Though right concentration claims the last place
among the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, concentration itself does
not mark the path’s culmination. The attainment of concentration makes
the mind still and steady, unifies its concomitants, opens vast vistas
of bliss, serenity, and power. But by itself it does not suffice to
reach the highest accomplishment, release from the bonds of suffering.
To reach the end of suffering demands that the Eightfold Path be turned
into an instrument of discovery, that it be used to generate the
insights unveiling the ultimate truth of things. This requires the
combined contributions of all eight factors, and thus a new mobilization
of right view and right intention. Up to the present point these first
two path factors have performed only a preliminary function. Now they
have to be taken up again and raised to a higher level. Right view is to
become a direct seeing into the real nature of phenomena, previously
grasped only conceptually; right intention, to become a true
renunciation of defilements born out of deep understanding.

Before we turn to the development of wisdom, it
will be helpful to inquire why concentration is not adequate to the
attainment of liberation. Concentration does not suffice to bring
liberation because it fails to touch the defilements at their
fundamental level. The Buddha teaches that the defilements are
stratified into three layers: the stage of latent tendency, the stage of
manifestation, and the stage of transgression. The most deeply grounded
is the level of latent tendency (anusaya), where a defilement merely
lies dormant without displaying any activity. The second level is the
stage of manifestation (pariyutthana),
where a defilement, through the impact of some stimulus, surges up in
the form of unwholesome thoughts, emotions, and volitions. Then, at the
third level, the defilement passes beyond a purely mental manifestation
to motivate some unwholesome action of body or speech. Hence this level
is called the stage of transgression (vitikkama).

The three divisions of the Noble Eightfold Path
provide the check against this threefold layering of the defilements.
The first, the training in moral discipline, restrains unwholesome
bodily and verbal activity and thus prevents defilements from reaching
the stage of transgression. The training in concentration provides the
safeguard against the stage of manifestation. It removes already
manifest defilements and protects the mind from their continued influx.
But even though concentration may be pursued to the depths of full
absorption, it cannot touch the basic source of affliction — the latent
tendencies lying dormant in the mental continuum. Against these
concentration is powerless, since to root them out calls for more than
mental calm. What it calls for, beyond the composure and serenity of the
unified mind, is wisdom (pañña), a penetrating vision of phenomena in their fundamental mode of being.

Wisdom alone can cut off the latent tendencies at
their root because the most fundamental member of the set, the one which
nurtures the others and holds them in place, is ignorance (avijja), and
wisdom is the remedy for ignorance. Though verbally a negative,
“unknowing,” ignorance is not a factual negative, a mere privation of
right knowledge. It is, rather, an insidious and volatile mental factor
incessantly at work inserting itself into every compartment of our inner
life. It distorts cognition, dominates volition, and determines the
entire tone of our existence. As the Buddha says: “The element of
ignorance is indeed a powerful element” (SN 14:13).

At the cognitive level, which is its most basic
sphere of operation, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, thoughts,
and views, so that we come to misconstrue our experience, overlaying it
with multiple strata of delusions. The most important of these delusions
are three: the delusions of seeing permanence in the impermanent, of
seing satisfaction in the unsatisfactory, and of seeing a self in the
selfless.66
Thus we take ourselves and our world to be solid, stable, enduring
entities, despite the ubiquitous reminders that everything is subject to
change and destruction. We assume we have an innate right to pleasure,
and direct our efforts to increasing and intensifying our enjoyment with
an anticipatory fervor undaunted by repeated encounters with pain,
disappointment, and frustration. And we perceive ourselves as
self-contained egos, clinging to the various ideas and images we form of
ourselves as the irrefragable truth of our identity.

Whereas ignorance obscures the true nature of
things, wisdom removes the veils of distortion, enabling us to see
phenomena in their fundamental mode of being with the vivacity of direct
perception. The training in wisdom centers on the development of
insight (vipassana-bhavana), a deep and comprehensive seeing into the
nature of existence which fathoms the truth of our being in the only
sphere where it is directly accessible to us, namely, in our own
experience. Normally we are immersed in our experience, identified with
it so completely that we do not comprehend it. We live it but fail to
understand its nature. Due to this blindness experience comes to be
misconstrued, worked upon by the delusions of permanence, pleasure, and
self. Of these cognitive distortions, the most deeply grounded and
resistant is the delusion of self, the idea that at the core of our
being there exists a truly established “I” with which we are essentially
identified. This notion of self, the Buddha teaches, is an error, a
mere presupposition lacking a real referent. Yet, though a mere
presupposition, the idea of self is not inconsequential. To the
contrary, it entails consequences that can be calamitous. Because we
make the view of self the lookout point from which we survey the world,
our minds divide everything up into the dualities of “I” and “not I,”
what is “mine” and what is “not mine.” Then, trapped in these
dichotomies, we fall victim to the defilements they breed, the urges to
grasp and destroy, and finally to the suffering that inevitably follows.

