Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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with good conduct, for they are essentially the disciples who, having
entered on the path of perfection, are now progressing towards the
final deliverance of arahantship. This path of perfection has four
stages during which the disciple progressively disburdens himself
from the ten fetters (dasa saṁyojana).
The ten fetters are overcome in the lower stages of sainthood:
1.) The initial impediments of misconception of individuality
(sakkāya-diṭṭhi), of perplexity (vicikicchā) and of attachment to
ritualism (sīlabbata-paramāsa), which prevent a disciple even to
enter the path of holiness, and the overcoming of which, therefore,
make him a stream-enterer (sotāpanna), the stream of sanctity,
which without fail carries him down to the ocean of deliverance,
where all wrong views of ‘self’ are submerged for ever in
Nibbāna.
2.) The overcoming of sensual pleasure (kāmacchanda) and of aversion
(vyāpada), of attachment and of repulsion, constitutes the
second stage in which the fetters of love and hate are loosened,
and the disciple is assured that at most only once more he will
return to this life and world of conflict (sakadāgāmin), and then
in perfect awareness make himself free from those carnal bonds.
3.) The more subtle craving for forms of beauty (rūparāga) and the
clinging to the formless speculations of philosophy (arūparāga)
are the sublimation of carnal desires. They too form fetters
which have to be set aside. And when that stage is reached,
there no more return (anāgāmin) to any form of life can occur.
In that life he will make the supreme effort to break away from
all that binds.
4.) The final stage of arahantship is when the last three impediments
are shaken off, conceit (māna), agitation (uddhacca) and
ignorance (avijja).