701
CHAPTER XXII
PURIFICATION BY KNOWLEDGE AND VISION
(Ñāṇadassana-visuddhi-niddesa)
[I. CHANGE-OF-LINEAGE, PATHS, AND FRUITS]
1.
[672] Change-of-lineage knowledge comes next. Its position is to advert
to the path, and so it belongs neither to purification by knowledge and vision
of the way nor to purification by knowledge and vision, but being intermediate,
it is unassignable. Still it is reckoned as insight because it falls in line with
insight.
2. Purification by knowledge and vision properly consists in knowledge of the
four paths, that is to say, the path of stream-entry, the path of once-return, the path
of non-return, and the path of Arahantship.
[THE FIRST PATH—FIRST NOBLE PERSON]
3.
Herein, nothing further needs to be done by one who wants to achieve,
firstly, the knowledge of the first path. For what he needs to do has already been
done by arousing the insight that ends in conformity knowledge.
4.
As soon as conformity knowledge has arisen in him in this way, and the
thick murk that hides the truths has been dispelled by the respective force peculiar
to each of the three kinds of conformity (see XXI.129f.), then his consciousness
no longer enters into or settles down on or resolves upon any field of formations
at all, or clings, cleaves or clutches on to it, but retreats, retracts and recoils as
water does from a lotus leaf, and every sign as object, every occurrence as object,
appears as an impediment.
5.
Then, while every sign and occurrence appears to him as an impediment,
when conformity knowledge’s repetition has ended, change-of-lineage
knowledge arises in him, which takes as its object the signless, non-
occurrence, non-formation, cessation, Nibbāna,—which knowledge passes
out of the lineage, the category, the plane, of the ordinary man and enters the
lineage, the category, the plane, of the Noble Ones,—which, being the first
adverting, the first concern, the first reaction, to Nibbāna as object, fulfils the
state of a condition for the path in six ways, as proximity, [673] contiguity,
repetition, decisive-support, absence, and disappearance conditions,—which
is the culminating peak of insight,—which is irrevocable,—of which it is
said: