When people do that, they are not bowing down to the individual but whole sangha. To that unbroken lineage going back to the Buddha. In the dhamma vinaya the robe is not called a piece of cloth. It is the flag or standard of the Arahants.
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That makes a lot of sense to me. I reckon it’s one thing to metaphorically “polish the mirror” in spiritual practice (over the years to remove some imperfections and smudges). It can be easy to think we’re doing great but then comes just the wrong situation or person perfectly suited to trigger us! 
I guess an arahant is someone for whom the mirror is 100% spotlessly clean and will not lose their basic poise in any situation. That finality sounds like a very tall order. Though I also don’t want to talk up the difficultly to the extent it is unattainable (many people were attaining this in the Buddha’s day). But I’d guess a 100% commitment is a minimum prerequisite: a bit like the sutta with the metaphor of a guy walking with a pot of oil on his head through a crowded fair with everyone gaping at a beautiful woman and a soldier walking right behind ready to swing his sword and lop off his head if a single drop of oil falls! High motivation levels there!
You’re right, I’d say, that the Buddha’s initial band of five obviously had high commitment levels already: had abandoned household life and subjected themselves to batteries of self-torment and physical austerities in pursuit of a goal. Maybe the effort had not been wisely directed, but they were nothing if not motivated.
I’m not sure if high commitment necessarily translates into the taking up of robes, but I’d reckon for the final stage(s) of the path commitment probably has had to have become pretty unwavering!
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I appreciate you looking up these texts. But we probably have different attitudes towards the texts and therefore come to different conclusions. For me the suttas are not Buddha-word but redactions, filtered, edited, composed. In engaging with the texts I try to find out what they can tell me and what spiritual value they have. The sutta you quoted (AN 7.29) is a good example for a text that most religions churn out eventually: “Don’t pray to other gods”, “Don’t believe false prophets”, “Only Jesus is the way” etc. I cannot take it seriously - the aim is religious coherence, mainly because the topic is not dispassion, freedom, the workings of the mind…
The second text seems to reflect some social realities of monastics. And sure, ideally we’d be above it all. The sutta says “some monastics are comfortable in spite of all, some are not”.
This is what we like to tell ourselves. In reality (that is my interpretation, I’m not a mind-reader) people bow down because of social expectation and habit. Why do Westeners bow down? They have seen Asians doing it, and like the explanation given. And Asians do it invariably - not because they feel the respect - otherwise they would sometimes bow and sometimes not. It’s a custom with a nice explanation that makes it palatable. Partly I can follow the explanation, but not fully. And who bows down to lay teachers who represent the Dhamma?
My pleasure. I also appreciate you not becoming angry or unreasonable. Good luck on your quest!
“Let there be nothing untried; for nothing happens by itself, but men obtain all things by trying.”
— Herodotus
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The fetter framework is useful in understanding the preconditions for spiritual attainments. Further, they’re referenced in all four “major” Nikayas, so they can’t be too late of an addition. If a teaching is useful, there’s no point in tossing it aside.
This is an interesting point.
The dhamma is a gradual training (pali: anupubbasikkhā) that starts with cultivating the basics, and aiming for attainments that are within our reach. Taking on more than one can handle, or trying to pursue a fast lane, will likely lead to discouragement.
“The ocean gradually slants, slopes, and inclines, with no abrupt precipice. In the same way in this teaching and training the penetration to enlightenment comes from gradual training, progress, and practice, not abruptly.”
— AN 8.19
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True enough. I am against advocates of “using will-power instead of wisdom-power”, taking shortcuts, swallowing more than one can chew, wishing for instant enlightenment with no regard for Conditioned Origination. I hope you did not infer that from my comment?
This is an excellent passage. Every Buddhist needs to learn and memorize it. The Buddha explained the Noble Path as a Gradual Path.
Nevertheless, I have heard this simile: Human beings wallowing in endless rounds of rebirth is akin to swimmers floundering in the ocean, in deep water, carried by waves and tides. As they train themselves along the Eightfold Noble Path, they gradually purify their mind from defilements, their sight is set on the shoreline, they swim against the current and approach the shore. At one point they find their feet touching the sandy ground, the waves are calmer. They can wade with ease walking along the sandy bottom. Dry land is within sight and nothing can hold them back. This is how the aryan-sangha no longer regress, carried by the waves of desires, aversion and delusion, the outflow (asava).
Amen.
Not at all. I didn’t infer the opposite in your comment. I was agreeing with you.
I totally agree with you in regard to the “five fetters that maintain us in the lower (realms)” that are found in many suttas in all four main collections with explanations about what they are and what are the various fruits of having eliminated them (from stream-entry to arahat) but not regarding the so-called five higher fetters that are mainly found in the SN (45 to 53) without any explanation about what they are for.
To me, “seeing the deathless” is equivalent to the attainment of gotrabhū-ñāna:
gotrabhū-ñāna: “Change of lineage knowledge”: The glimpse of nibbāna that changes one from an ordinary person (puthujjana) to a Noble One (ariya-puggala).
_Source: A Glossary of Pali and Buddhist Terms
I think it is worth investigating where else in the Pali Nikaya the formula ‘amataddaso amataṃ sacchikatvā iriyati’, translated as ‘see the deathless, and live having realized the deathless’ shows up.
I only found AN6.119, which is the first of the series of suttas on on lay disciples possessing six qualities.
It is also worth finding out how it shows in non-Pali parallels (like Chinese Agamas…).
