As we can see from the Bāhiya story, the transcendent ‘right view’ (sammaditthi) is not a simple opposition of ‘right’ concepts against ‘wrong’ concepts (micchaditthi). The crucial point is how the concepts are used. His right relationship with concepts invited a gap in Bāhiya’s object-making thought stream. Right view, then, is an alive, intuitive, non-conceptual understanding that, merges in the deathless; and, allows space for direct experience of both concepts and non-conceptual experiences.
A related aspect of the arahant’s consciousness is that although she has transcended the causal matrix, she does not evade its presence. She is also subject to normal human vicissitudes – whatever perturbation goes with having a human body, with its nervous system and its thinking, but without ‘the mental-emotional biases'(āsavas):
“This mode of perception is empty of the effluent of sensuality… of becoming… of ignorance. And there is just this non-emptiness: that connected with the six sensory spheres, dependent on this very body with life as its condition.’ Thus he regards it as empty of whatever is not there. Whatever remains, he discerns as present: ‘There is this.’ And so this, his entry into emptiness, accords with actuality, is undistorted in meaning, pure — superior & unsurpassed.“- Culasuññata Sutta. Trans. Thanissaro, Bhikkhu.
So, the arahant is one whom we could describe as ‘in the world, but not of it,’ as the Sufis say. She is a person not identified with or by any content – such as body, speech or mind. She or he is a person of ‘suchness.’
She, by not conceiving of any ‘thing’-substance to anything at all, has vanquished Māra, the bringer of death. We’ll see how that can be, in a post in the near future.
A well-known characteristic of the ascetic arahant is ‘homelessness.’ The mendicant arahants at the time of the historical Buddha abandoned worldly affairs literally. The mendicant Mahākaccāna, a prominent student of the Nikāya Buddha, however, proposed a figurative interpretation of ‘homelessness’ – no doubt so that it could be applied more widely:
And how, householder, does one roam about homeless? The desire, lust, delight, and craving, the engagement and clinging, the mental standpoints, adherences, and underlying tendencies regarding [the five khandhas], these have been abandoned…. so that they are no more subject to future arising. Therefore, the Tathāgata is called one who roams about homeless. (SN 22:3, Haliddikani sutta, trans. Bodhi, Bhikkhu)
While she is not identified with her five sentient processes, while she knows the limits of ordinary knowing and she knows a ‘beyond,’ and while she is in the world but not of it, the arahant nevertheless knows how to use language in the ordinary ways. She doesn’t avoid saying ‘I’:
Though the wise one transcends conceiving,
She nevertheless might say, ‘I speak,’
She might also say, ‘They speak to me.’
Skilful, knowing the world’s common usage
She uses such terms as nothing more than gestures.
– Samyutta Nikāya I.61-64 Translated by Christopher J. Ash
She knows words don’t create realities. (This, by the way, is an early seed of the later ‘two truths doctrine.’)
So, how does the great arahant, the Nikaya Buddha, the fully awakened one, the flourishing one, the well-gone one, how does he see the relationship of language to experiencing? Is that a valid question, or a modern preoccupation?