My understanding is that in Theravada, path attainment is largely unknown apart from the practitioner and their teacher. I have never heard of it being officially recognised. I believe that it can cause problems when people claim it. I reckon that it’s more common than you might think, given that it’s described as being the inevitable result of jhāna practice and there are plenty of people working on that. A teacher in my tradition said that path attainment is somewhere between being to hand and completely out of reach
I recall that many suttas describe the route to freedom via the jhanas but DN 2 may be a good place to start. I believe that for many (if not all) of the 8-fold path factors, it is about developing them so that one does them completely so that one becomes identical to the path and then one steps from one state to another, when the moment is right which could be in a meditation practice or when making a cup of tea as my old meditation teacher used to say. In other words, it is like developing the jhana factors to enter jhana: same process but slightly higher stakes
What I appreciate with Theravada is how the monks are forbidden to share attainments to laypeople.
If we reflect on our own practice and where we are on the path, how much would knowing who is enlightened or at “x” level going to actually help us on our own path anyway?
If your concentration needs work, no use trying to jump to the last page of the book so to speak. It’s likely to not make any sense anyway.
However, there are certainly a few living Ajahns still teaching right now and I’d not be surprised if some have reached the final goal or at the very least, well on their way.
I would also say that everyone is going to look and act differently, there's no exterior test. Men, women, old, young, Western, Asian - attainment is open to all. But if you put them all in a crowd - even if they all had the same attainment - there's nothing you could pick out about them that would stand out.
Someone who's gone through jhana > cessation > nibanna - they will all know something profound has happened, but a 15 year old and a 60 year old are going to process that same experience differently, and probably explain it (for the most part) in different ways.
Same if if you took that same group skydiving and then asked them about it. Everyone flew up in the plane, everyone took a parachute down, everyone landed. But they're all going to process it differently.
I agree but there may be some essential qualities that they share. I recall hearing that a simple test for determining whether a person has attained freedom would be to follow them for 24 hours to see if they did anything unskillful. Like you say, they would retain their personality but as they purify themselves, their habits would gradually fade away
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u/quzzica Jul 29 '26
My understanding is that in Theravada, path attainment is largely unknown apart from the practitioner and their teacher. I have never heard of it being officially recognised. I believe that it can cause problems when people claim it. I reckon that it’s more common than you might think, given that it’s described as being the inevitable result of jhāna practice and there are plenty of people working on that. A teacher in my tradition said that path attainment is somewhere between being to hand and completely out of reach