To free ourselves from all defilements and
suffering, the illusion of selfhood that sustains them has to be
dispelled, exploded by the realization of selflessness. Precisely this
is the task set for the development of wisdom. The first step along the
path of development is an analytical one. In order to uproot the view of
self, the field of experience has to be laid out in certain sets of
factors, which are then methodically investigated to ascertain that none
of them singly or in combination can be taken as a self. This
analytical treatment of experience, so characteristic of the higher
reaches of Buddhist philosophical psychology, is not intended to suggest
that experience, like a watch or car, can be reduced to an accidental
conglomeration of separable parts. Experience does have an irreducible
unity, but this unity is functional rather than substantial; it does not
require the postulate of a unifying self separate from the factors,
retaining its identity as a constant amidst the ceaseless flux.

The method of analysis applied most often is that
of the five aggregates of clinging (panc’upadanakkhandha): material
form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.67
Material form constitutes the material side of existence: the bodily
organism with its sense faculties and the outer objects of cognition.
The other four aggregates constitute the mental side. Feeling provides
the affective tone, perception the factor of noting and identifying, the
mental formations the volitional and emotive elements, and
consciousness the basic awareness essential to the whole occasion of
experience. The analysis by way of the five aggregates paves the way for
an attempt to see experience solely in terms of its constituting
factors, without slipping in implicit references to an unfindable self.
To gain this perspective requires the development of intensive
mindfulness, now applied to the fourth foundation, the contemplation of
the factors of existence (dhammanupassana). The disciple will dwell
contemplating the five aggregates, their arising and passing:

Or the disciple may instead base his contemplation
on the six internal and external spheres of sense experience, that is,
the six sense faculties and their corresponding objects, also taking
note of the “fetters” or defilements that arise from such sensory
contacts:

The view of self is further attenuated by examining
the factors of existence, not analytically, but in terms of their
relational structure. Inspection reveals that the aggregates exist
solely in dependence on conditions. Nothing in the set enjoys the
absolute self-sufficiency of being attributed to the assumed “I.”
Whatever factors in the body-mind complex be looked at, they are found
to be dependently arisen, tied to the vast net of events extending
beyond themselves temporally and spatially. The body, for example, has
arisen through the union of sperm and egg and subsists in dependence on
food, water, and air. Feeling, perception, and mental formations occur
in dependence on the body with its sense faculties. They require an
object, the corresponding consciousness, and the contact of the object
with the consciousness through the media of the sense faculties.
Consciousness in its turn depends on the sentient organism and the
entire assemblage of co-arisen mental factors. This whole process of
becoming, moreover, has arisen from the previous lives in this
particular chain of existences and inherit all the accumulated kamma of
the earlier existences. Thus nothing possesses a self-sufficient mode of
being. All conditioned phenomena exist relationally, contingent and
dependent on other things.

The above two steps — the factorial analysis and
the discernment of relations — help cut away the intellectual adherence
to the idea of self, but they lack sufficient power to destroy the
ingrained clinging to the ego sustained by erroneous perception. To
uproot this subtle form of ego-clinging requires a counteractive
perception: direct insight into the empty, coreless nature of phenomena.
Such an insight is generated by contemplating the factors of existence
in terms of their three universal marks — impermanence (aniccata), unsatisfactoriness (dukkhata), and selflessness (anattata).
Generally, the first of the three marks to be discerned is
impermanence, which at the level of insight does not mean merely that
everything eventually comes to an end. At this level it means something
deeper and more pervasive, namely, that conditioned phenomena are in
constant process, happenings which break up and perish almost as soon as
they arise. The stable objects appearing to the senses reveal
themselves to be strings of momentary formations (sankhara); the person
posited by common sense dissolves into a current made up of two
intertwining streams — a stream of material events, the aggregate of
material form, and a stream of mental events, the other four aggregates.

