Arhat

• 1. Introduction

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  An Arhat is a person in Buddhism who has seen through the nature of existence, reached nirvana, and broken free from the cycle of endless rebirth. Five hundred stone statues of these figures stand at the Daishō-in temple on the island of Miyajima in Japan, each face different, each one meant to depict a real attained being. Walk among them long enough and a question forms: what exactly did these people achieve, and why do Buddhists argue so fiercely about whether it was enough? The concept of the arhat reaches back before Buddhism itself, yet the tradition has spent centuries debating whether an arhat truly deserves the name. Some schools called them fallible. Some called them selfish. Others regarded them as so close to full buddhahood that the distinction barely matters. What is an arhat, how did eight or more distinct Buddhist schools come to disagree about their status, and why did a Chinese monk named Guanxiu paint their portraits in 891 CE and donate them to a temple that guards them to this day?

• 2. Roots of a Word

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  Sanskrit hands down the word arhat from the verbal root meaning "to deserve." The related forms arha, arhaṇa, and the past participle arhita carry meanings of meriting, being entitled, and being honored. The word appears in the Ṛgveda with exactly this sense of deserving. Tibetan translators, working centuries later, did not simply borrow the Sanskrit sound. They rendered it by meaning instead, producing dgra bcom pa, which translates as "one who has destroyed the foes of afflictions." The foes here are internal: greed, hatred, delusion, craving. The Tibetan translators understood the term as ari-hanta, a compound pointing to the destruction of those inner enemies. In Chinese, the word arrived as a phonetic transliteration, āluóhàn, quickly shortened to luóhàn in everyday usage. Japanese adopted the same characters and pronounced them differently again. The same concept thus entered East Asian culture under a name that sounded like the original Sanskrit rather than translating its meaning, which may explain why the luohan or lohan figures in Chinese and Japanese art carry such distinctive, individualized faces: they arrived as named persons rather than as an abstract category.

• 3. A Divided Verdict

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  At least eight early Buddhist schools took explicit positions on whether an arhat's attainment was complete. The Sarvāstivāda, Kāśyapīya, Mahāsāṃghika, Ekavyāvahārika, Lokottaravāda, Bahuśrutīya, Prajñaptivāda, and Caitika schools all concluded that arhats fell short of buddhas in their attainments. The Kāśyapīyins went further, holding that arhats have not fully eliminated desire, that their perfection is incomplete, and that relapse remains possible. The Caitikas explicitly championed the bodhisattva ideal over the arhat path, calling the latter the śrāvakayāna, or the vehicle of the hearers. The Sarvāstivādin text called the Nāgadatta Sūtra dramatizes this tension directly. In it, the demon Māra disguises himself as the father of Nāgadatta, a Buddhist nun, and tries to persuade her to settle for arhatship rather than pursue full buddhahood. Nāgadatta's reply is the sūtra's sharpest line: "A Buddha's wisdom is like empty space of the ten-quarters, which can enlighten innumerable people. But an Arhat's wisdom is inferior." The Mahīśāsaka school and the Theravada took the opposite view, considering buddhas and arhats closely similar to each other. Buddhaghosa, the fifth-century Theravadin commentator, placed the arhat squarely at the completion of the path to liberation.

• 4. The Theravada Path

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  Theravada tradition identifies the Buddha himself as an arhat, alongside his enlightened followers, because all of them are free from greed, hatred, delusion, ignorance, and craving. Bhikkhu Bodhi writes that the Pāli Canon portrays the Buddha declaring himself to be an arahant, and that "the defining mark of an arahant is the attainment of nirvāṇa in this present life." The word tathāgata, which usually refers to the Buddha alone, occasionally appears as a synonym for arhat in the Pali Canon. Ānanda, one of the Buddha's closest disciples, described four distinct routes to arhatship. A practitioner might develop insight preceded by serenity, serenity preceded by insight, both in a stepwise fashion, or experience a sudden mental seizure by excitation about the dhamma that produces serenity and uproots the fetters all at once. This last route, striking in its immediacy, is numbered among the legitimate paths in AN 4.170. The technical distinction between the arhat's two phases of nirvana matters in Theravada thought. Before death, the five aggregates, which include physical form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness, continue to function in a state called nirvana with residue. At physical death they cease entirely, producing nirvana without residue. This final state is parinirvana. Those who have eliminated greed and hatred but still carry some residue of delusion are called anagami, or non-returners: they will not be reborn into the human world but into the Pure Abodes, a heavenly realm populated only by anagamis, where they complete the remaining work.

• 5. Mahayana's Reframing

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  Mahayana Buddhism reordered the map entirely. At the top of its hierarchy sits the samyaksambuddha, with mahāsattvas below, then pratyekabuddhas, then arhats. Scholar Paul Williams summarizes the decisive criterion: "The difference lay, more than anywhere else, in the altruistic orientation of the bodhisattva." The arhat's path, in Mahayana analysis, is driven by a personal wish to escape samsara. Some Mahayana texts call this motivation fear, and conclude that an arhat-aspirant lacks the courage and wisdom needed to pursue buddhahood. Some texts go further and classify the aspiration to arhatship as an outside path entirely. A story in one Mahayana text describes sixty novice bodhisattvas who accidentally attain arhatship despite their intentions, because they lacked the abilities of prajnaparamita and skillful means. The text compares them to a giant bird without wings that cannot help but fall from the summit of Mount Sumeru. Yet the Mahayana tradition does not simply dismiss what arhats have accomplished. Buddha-realms are depicted as home to both śrāvakas and bodhisattvas. The Lotus Sutra teaches that any true arhat will eventually accept the Mahayana path. Arhats who fail to take up the bodhisattva path in the lifetime of their attainment are said to fall into a deep samadhi of emptiness, from which they will later be roused and taught when ready. Williams captures the resulting paradox in one line from Mahayana thought: "Nirvāṇa must be sought without being sought (for oneself), and practice must be done without being practiced."

• 6. Veneration and Art

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  Groupings of arhats became a major subject of Buddhist art, especially across East Asia, where they appear under the Chinese name luohan or lohan. Traditions settled on groups of 6, 8, 16, 100, and 500, each with distinct names and personalities. The Eighteen Arhats became particularly prominent in Mahayana devotion: they are described as waiting, in this world, for the return of the future Buddha Maitreya. The monk Guanxiu painted the first famous portraits of this group in 891 CE and donated the paintings to Shengyin Temple in Qiantang, the city now known as Hangzhou. Those portraits are preserved there with what the source describes as great care and ceremonious respect. Theravada buddhists came to regard at least the senior arhats as having moved beyond personal liberation to participate in the bodhisattva enterprise in their own way. The Arhat Garden at Hsi Lai Temple in the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California offers a contemporary example of how this veneration crossed oceans. Chinese Buddhism and other East Asian traditions have historically venerated specific clusters, including the Sixteen Arhats, the Eighteen Arhats, and the Five Hundred Arhats. The Seated Luohan from Yixian, dated to around 1000 CE, is one of a celebrated group of glazed pottery luohans now held by institutions including the British Museum. The comparison to Christian saints, apostles, and early disciples appears directly in the tradition: arhats occupy a role as the foundational realized figures who sustain the faith across time.