Early Indian and Theravada Buddhism: Soteriological Controversy a ...

the āsavas, having realized them here and now through his own higher knowledge. (MN I.35, I.70, I.284, and I.490)

AN II.157 states that one can attain arahantship in any one of four ways. In each case, all the fetters are said to be eliminated. They are (1) insight preceded by tranquility, (2) tranquility preceded by insight,²² (3) developing tranquility and insight together, and (4) utterly clearing the mind of all perplexities about Dhamma. Again, it must be allowed that the first way is the way most commonly found in the Nikāyas, and the fourth way probably also would be best pursued by an insight-based path. In any case, it is noteworthy that here is another example of the tradition explicitly allowing for a diversity of soteriologies.

But what is of interest in this study is that material can also be drawn from the early texts, which demonstrates that these samatha and vipassanā ways of meditation were considered to be separate and distinct paths by at least some factions within the early tradition. Many Buddhist path schemes may well have arisen from attempts to resolve a fundamental tension in Buddhism, and indeed in much of Indian religion, between the impulse toward knowledge and the drive to purification, these being the counteragents, respectively, to ignorance and mental defilement (in the Buddhist case especially, the primary defilement is craving [taṇhā]). This polarity is adumbrated in these two distinct soteriologies that emerged in the earliest Buddhist texts. Buswell and Gimello suggested that

this bifurcation of a path of knowledge which nullifies epistemological error through a direct, analytical vision of truth and a path of purification which destroys the impure fluctuations of mind by a process of gradual calming, may have been the principal catalyst in the production of the Buddhist mārga as a diversity rather than a uniformity of discipline.²³

An example of the differences that existed between these two approaches can be found in a sutta that relates a dispute between two groups of monks, labeled “meditators” (jhāyī bhikkhū), and those monks