When impermanence is seen, insight into the other
two marks closely follows. Since the aggregates are constantly breaking
up, we cannot pin our hopes on them for any lasting satisfaction.
Whatever expectations we lay on them are bound to be dashed to pieces by
their inevitable change. Thus when seen with insight they are dukkha,
suffering, in the deepest sense. Then, as the aggregates are impermanent
and unsatisfactory, they cannot be taken as self. If they were self, or
the belongings of a self, we would be able to control them and bend
them to our will, to make them everlasting sources of bliss. But far
from being able to exercise such mastery, we find them to be grounds of
pain and disappointment. Since they cannot be subjected to control,
these very factors of our being are anatta: not a self, not the
belongings of a self, just empty, ownerless phenomena occurring in
dependence on conditions.

When the course of insight practice is entered, the
eight path factors become charged with an intensity previously unknown.
They gain in force and fuse together into the unity of a single
cohesive path heading towards the goal. In the practice of insight all
eight factors and three trainings co-exist; each is there supporting all
the others; each makes its own unique contribution to the work. The
factors of moral discipline hold the tendencies to transgression in
check with such care that even the thought of unethical conduct does not
arise. The factors of the concentration group keep the mind firmly
fixed upon the stream of phenomena, contemplating whatever arises with
impeccable precision, free from forgetfulness and distraction. Right
view, as the wisdom of insight, grows continually sharper and deeper;
right intention shows itself in a detachment and steadiness of purpose
bringing an unruffled poise to the entire process of contemplation.

Insight meditation takes as its objective sphere the “conditioned formations” (sankhara)
comprised in the five aggregates. Its task is to uncover their
essential characteristics: the three marks of impermanence,
unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. Because it still deals with the
world of conditioned events, the Eightfold Path in the stage of insight
is called the mundane path (lokiyamagga). This designation in no way
implies that the path of insight is concerned with mundane goals, with
achievements falling in the range of samsara. It aspires to
transcendence, it leads to liberation, but its objective domain of
contemplation still lies within the conditioned world. However, this
mundane contemplation of the conditioned serves as the vehicle for
reaching the unconditioned, for attaining the supramundane. When insight
meditation reaches its climax, when it fully comprehends the
impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of everything formed,
the mind breaks through the conditioned and realizes the unconditioned,
Nibbana. It sees Nibbana with direct vision, makes it an object of
immediate realization.

The breakthrough to the unconditioned is achieved
by a type of consciousness or mental event called the supramundane path
(lokuttaramagga).
The supramundane path occurs in four stages, four “supramundane paths,”
each marking a deeper level of realization and issuing in a fuller
degree of liberation, the fourth and last in complete liberation. The
four paths can be achieved in close proximity to one another — for those
with extraordinarily sharp faculties even in the same sitting — or (as
is more typically the case) they can be spread out over time, even over
several lifetimes.70
The supramundane paths share in common the penetration of the Four
Noble Truths. They understand them, not conceptually, but intuitively.
They grasp them through vision, seeing them with self-validating
certainty to be the invariable truths of existence. The vision of the
truths which they present is complete at one moment. The four truths are
not understood sequentially, as in the stage of reflection when thought
is the instrument of understanding. They are seen simultaneously: to
see one truth with the path is to see them all.

As the path penetrates the four truths, the mind
exercises four simultaneous functions, one regarding each truth. It
fully comprehends the truth of suffering, seeing all conditioned
existence as stamped with the mark of unsatisfactoriness. At the same
time it abandons craving, cuts through the mass of egotism and desire
that repeatedly gives birth to suffering. Again, the mind realizes
cessation, the deathless element Nibbana, now directly present to the
inner eye. And fourthly, the mind develops the Noble Eightfold Path,
whose eight factors spring up endowed with tremendous power, attained to
supramundane stature: right view as the direct seeing of Nibbana, right
intention as the mind’s application to Nibbana, the triad of ethical
factors as the checks on moral transgression, right effort as the energy
in the path-consciousness, right mindfulness as the factor of
awareness, and right concentration as the mind’s one-pointed focus. This
ability of the mind to perform four functions at the same moment is
compared to a candle’s ability to simultaneously burn the wick, consume
the wax, dispel darkness, and give light.71

The supramundane paths have the special task of
eradicating the defilements. Prior to the attainment of the paths, in
the stages of concentration and even insight meditation, the defilements
were not cut off but were only debilitated, checked and suppressed by
the training of the higher mental faculties. Beneath the surface they
continued to linger in the form of latent tendencies. But when the
supramundane paths are reached, the work of eradication begins.

