thus.

Four, not three. The precept counts.

The weight of this ruling deserves weighing in the hand. The side overruled—Sāḷha's three-factor position—asserted precisely that the precept is not among the conditions of entering the stream. Ordinarily the four-factor teaching circulates through the sūtras over and over; heard long enough, it might pass for a verbal routine. But here is a dispute fought with real blades: two earnest men each holding one end, forcing the Buddha to fix the words past unfixing. And fixed they were: in the person who has entered the stream, the precept cannot be lacking.

The Fourth Is Not the Same Kind of Thing as the First Three

Set the four side by side and look closely, and an asymmetry shows.

The first three are pure confidence toward the Buddha, toward the Dharma, toward the Saṅgha—your mind, facing three objects outside, fixed in an unshakable direction of faith. But the fourth is not "pure confidence toward the precept." The phrase the text uses is "accomplishment in the noble ethical conduct"—the conduct has already grown to completion in you.

The first three are faith directed outward; the fourth is a virtue already completed in oneself. One says "I place my faith in it"; the other says "it is already me." So the four are not four objects of belief set side by side, but three confidences, plus one thing grown into the body. The last chapter said the precept is an ability grown into the body—in one who has entered the stream, that ability now stands firm and will not be lost again; only thus does it merit the word accomplishment.

And this noble conduct—what does it look like? The texts sketch it with eight features: unbroken, without lack, unstained, unmottled, not taken by others, well-guarded, praised by the bright, the wise never weary of it. The first four speak from the side of nothing damaged—not torn, not holed, not stained, not mottled, like a garment whole and sound; the latter four speak from the side of truly good—it cannot be seized away, it is guarded entire, the discerning praise it, the wise never tire of recollecting it. These eight features will return in the next chapter—for they are not only a description; they are also the subject set for a practice.

A Tree That Leans East

One accomplished in these four—what is his condition? The Buddha once made a comparison. Also to Mahānāma—in the Pāli Saṃyutta Nikāya the same exchange is preserved. The Buddha said: a noble disciple accomplished in the four things slants toward nibbāna, slopes toward nibbāna, inclines toward nibbāna. Then He asked:

Suppose a tree that slants east, slopes east, inclines east—if it were cut off at the root, which way would it fall?

Mahānāma answered: it would fall the way it leans.

The Buddha said: the noble disciple is just so.

This comparison says through and through what accomplishment in the noble ethical conduct means. In the stream-enterer, the precept is not a line he watches daily for fear of crossing; it is the grown lean of a tree—the whole tree's weight already tipped toward the side of nibbāna. The day the root is cut, the day life ends, he need not struggle to fall the right way; he will simply go down along the lean a whole life has grown, toward the place he was facing all along. The precept is that lean itself.

The One Who Rests on the Precept

Yet this accomplishment can also trip a person up.

Another Sakyan, named Nandiya, once asked the Buddha a question: if a noble disciple lacks not one of the four factors of stream-entry, can he still pass his days in negligence? The Buddha's answer was cool: he can. He sketched such a person: one truly endowed with the ethical conduct loved by the noble ones—who then grows content with that conduct, and makes no further effort for solitude by day, none for retreat by night. And the result? Joy cannot arise; without joy, no rapture; without rapture, no tranquility; without tranquility, he dwells in suffering; the mind in suffering does not gain concentration.

Look at this chain—it is the very chain of the Heyi-jing, breaking in reverse. And what breaks it is not breaking the precept; it is hugging the precept in self-satisfaction. However well the precept is kept, the moment it is hugged as proof that "I have done enough," the upward chain jams at the precept link and pushes no higher.

So that feature among the eight, not taken by others, hides a deeper sense: this conduct is not to be seized away—including not seized away by one's own grasping. The precept is for walking with, not for hugging while you rest. This point will reach its deepest place at the end of this book, when we speak of the sign-less precept; here we only bury the seed.

The Gate of the Stream Does Not Pick Its People

Last, something warm needs saying: these four are not the monastic's private holding.

The Saṃyutta Nikāya records a lay woman of the Sakyans named Kāḷigodhā. The Buddha taught her the four factors of entering the stream. When she had heard them, she declared then and there: these four factors of stream-entry that the Blessed One teaches—they are all present in me, and I see it plainly for myself. The Buddha confirmed her on the spot, telling her that it was well, that Godhā was fortunate, and that she had herself proclaimed the fruit of stream-entry.

A laywoman of the household, examining herself by herself; the Buddha only nodded and confirmed. The gate of the stream—and the accomplishment that stands as its fourth factor—is open to householder and renunciant, to men and to women, to everyone who practices as things truly are.

The precept can grow into the body, grow into a tree that leans toward nibbāna. Can the practitioner then turn around and take this conduct he has already kept into being and make it a task for the mind—inviting it back into the heart, time and again, to recollect it?

He can. And this practice, too, the Buddha taught to Mahānāma. In the next chapter, we return to the Nigrodha Grove.