Realising the Four Noble Truths & Abandoning the Self-View (The Simile of the Archer)

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Teaching of the Buddha was purely to see the Truth. The Buddha realising the extreme difficulty of attaining the true goal of seeing the Truth, does not favour any half-hearted measures and enjoins a holy life pure and perfect. Stream winner is the definition of a person who sees the truth by abandoning self-view. If one aims to become a stream winner treating it as a mundane qualification, it suggests that his aim is not to be free from the self-view but to strengthen it.

The Enlightened One speaks of the feat of a holy aspirant as something much more difficult than that of a skilled archer.

When Ananda reports to Buddha about the difficult feat of Liccavi youth who were shooting even with their arrows from a distance through a very small keyhole, and splitting an arrow, shot after shot, with never a miss, the Blessed One asked him, ''Now what do you think, Ananda? Which is the harder, which is the harder task to compass: To shoot like that or to pierce one strand of hair, a hundred times divided, with another strand?'

'Why, lord, of course to split a hair in such a way is the harder, much the harder task.'

'Just so, Ananda, they who penetrate the meaning of this is dukkha, this is the arising of dukkha, this is the ceasing of dukkha and this is the path that leads to the ceasing of dukkha, pierce through something much harder to pierce.

Wherefore, Ananda, you must make an effort to realise (The Four Noble Truths): This is dukkha. This is the arising of dukkha. This is the ceasing of dukkha. This is the path that leads to the ceasing of dukkha.'


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