| Chapter 1: | The Pāli Nikāyas |
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has removed all ten fetters (saṁyojanas). Destruction of the fetters is identical to arahantship.
Another sutta that describes the path completely in terms of the samatha-based path’s jhānas and samāpattis, culminating in the attainment of cessation, is the MN’s Nivāpa Sutta. Jhānas and samāpattis are described as places where Māra, the Buddhist personification of death, cannot go and the one abiding in them as having “blindfolded Māra, to have become invisible to the Evil One” (MN I.159). As for the one who has reached the attainment of cessation, all of these ways of defeating Māra are again listed, and it is added that he has “crossed beyond attachment to this world” (MN I.160).
The Laṭukikopama Sutta is yet another text that describes the path as purely a matter of proceeding through the jhānas and samāpattis, each one surmounting the previous one. In the end it seems that the attainment of cessation is sufficient for the removal of all the fetters, which amounts to attainment of arahantship:
By completely surmounting the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, a bhikkhu abides in the cessation of cognition and feeling that surmounts it. Thus I speak of the abandoning even of the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Do you see, Udāyin, any fetter, small or great, of whose abandoning I do not speak?
[Udāyin replies:] No, venerable sir. (MN I.456)
SN IV.225–228 also speaks only of the jhānas and samāpattis, with the practitioner rising up through them as he finds greater and greater joy in each successive stage. As the sutta reaches its completion, the Buddha speaks of the attainment of cessation of cognition and feelings as being of a happiness more excellent and sublime than any other previous kind. The final confirmation of the ultimacy of this state as the highest happiness is further asserted with these concluding words: