University of Virginia Library

The `arahat' and his miraculous powers

While the Buddha is a personage of the past who has reached nirvana,
and Maitreya is the coming Buddha, the arahat is a lesser personage of
both the past and the present,[5] who is inferior to the other two but is
nevertheless on the path to salvation. The attributes of an arahat are of
interest to us because they have relevance for understanding certain
village rituals, especially those connected with healing and exorcism.
Their bearing on these rituals nevertheless is not readily apparent.

Buddhism poured new content into an old word. The term arahat
was previously applied to persons with honorary titles and of worldly
position who were entitled to receive gifts, and also to ascetics who
subjected themselves to self-mortification (tapas). The Buddhist conception
applied more narrowly to the ascetic man of religion who has entered the

Ariyan path and has reached its end, and consequently possesses the
knowledge of emancipation. By the exercise of meditation (dhyana), the
performance of certain ceremonies, and the observance of the prescribed
course of moral action, the arahat has entered the path of salvation and
his mind is therefore free of desire for, and cleaving to, sensuous objects,
and free of the accompaniments of sorrow and pain. At his death he
reaches the state of nirvana.

Now the notion of iddhi (or siddhi) is ancient in India, and Buddhism
accepted and confirmed its existence and reality. The mystic powers of
iddhi are not miraculous in the Western sense of interference by an outside
power to contravene known laws of nature, but are special powers in
conformity with nature possessed by certain people who are able to
accomplish acts beyond the powers of ordinary men. Typically they are
gained by ascetics.

The Buddhist suttas enumerate the iddhi powers in several places. For
instance in the Samanna-Phala Sutta the Buddha enumerates the five
modes of mystical insight that an arahat possesses:

the practice of iddhi—`being one he becomes many, or having become
many becomes one again; he becomes visible or invisible; he goes, feeling
no obstruction, to the further side of a wall or rampart or hill, as if through
air...he walks on water without breaking through, as if on solid ground;
he travels cross-legged in the sky...even the moon and the sun, so
potent...does he touch with his hand...' (Rhys Davids, Vol. II, 1899,
pp. 88-9);

the heavenly ear—the ability to hear sounds, both human and celestial,
whether far or near;

knowledge of others' thoughts;

memory of his own previous births;

the heavenly eye—the knowledge of other people's previous births.

What is of special interest in respect of the concerns of this book is
the relation between the achievement of arahatship and the possession
and employment of these mystic powers. In the Samanna-Phala Sutta
the Buddha has listed `The Fruits of the Life of a Recluse' and in this
list the mystic powers of iddhi rank high, superseded only by the higher
achievement of the destruction of ignorance, rebirth and the sure knowledge
of emancipation.

Thus a remarkable feature of the arahat is that in the course of his
mental and spiritual progress he naturally attains extraordinary powers.
But in the Kevaddha Suttanta (Rhys Davids, Vol. II, 1899, Ch. II) the
Buddha is said to have taken a definite stand regarding their exercise.
On being urged by Kevaddha, a young householder, to perform mystic

wonders so as to make the people of Nalanda more devoted to the Exalted
One, the Buddha, while conceding that he has himself realized the powers
of iddhi (the `mystic wonder' and the `wonder of manifestation') asserted
strongly that he loathed their practice, and that a greater and better
wonder, which he had realized and recommended, was the wonder of
education, that is, the system of self-training which culminated in arahatship.

The doctrinal position thus is that while it is inevitable that, at an
advanced stage in his progress, the searcher attains mystic powers—
which are in fact a mark of his progress—the exercise of these powers
is dangerous both for the monk, who may be seduced into a vain magical
mastery of the world, and for the laymen, because it may cause confusion
in their minds and give opportunity for unbelievers to degrade the mystic
powers of the recluse and equate them with the efficacy of base charms.
The Buddha therefore forbade the monk to exhibit his powers before
non-initiates, and the following stricture is embedded in the Canonical
Law of the Vinaya: `You are not, O Bhikkus, to display before the laity
the wonders of iddhi, surpassing the power of ordinary men. Whosoever
does so shall be guilty of a wrong act' (dukkata).

While Buddhist commentators and expositors state the above as the
Buddha's position on this issue, a measure of ambiguity and contradiction
is introduced in the Patika Suttanta (Rhys Davids, Vol. IV, Part III, 1957,
Ch. 24), which belongs to the same historical period as the suttas already
cited. In this dialogue the Buddha claimed to have worked wonders of an
amusing and magical nature to vindicate his superiority over other ascetics.

I am not concerned here with sifting out the true doctrine but to
pinpoint a phenomenon dealt with in classical Buddhist doctrine and
which serves as a point of reference for certain kinds of cults and practitioners
one meets in the field today.

The powers of iddhi (itthibat in Siamese) as set out above are not
peculiar to Buddhism alone; they are for the most part stereotyped and
occur in all the ascetic and mystical literatures of India (Eliade 1958).

The supra-normal powers of the arahat thus have an indirect bearing
on contemporary religion in so-called Buddhist countries. Strictly speaking,
in the Buddhist discussion of the problem, it is by virtue of mental
discipline and by undergoing an inner transformation that the monk
gains the mystic powers, and it is because their indulgence and exercise
would stall his progress to the final goal that Buddha forbade their display
as dukkata (evil deed). To make false profession of the attainment of
arahatship is one of the four crimes that result in permanent exclusion
from the priesthood.

But the possibility of acquiring mystic powers is not denied. And the

way is therefore open for someone to take to the ascetic and meditative
discipline in order to acquire them. An example that springs to mind is
the Burmese weikza, who is regarded as possessed of supernatural powers,
long-lived and on the path to nirvana (Mendelson 1963). The possibility
is also there for someone to use the vehicles of inner transformation—
chants and spells—without actually undergoing the mental transformation
in the Buddhist meditative sense. Thus come about hierarchical distinctions
between ritual specialists and practitioners in respect of their ethical
status and endowment with spiritual power (rit in Siamese). The actual
results of these possible developments we shall see later in Chapter 18,
which deals with exorcism.