Thank you for all the kind responses: I am reading them with great interest, and they are providing much food for thought. I am learning quite a lot, and I am very grateful. I am sorry that I don’t have much to contribute other than questions, but below I have included some thoughts based on what I have read so far:
In the thread on the Ten-fold Path , @Gabriel , you brought up Rod Bucknell’s paper on the variety of paths, where you cite him as maintaining that
Right Knowledge and Right Liberation are not automatic developments on the path and have to be practiced.
I have not finished the article, but so far he seems undecided. Nevertheless, you asked the question:
I think we should separate intention from insight and/or wisdom here: the first is volitional, the latter two are not necessarily. Perhaps it would be more effective to try and find evidence demonstrating that actual volitional effort is required for attaining anything subsequent to Right Concentration, and then to assume, if no evidence were to be found, that whatever is attained is an automatic result.
Really great questions here, Charles! Additionally, assuming the answer to question 1 were “no” (which seems to be the direction things are going), I would add one more:
2.5 Is samādhi a requirement for liberation?
While I think the general consensus here would be that EBTs are probably the final authority, I for one think there is may be value in citing (“later”) patterns: my limited knowledge of the Mahāyāna and Chinese Buddhism has led me to believe that trends found in those corpuses (corpi?) do often shed light on EBT doctrine (sort of breaking us out of Theravādin thought patterns). I’d be interested if you had some personal insight to add in this regard.