I wish there was more material to back up any further theories about the FF & DF. If the agamas are not too revealing I’m afraid it all stands on shaky feet. Keeping that in mind…[quote=“Aminah, post:6, topic:5778”]
I wonder if this might be squared by what’s pointed to in eg. SN 22.87
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I would personally follow completely (but couldn’t deduce it from these texts)! If the love for the Buddha is not backed up by dhamma, in what do I have faith in, the cool name ‘Buddha’? or ‘enlightenment’? or the ‘supreme holy man’? But that’s just my inclination to emphasize the dhamma - other followers might see it differently.[quote=“Aminah, post:6, topic:5778”]
Is there anything to suggest becoming a faith-/Dhamma-follower is quite such a fixed ‘attainment’…?
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Unfortunately not. The sources I collected are really the only ones the four nikayas provide. So what we have is
- SN 55.24/25 stating that they are not going to hell - which doesn’t automatically mean that they are inevitably destined to bodhi
- and the stronger MN 22 and MN 34 that basically equate them with sotapannas
But to be fair - if FF and DF were a consistent concept - SN 25 says that they are bound to be sotapannas in their lifetime. That would get rid of the confusion: It’s not that they are sotapannas already, just that they are destined to become sotapannas in their lifetime. But that’s just SN 25, and also leaves us questioning ‘what happens in case of an accident - spontaneous sotapatti?!’…[quote=“Aminah, post:6, topic:5778”]
sotāpattimagga
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It’s a bit of a stretch, but theoretically it could be that DF and FF are those who “practise to gain the
fruit of Stream-Entry” which are, according to DN 33 and MN 142 one of “Eight persons worthy of offerings”. These practitioners are also mentioned (without a ‘title’) in SN 22.122/123, SN 48.18, SN 55.55, AN 1.596, AN 5.260, AN 5.268, AN 8.19, AN 8.59, AN 9.9, AN 9.10. But it is nowhere mentioned that those are bound to sotapatti at the end of their lifes…
Please look for this discussion regarding the application of ‘ariya’ to not-yet-sotapannas. We collected some sources that imply that basically everyone who is ‘seriously’ on the path can be called an ‘ariya’: https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/ariyo-vs-ariya/
Certainly FF & DF don’t have any ‘knowledge’ or ‘vision’, or ‘have seen for themselves’, we can exclude that from the wider contexts in which the two are mentioned. I think the verb you are looking for here is khamati - not a satisfying word to translate (SuttaCentral):
Tathāgatappaveditā cassa dhammā paññāya mattaso nijjhānaṃ khamanti.
And the teachings proclaimed by the Tathagata are accepted by him after being pondered to a sufficient degree with wisdom.
Anyway, good questions, and hopefully some agama-insights will help us further!