![[info icon]](./../../../img/question_16.gif "Summary:")
[A monk said:] "'Dhamma-teacher, Dhamma-teacher' they say, Lord."
"If, monk, anyone teaches a doctrine of disenchantment[1] with decay-and-death, of dispassion[2] [leading to] its cessation, that suffices for him to be called a monk who teaches Dhamma.[3]
"If anyone has trained himself in this disenchantment with decay-and-death, in dispassion[4] [leading to] its cessation, that suffices for him to be called a monk who is trained in what is in conformity with Dhamma.[5]
"If anyone, through disenchantment with decay-and-death, through dispassion [leading to] its cessation, is liberated from grasping, that suffices for him to be called one who has attained Nibbaana in this life."[6]
[The same three distinctions are made in respect of birth... ignorance]
Notes
- 1.
- Nibbidaa: sometimes rendered "revulsion," but this suffers from the defect of suggesting too strong an emotional reaction. "Disenchantment" covers it better.
- 2.
- Viraaga is quite literally "dis-passion." The syntax of this sentence is rather curious, but the meaning is clear enough.
- 3.
- This gives a clear indication of the minimum standard required for anyone (today, in the West, often a lay person) setting up as a teacher of Buddhism. It denotes a "worldling" (puthujjana, i.e., one who has not "entered the stream") who has the basic intellectual knowledge mentioned here.
- 4.
- This one is a sekha "trainee," i.e., one who has at least "entered the stream" (and thus knows in part from experience), but is not an Arahant.
- 5.
- His training is proceeding along the right path.
- 6.
- He is an asekha ("non-trainee," i.e., one who has finished his training), an Arahant.