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

of relinquishing things through direct knowledge, and “through not clinging his mind was liberated from the āsavas” (MN I.500–501). Liberation from or destruction of the “impure influences” (āsavas) of attachment to sense desires (kāmāsava), attachment to continued existence in saṁsāra (bhavāsava), and ignorance (avijjāsava) is synonymous with attaining the final goal of nibbāna.²⁷ So, in the case of this first in the pair of “Sāriputta’s liberation” suttas, a pure path of knowledge and insight is preached along which one becomes liberated by seeing the person as disenchanting, impermanent, and void or not-self. This is a path of pure vipassanā, with not the least mention of the tranquility-based path’s primary practices of achieving the jhānas and samāpattis.

In drastic contrast is the description of Sāriputta’s liberation in MN 111 (Anupada Sutta). Almost the whole discourse is taken up with Buddha describing his disciple’s path consisting of progressing up through the four jhānas and four samāpattis, transcending each one as he imagines that there is a “liberation beyond” each state, with the path culminating in entrance into and emergence from the cessation of cognition and feeling. In contrast to MN 74, there is virtually no mention of a concrete insight-based practice such as contemplating the impermanence of body and feelings. Instead, Sāriputta is said to achieve “with insight” the liberating destruction of the āsavas simply by detaching himself from these states and contemplating that there is no “liberation beyond” this. There is no inclusion of the insight-based path’s main practice of observing the various components of the person (body, feelings, and thoughts) and seeing them as characterized by the three marks of existence. That the most prominent figure in the Pāli Nikāyas besides the Buddha is portrayed as gaining liberation in two such sharply divergent ways is a very likely sign that there were various camps in the early saṅgha promoting different paths to nibbāna. The scholarly consensus seems to point in this direction, with Bareau, Frauwallner, Gombrich, and Vetter all arguing that the inconsistencies in the texts are unlikely due to development in the Buddha’s own thought but likely due to soteriological divergences in the first few generations of the saṅgha.²⁸