19.3 Of the Fruits of Life in Religion (KV19.3)

Controverted Point: That the fruit of recluseship is unconditioned.

Theravādin: Do you then identify that “fruit” with Nibbāna: the Shelter, the Cave, the Refuge, the Goal, the Past-Decease, the Ambrosial? Or are there two “unconditioneds”? You deny both alternatives but you must assent to one or the other. If to the latter, I ask are they both … Nibbānas, and is there one higher than the other,… or is there a boundary … an interstice between them?

Again, do you imply that recluseship itself is unconditioned? “No, conditioned”, you say. Then is its fruit or reward conditioned? … .

You admit, again, that the four stages in the recluse's Ariyan Path—the Four Paths—are conditioned. Yet you would deny that the Four Fruits are conditioned!

In fact, you would have in these four and Nibbāna five “unconditioneds”. Or if you identify the four with Nibbāna, you then get five sorts of Nibbāna, five Shelters, and so on … .

The Points of Controversy, an English translation of the Pali Abhidhamma Kathāvatthu. Translated by Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. First published by Pali Text Society, 1915.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Manfred Wierich and Ven. Vimala and proofread by Josephine Tobin. Some changes were introduced:

Abbreviations, i.e., those of cited works and the participants in the controversies, were expanded.

Cross-references were linked.

Some typographic changes were introduced, among others, i.e.: the phonetic symbol “ŋ” was changed to the Pāli diacritical letter “ṃ”, “ô” to “o”, single quotes to double quotes, and “:—” to “:”.

Letter-spacing with fixed spaces was replaced with bold font.

The corrigenda were merged into the text. Some could not be resolved, though.

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