Arhatship ("sainthood")

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Arhat

In the sramanic (recluse, ascetic) traditions of ancient India (most notably those of Jainism and Buddhism) arhat (Sanskrit) or arahant (Pali) signified a spiritual practitioner who had — to use an expression common in the Tipitaka — "laid down the burden" and realized the goal of nirvana. This was the culmination of the spiritual life (brahmacarya). Such a person, having removed all causes for future suffering, is not reborn into any Samsaric realm.

Origin

The term occurs as arhattaa in the Rig Veda (Hopkins, The Great Epic of India) and as the first offer of salutation in the main Jain prayer Navakar Mantra.

Later the word occurs mostly in Buddhist and Jain texts, but also in some Vaishnava texts such as the Srimad Bhagavatam [4]. It also occurs in the Vaishnava Srî Narada Pancharatnam (Vijnanananda, Srî Narada Pancharatnam).

The word arahan literally means "worthy one"[1] (an alternative folk etymology is "foe-destroyer" or "vanquisher of enemies" [2]) and constitutes the highest grade of noble person—or ariya-puggala—described by the Buddha as recorded in the Pali Canon. The word was used (as it is today in Theravada Buddhism) as an epithet of the Buddha himself as well as of his enlightened followers. The most widely recited liturgical reference is perhaps the homage:

Namo tassa Bhagavato, Arahato, Samma-sambuddhassa.

"Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the perfectly enlightened Buddha."

Theravada

In Theravada Buddhism the Buddha himself is first called an arahant, as were his enlightened followers, since he is free from all defilements, without greed, hatred, and delusion, rid of ignorance and craving, having no possessions that will lead to a future birth, knowing and seeing the real here and now. His virtues reveal stainless purity, true worth, and the accomplishment of the end of suffering, nirvana [3].

In the Pali Canon, Ānanda states that he has known monastics to achieve nirvana in one of four ways:

1. one develops insight preceded by serenity (Pali: samatha-pubbaṇgamaṃ vipassanaṃ);
2. one develops serenity preceded by insight (vipassanā-pubbaṇgamaṃ samathaṃ);
3. one develops serenity and insight in a stepwise fashion (samatha-vipassanaṃ yuganaddhaṃ);
4. one's mind becomes seized by excitation about the Dharma and, as a consequence, develops serenity and abandons the fetters (dhamma-uddhacca-viggahitaṃ mānasaṃ hoti) [4][5].

In Theravada, although arahants have achieved the same goal as the Buddha, there are differences among them due to other talents and practices.

Mahayana

Mahayana Buddhists see the Buddha himself as the ideal towards which one should aim in one's spiritual aspirations. Hence the arhat, as an enlightened disciple of the Buddha, is not regarded as a goal as much as the bodhisattva.

In the Mahayana tradition, bodhisattva carries a meaning different from that in Theravada Buddhism (where a buddha prior to his enlightenment is called a bodhisattva, or a "being bent on enlightenment" with the ability to teach). In the Pali Canon the Tathagata, when relating his own past life experiences, often uses the phrase "when I was an unenlightened bodhisattva." Bodhisattva denotes as yet unenlightened but striving towards the goal.

In Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, a bodhisattva is someone who seeks to put the welfare of others before one's own, forfeiting enlightenment until an infinite number of beings are first saved. Such a person is sometimes said to have achieved a proto-enlightenment called bodhicitta ("enlightened mind").