It is nevertheless noteworthy that apparently the neither AN6.119 nor AN6.120-139 haven’t yet got no recorded parallels in SC.
https://suttacentral.net/an6.119
https://suttacentral.net/an6.120-139
Note that these suttas refer to foremost lay disciples such as Anāthapindika (aka Sudatta), all known in the texts to have attained to non-return. See both SN2.20 and MN143 as pali suttas with many parallels which support that understanding.
By inference I therefore conclude that the lay disciples found and referred to in AN6.119 and AN6.120-139 have all come to a similar fruition.
amata was the original word used by the Buddha to describe his own liberation (the word nibbāna came later). The amata idea was already in the early Upanishads as meaning reaching immortality by merging the atman with Brahma. As usual the Buddha reused a term but redefined it; in this case it means “undying” (some translate it as deathless). amata is directly connected to māra, who means “the killer”. To conquer māra is to vanquish death. So having realised the deatless means having become an arahat. These many lay people were thus arahat.
Michael David Radish PHD thesis explains that it is possible to realise a state of undying in which one no longer “is” the thing that dies and as one of his student suggests “when reaching the “undying” one is “not-to-die” in the sense that one is already dead”. I takes this last point as the arahat who has the full realisation of anata makes one realises that one is not the 5-kandhas that will disappear at death.
So how to explain the inconsistency in the case of Anāthapindika (aka Sudatta), which as per SN2.20 and MN143 are depicted as having attained to non-return and not arahantship?
Many suttas indicate that having destroyed the five fetters (that attach to the lower (realms)) either one becomes an arahat or if there is some attachment left to spontaneously being reborn in a rupa-realm and without returning to this world will finish the job there…
Thanks, I am aware of that.
But what you have written does not explain why in the suttas I pointed one of the lay disciples mentioned in AN6.120-139 is clearly stated to having attained non-return and not arahantship.
Thus, I dont think we have a strong enough argument to conclude that the lay disciples found and referred to in AN6.119 and AN6.120-139 have attained to arahantship and not come to a similar fruition as the one of Anāthapindika (aka Sudatta), i.e. non-return.
You are making assumption from just one person story who may have been another person anyway. What counts is the usual meaning of undying in the Buddha dispensation.
I am just highlighting the apparent inconsistency and inferring that for the inconsistency to not be there then the lay disciples the AN suttas speak of must have attained to the safe fruition as Anathapindika. All in all, to me this is where we agree to disagree. 
Moreover, the fact across the entire nikayas we have only a handful of lay disciples listed briefly as having attained to a high fruition tells me more about the low odds of that taking place in absence of greater dedication to the undertaking of the sort of rightlihood the bhikkhu / bhikkhuni sangha preserves. Reading anything different than that to me from that fact strikes me as wishful thinking!
Last but not least, we have almost no details about how in fact these individuals witnessed the deathless. It may very well be the case they did so at the deathbed as commentarial tradition holds it is possible for lay disciples to do so…
I guess it rather comes down to logical consistency. There is little doubt that in the overwhelming majority of cases in the Suttas we have monastic arahants.
Some important factors, that I think are obvious, but as I learned people disagree with:
- The texts are transmitted by monastics. Socially there is an inherent interest to present their status as important - how else could they justify at all that the monastic sangha is necessary, if lay people could equally reach the goal. This is a transmission argument for around the 2nd or 1st century BCE.
- If you listen to lay teachers I think you hardly hear the position “I was lucky, I still recommend you to ordain”. They rather talk about the nature of the mind than about rules and communities (see for example Nisargadatta or even Ramana who was ascetic himself)
- Lay people in ancient India didn’t have the liberty that urban practitioners have and were much more tied to family and income
- The term ‘arahant’ itself is a rather monastic one - ‘The Worthy’ - worthy of what? of veneration and offering as B.Bodhi writes. Since ‘offering’ doesn’t apply to lay people there might have been conceptual obstacles to apply the term to lay people at all. Again we don’t have enough deviating material, but if that was correct we would find more ‘amata’ applied to lay people than ‘arahant’.
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For the record, as per AN1.248-257 Anāthapiṇḍika was named in full Sudatta. It is not about assumptions.
https://suttacentral.net/an1.248-257/en/sujato
There is an unusual description of the qualities of lay disciples in AN 6.120-139:
“Mendicants, having six qualities … [a number of householders] … are certain about the Realized One, see freedom from death and live having realized freedom from death.
What six?
Experiential confidence in the Buddha, the teaching, and the Saṅgha, and noble ethics, knowledge, and freedom.
Having these six qualities the [aforementioned] lay followers are certain about the Realized One, see freedom from death and live having realized freedom from death.”
There are some places where there is a qualification of qualities like “noble ethics, knowledge, and freedom” as those of an adept, that is someone who has completed the training, and as this isn’t said here, I thought that means perhaps they don’t have this degree of these qualities. But with all searching I could find ethics of a trainee, but nowhere did I find knowledge or freedom of a trainee. Also, the description of not only “seeing freedom from death”, but “having realized freedom from death” sounds pretty much like a perfected one.
How is this to be understood?
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Maybe when a lay disciple becomes Arahant he keeps the whole Vinnaya without knowing?
Page 89, Bhante aggacitta said this is trainee, who has realized nibbāna as well. Touching with the body is another thing only for arahants and he mapped AN11.7 to that. Whereas B. @Sunyo mapped that to stream winner seeing Nibbāna.
From the point of view of Abhidhamma, knowledge is also present in stream winners as there’s many insights to go through before the path knowledge.
And for me freedom can mean freedom from the lower realms, and from infinite deaths, just a finite amount left.
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