Yeos,
Thank you for this.
Your ‘conceptual’ (Ariya – involving Tilakkhana) and ‘Third hypothesis’ (related to magga phala, so also involving Tilakkhana, plus ‘living ethically and a lot of study’) to me are one. This last not ‘another subject’. I combine the two.
So to me it is: living a moral life as far as possible (occasional ‘slips’ happen, but not grave ones) – therefore sila; dana (by body, speech AND mind), ever mindful of the anicca and anatta nature and ‘how everything eventually, even all this, comes to nothing in the grandest cosmic timescale imaginable.
Metta to you