Faith-Follower, Dharma-Follower, and the Five Kinds of Liberation
The fourth distinction, faith-follower and Dharma-follower, sorted by whether the noble path is pursued on another's word or through direct engagement with the teaching — and the opening five of the treatise's extended twenty-seven-fold fruit classification, distinguishing how liberation is actually reached and how completely it has been realized.
1. Faith-Follower and Dharma-Follower
云何方便差別？此有二種，謂隨信行、隨法行補特伽羅差別故。何等隨信行補特伽羅？謂資糧已具、性是鈍根，隨順他教修諦現觀。何等隨法行補特伽羅？謂資糧已具、性是利根，自然隨順諦增上法修諦現觀。
What is the distinction of means? There are two: the faith-follower person and the Dharma-follower person.
What is the faith-follower person? One whose provisions are already complete, of dull faculties, who cultivates direct realization of the truths by following another's instruction. What is the Dharma-follower person? One whose provisions are already complete, of sharp faculties, who cultivates direct realization of the truths by naturally engaging with the exalted teaching of the truths itself.
This distinction picks up precisely where the third distinction left off: both persons here have already completed their provisions, at the strong degree just examined in Part 85, and are now actually engaged in the path of preparation immediately preceding the path of seeing. What separates them is not how far they have progressed but how they progress — the faith-follower, being of dull faculties, relies on a teacher's guidance to advance, still needing another's instruction to actually engage the truths; the Dharma-follower, being of sharp faculties, is able to engage the exalted teaching of the truths directly and naturally, without needing to lean on another's word at every step. This same distinction, the treatise's next section shows, continues to differentiate these two persons all the way through to the fruit they eventually reach.
2. Five Kinds of Liberation
何等信勝解補特伽羅？謂隨信行已至果位。何等見至補特伽羅？謂隨法行已至果位。何等身證補特伽羅？謂諸有學已具證得八解脫定。何等慧解脫補特伽羅？謂已盡諸漏而未具證八解脫定。何等俱分解脫補特伽羅？謂已盡諸漏及具證得八解脫定。
What is the person of conviction through faith? It is the faith-follower who has now reached the level of fruit. What is the person of arrival through view? It is the Dharma-follower who has now reached the level of fruit.
What is the body-witness person? It is one still in training who has already realized and fully attained the eight liberations. What is the wisdom-liberated person? It is one who has already exhausted every contaminant, but has not yet fully attained the eight liberations. What is the both-ways liberated person? It is one who has already exhausted every contaminant, and has also already realized and fully attained the eight liberations.
T1606 explains that the faith-follower and the Dharma-follower do not vanish once the path of seeing is reached — they simply take on new names, conviction through faith and arrival through view respectively, marking the very same two persons now standing at the level of an actual fruit of the path rather than still on the approach to it. The remaining three — the body-witness, the wisdom-liberated, and the both-ways liberated — sort persons instead by a different criterion entirely: not how they arrived, but how completely their liberation has been realized. The body-witness is specifically identified with the non-returner who has, in addition to the ordinary liberation from affliction, also personally attained and now fully abides in the eight liberations — meditative attainments to be examined in detail later in this chapter — earning the name "body-witness" because that attainment is directly witnessed in one's own person rather than known merely by report. The wisdom-liberated has permanently exhausted every contaminant through wisdom alone, severing specifically the obstruction that wisdom is capable of counteracting, but without having gone on to also attain the eight liberations. And the both-ways liberated has accomplished both at once — freedom from the contaminants through wisdom, and freedom from the obstruction to concentration through the eight liberations — liberated, in this sense, in two distinct respects simultaneously rather than one alone.
Part 86 Complete
Faith-follower and Dharma-follower, and the first five of the twenty-seven fruits, are now examined. Part 87 turns to the four classic pairs of path and fruit — stream-entry, once-returning, non-returning, and arhatship — beginning with why the noble path is said to sever only three fetters at the moment stream-entry is actually attained, though every fetter belonging to the path of seeing has in fact already been severed.
Continue to Part 87 — Stream-Entry, and the Three Fetters →