Insofar as they bind us to the round of becoming,
the defilements are classified into a set of ten “fetters” (samyojana)
as follows: (1) personality view, (2) doubt, (3) clinging to rules and
rituals, (4) sensual desire, (5) aversion, (6) desire for fine-material
existence, (7) desire for immaterial existence, (8) conceit, (9)
restlessness, and (10) ignorance. The four supramundane paths each
eliminate a certain layer of defilements. The first, the path of
stream-entry (sotapatti-magga), cuts off the first three fetters, the
coarsest of the set, eliminates them so they can never arise again.
“Personality view” (sakkaya-ditthi),
the view of a truly existent self in the five aggregates, is cut off
since one sees the selfless nature of all phenomena. Doubt is eliminated
because one has grasped the truth proclaimed by the Buddha, seen it for
oneself, and so can never again hang back due to uncertainty. And
clinging to rules and rites is removed since one knows that deliverance
can be won only through the practice of the Eightfold Path, not through
rigid moralism or ceremonial observances.

The path is followed immediately by another state of supramundane consciousness known as the fruit (phala),
which results from the path’s work of cutting off defilements. Each
path is followed by its own fruit, wherein for a few moments the mind
enjoys the blissful peace of Nibbana before descending again to the
level of mundane consciousness. The first fruit is the fruit of
stream-entry, and a person who has gone through the experience of this
fruit becomes a “stream-enterer” (sotapanna). He has entered the stream
of the Dhamma carrying him to final deliverance. He is bound for
liberation and can no longer fall back into the ways of an unenlightened
worldling. He still has certain defilements remaining in his mental
makeup, and it may take him as long as seven more lives to arrive at the
final goal, but he has acquired the essential realization needed to
reach it, and there is no way he can fall away.

An enthusiastic practitioner with sharp faculties,
after reaching stream-entry, does not relax his striving but puts forth
energy to complete the entire path as swiftly as possible. He resumes
his practice of insight contemplation, passes through the ascending
stages of insight-knowledge, and in time reaches the second path, the
path of the once-returner (sakadagami-magga). This supramundane path
does not totally eradicate any of the fetters, but it attenuates the
roots of greed, aversion, and delusion. Following the path the meditator
experiences its fruit, then emerges as a “once-returner” who will
return to this world at most only one more time before attaining full
liberation.

But our practitioner again takes up the task of
contemplation. At the next stage of supramundane realization he attains
the third path, the path of the non-returner (anagami-magga), with which
he cuts off the two fetters of sensual desire and ill will. From that
point on he can never again fall into the grip of any desire for sense
pleasure, and can never be aroused to anger, aversion, or discontent. As
a non-returner he will not return to the human state of existence in
any future life. If he does not reach the last path in this very life,
then after death he will be reborn in a higher sphere in the
fine-material world (rupaloka) and there reach deliverance.

But our meditator again puts forth effort, develops
insight, and at its climax enters the fourth path, the path of
arahatship (arahatta-magga).
With this path he cuts off the five remaining fetters — desire for
fine-material existence and desire for immaterial existence, conceit,
restlessness, and ignorance. The first is the desire for rebirth into
the celestial planes made accessible by the four jhanas, the planes
commonly subsumed under the name “the Brahma-world.” The second is the
desire for rebirth into the four immaterial planes made accessible by
the achievement of the four immaterial attainments. Conceit (mana) is
not the coarse type of pride to which we become disposed through an
over-estimation of our virtues and talents, but the subtle residue of
the notion of an ego which subsists even after conceptually explicit
views of self have been eradicated. The texts refer to this type of
conceit as the conceit “I am” (asmimana). Restlessness (uddhacca) is the
subtle excitement which persists in any mind not yet completely
enlightened, and ignorance (avijja)
is the fundamental cognitive obscuration which prevents full
understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Although the grosser grades of
ignorance have been scoured from the mind by the wisdom faculty in the
first three paths, a thin veil of ignorance overlays the truths even in
the non-returner.

The path of arahatship strips away this last veil
of ignorance and, with it, all the residual mental defilements. This
path issues in perfect comprehension of the Four Noble Truths. It fully
fathoms the truth of suffering; eradicates the craving from which
suffering springs; realizes with complete clarity the unconditioned
element, Nibbana, as the cessation of suffering; and consummates the
development of the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path.

With the attainment of the fourth path and fruit
the disciple emerges as an arahant, one who in this very life has been
liberated from all bonds. The arahant has walked the Noble Eightfold
Path to its end and lives in the assurance stated so often in the
formula from the Pali canon: “Destroyed is birth; the holy life has been
lived; what had to be done has been done; there is no coming back to
any state of being.” The arahant is no longer a practitioner of the path
but its living embodiment. Having developed the eight factors of the
path to their consummation, the Liberated One lives in the enjoyment of
their fruits, enlightenment and final deliverance.