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The monk doesn’t elaborate why one can’t become a sotapanna by reading and contemplating dhamma concepts. As long as one has the intelligence, wisdom and sensory faculty capable of receiving dhamma input, I don’t see why a deaf person can’t be a sotapanna. It might be harder than for those who can listen though.
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We must continue to listen further. He specified that the Dhamma must be learned from an ariya. One must listen to the correct Dhamma. It is impossible to learn the Dhamma alone without learning it from an ariya. Personally, I agree with him. The perfect example is an arupa brahma. It is impossible for any ariya, even a Lord Buddha to teach them the Dhamma. They don’t have the 5 senses necessary to learn it. Of course, an ariya who is reborn in arupa loka will attain Nibbāna. The reason is that he learned the Dhamma before losing these 5 senses. I believe that a person who learned the Dhamma before becoming deaf can realize Nibbāna. However, a person who is born deaf will have some disability. Once again this is my personal opinion.
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Of course, an anariya arupa brahma won’t be able to attain Nibbana in that bhava. That is why I said, “As long as one has the intelligence, wisdom and sensory faculty capable of receiving dhamma input…”. A deaf person can’t listen but if they can see, they can read and ponder the dhamma concepts written by ariya.
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I am also quite conflicted with this. On one hand, if there are texts around like this website, and one understands it, that means that one can become a sotapanna without listening. This is logical because the dhamma is meant to be understood.
However, if the last ariya dies while this site is still available, does it make sense that this site magically becomes unreadable? Yet we cannot comprehend the dhamma without a living ariya!
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Jittananto started the thread by asking: “The Bhante says that a deaf person cannot reach the sotāpanna stage. Do you agree?”
1. There are three types of humans: (i) tihetuka births, (ii) dvihetuka births, and (iii) ahetuka births.
- Those with a tihetuka birth (meaning the birth was due to a past kamma done with mundane alobha, adosa, amoha) can attain magga phala in this life.
- Those with a dvihetuka birth (meaning the birth was due to a past kamma done with mundane alobha and adosa) cannot attain magga phala in this life. However, they can accrue “good kamma” and may even get a tihetuka birth next time.
- Those with an ahetuka birth (meaning the birth was due to a past kamma done without akusala kamma but not with strong enough mundane alobha and adosa) are born with apparent mental and or physical deficiency. They cannot do either of the above. Note that ahetuka does not mean “without causes”; it just means not enough “potent good causes, even if no bad causes.)
2. It is not easy to determine whether a person is a tihetuka or a dvihetuka.
- However, it is fairly easy to identify an ahetuka. They are typically born with (i) a physical handicap (especially with one or more of the sensory faculties missing) or (ii) an apparent mental deficiency (very low IQ.)
- Even in case (i) above, there could be complications. For example, a baby may be born without the ability to see or hear. Still, the baby’s mental body may have cakkhu and sota pasada rupa intact, but one or both of those two senses may not work due to damage to the physical body parts (e.g., eyes, optical nerve, eardrum, etc.) while in the womb. In that case, it is still a tihetuka birth.
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The next question is whether one can attain the Sotapanna stage by reading the correct Buddha Dhamma.
3. The four requirements for someone to attain the Sōtapanna stage of Nibbāna are Sappurisasaṃsevo, saddhammassavanaṃ, yonisomanasikāro, dhammānudhammappaṭipatti“. See #3 of “Four Conditions for Attaining Sotāpanna Magga/Phala.”
- As explained there, “To fulfill the first two requirements, it is necessary to associate with (Sappurisasaṃsevo) and learn from (saddhammassavanaṃ) a Noble Person (Ariya).”
- However, the translation of saddhammassavana (saddhamma savana) means “learn from that Noble Person by listening to his/her explanations.” Of course, in the days of the Buddha, that was the only way since written texts were not available.
- Thus, even though we cannot be definite about it, it is reasonable to assume that one could learn by reading texts, provided they are correct and written by an Ariya.
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Now, to the last question by Pathfinder: “However, if the last ariya dies while this site is still available, does it make sense that this site magically becomes unreadable? Yet we cannot comprehend the dhamma without a living ariya!”
- That question was addressed in the following thread: “How the Meanings Got Lost and How to Interpret.”
- See the comment by Taryal on July 28, 2024, at 1:05 am and my response to it.
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