Now each of these 5 masters is wondering if he is the one who is not one of the four!
I don’t know 4 of them… I’ll have to do a bit of googling I suppose.
Perhaps because the one (Ven. Gaksan) is the host, who invited the other four preeminent monks:
Thanks for sharing. I looked up some information on these Masters and found here:
http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=12987
that Ajahn Ganhah is regarded as an Arhat.
Does anyone know on what criteria, today, people get to be regarded as arhats? I understand that in EBT it was the Buddha who could tell.
Today, is it the monks themselves who declare it? Or their teachers? Or are there some criteria that must be met?
People are free to regard any bhikkhu, bhikkhuni, tree or box as whatever they want, including an arahant!
Ordained monastics are required to observe four parajika rules, which if broken result in expulsion. One of those four rules relates to the false claiming of profound spiritual attainments (including arahanthood). I strongly recommend you check it:
As a result, bhikkhus and bhikkhunis make the choice of simply not openly talking about that subject.
This means that whatever claim we hear or read about is usually noise, gossip from careless lay disciples which lack understanding of how back in the time of the Buddha this topic only caused trouble and dis-harmony …
Needless to say , given that cultivating the path only requires receiving from a Buddha the instructions of how to do it, it is most proper that us non-monastics mind our own spiritual practice: knowing whether a certain bhikkhu or bhikkhuni is arahant is not going to get us any closer to fullfilling the ennobling tasks the four Noble Truths point us to.
If Ajahn A, B or C, or lay disciple X, Y Z has attained whatever, it absolutely is not my business! Unless, of course, someone were to convince me that I need anything more than the words of the Buddha for me to bring about peace unto myself.