What This Concept Is About
斯陀含 (sakṛdāgāmin in Sanskrit, sakadāgāmin in Pāli) is the second of the four fruits of the śrāvaka path (聲聞乘). The Chinese translation is quite literal — "一往來果" (the fruit of one more coming-and-going) or "一來果" (the fruit of one more coming) — meaning a noble one who, with only one more round of coming and going remaining, will completely exhaust suffering and realize nirvāṇa (涅槃). The core definition of this fruit appears repeatedly in the *Dīrghāgama* (《長阿含》), the *Madhyamāgama* (《中阿含》), and the *Saṃyuktāgama* (《雜阿含》), with nearly identical wording, which can be remembered as a formula:
三结已断，婬怒痴薄，一往一来，究竟苦边。
*The three fetters are cut off, lust, anger, and delusion are weakened; one more coming and going, and the end of suffering is reached.*
Unpacked, this statement contains three layers of completely different criteria, which must each be explained precisely and not conflated.
First Layer: Cutting Off the Three Fetters — This Is "Completion," Not "Reduction"
The "three fetters" (三結, trīṇi saṃyojanāni) refer to the three deepest, most fundamental wrong views, which are already completely cut off at the first fruit, 須陀洹 (srotāpanna, "stream-enterer"). The sakṛdāgāmin inherits this attainment, which is why it is said first that "the three fetters are cut off," and only then can one continue forward. The three fetters are:
身見 (sakkāya-diṭṭhi, "personality view"): clinging to a real, unchanging, independently dominating "self." This "I" is mistakenly believed to exist within the five aggregates — 色受想行識 (rūpa, vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāra, vijñāna, form, feeling, perception, volition, consciousness) — or else as a separate dominator outside them. In daily life it manifests as: "I" am that job title, "I" am that experience, "I" am the person who was hurt, "I" am that body — taking various identities, memories, and the body as "me myself."
戒取 (sīlabbata-parāmāsa, "attachment to rites and rituals"): clinging to the idea that some ritual, precept, or practice method is itself liberation. It manifests as: believing that merely reciting a certain mantra, eating certain food, wearing certain clothes, attending certain ceremonies, or doing certain yoga will bring purity; or conversely, believing these external forms are unimportant and thereby disparaging all practice. The essence of 戒取 is mistaking the "method" for the "destination."
疑 (vicikicchā, "doubt"): fundamental doubt — uncertainty about the reality of the Three Jewels, 佛法僧 (buddha, dharma, saṅgha), about the reliability of the Four Noble Truths (四聖諦), and about one's own ability to complete this path. This doubt is not academic inquiry, not "let me think it over," but a diffuse, faint distrust lurking at the bottom of the mind, which makes one shrink back, turn away, or give up at crucial moments.
Note: the sakṛdāgāmin's "three fetters cut off" is complete severance, not weakening. This forms a crucial contrast with the next layer's "lust, anger, delusion weakened" — the former is "already cut," the latter "still thin."
Second Layer: Weakening Lust, Anger, and Delusion — This Is "Reduction," Not "Elimination"
"婬怒痴" (lust, anger, delusion) appears in different wordings across translations: the *Dīrghāgama* writes "婬、怒、痴" or "薄淫、怒、痴," the *Madhyamāgama* writes "婬怒痴薄," and the *Saṃyuktāgama* writes "貪、恚、痴薄." The meaning is the same — the three poisons of 貪瞋痴 (rāga, dveṣa, moha, greed, hatred, delusion) are weakened, but not completely eradicated.
- 婬 (or 貪, greed): craving for sensory pleasures, attachment to forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. Not just sexual desire in the narrow sense, but the broader "wanting more, wanting better, wanting that pleasure to continue." - 怒 (or 瞋, 恚, hatred): rejection, resistance, opposition, anger — the inner burning that arises when reality does not meet expectations. - 痴 (or 無明, delusion): fundamental ignorance, the obscuration of the true nature of all dharmas.
The distinctive feature of the sakṛdāgāmin is that these three poisons still occasionally surface, but their power is greatly diminished. To use a somewhat imperfect analogy: the stream-enterer uproots the three fetters completely; the sakṛdāgāmin further prunes the "weeds" of the three poisons down to a shallow layer — they are still there, but they can no longer dominate the person.
Third Layer: One More Coming and Going — This Is "Locked In," Not "Contingent"
The sakṛdāgāmin is called "one more coming and going" because this noble one has only one more round-trip between the heavens and the human realm remaining at the level of rebirth (受生). Whether he rises to a heaven or returns to the human realm after this life, at most one more process of life will be experienced before completely exhausting the edge of suffering and realizing ultimate nirvāṇa.
This point deserves special attention: it does not mean "perhaps one more time will be needed," but rather the direction is already locked. It is like a ship that has entered the final channel toward the river mouth — no matter how the tides fluctuate, it will arrive at its destination when the next voyage ends.
The canon offers several variants of this fruition:
- *Dīrghāgama*: "還來此世，盡於苦本" (returning to this world once more, the root of suffering is exhausted) - *Madhyamāgama*: "得一往來天上人間，一往來已而得苦際" (one round between heaven and the human realm, and upon that one round the limit of suffering is reached) - *Saṃyuktāgama*: "一往一來，究竟苦邊" (one coming, one going, thoroughly reaching the end of suffering)
The Specific Path of Practice and Realization
The sakṛdāgāmin does not appear out of nowhere; it must be cultivated from the first fruit, the srotāpanna, through continued practice. The canon gives several paths, each leading to the same criterion — the three fetters exhausted, lust, anger, and delusion weakened:
1. Contemplating the five clinging aggregates as sickness, ulcer, dart, and murder: In the *Saṃyuktāgama*, Śāriputra (舍利弗) tells the srotāpanna that to go further, one must diligently observe the five aggregates of clinging (五取蘊) as "是病、是癰、是刺、是殺，是無常、是苦、是空、是非我" — "sickness, ulcer, dart, murder — impermanent, suffering, empty, not-self." Note that the text uses 五受陰 here rather than 五蘊 — 受陰 specifically emphasizes that the aggregates are the bearers of suffering; this choice of wording is itself a practice instruction.
2. Directly knowing the Four Noble Truths: having genuine direct insight into suffering, origin, cessation, and path — not intellectual understanding, but the kind of knowing that can be directly touched in the present moment.
3. Cultivating calm and insight: śamatha (止) and vipaśyanā (觀) practiced in tandem.
4. Cultivating the seven factors of awakening (七覺分): mindfulness, investigation of dharmas, energy, joy, tranquillity, concentration, equanimity — these seven elements of awakening.
5. The maturity of the five faculties (五根): the degree of cultivation of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom determines the level of attainment. Complete five faculties is the arhat (阿羅漢); if the faculties are "若軟若劣" — "soft or weak" — they correspond in sequence to the anāgāmin (阿那含), sakṛdāgāmin, and srotāpanna.
6. Practicing the Dharma, practicing rightly, maintaining pure precepts, and keeping the mind free from craving and desire.
7. Continuing diligent practice from the srotāpanna stage: receiving the ongoing guidance of a good spiritual friend (善知識).
Laypeople Can Also Attain It
This point is especially important. The sakṛdāgāmin is not the exclusive domain of monastics. In the *Saṃyuktāgama*, the Buddha tells Mahānāma (摩訶男): if a lay upāsaka (優婆塞) has cut off the three fetters and weakened greed, hatred, and delusion, he is called an "upāsaka sakṛdāgāmin." Even a layperson who is "居家有妻子、畜養奴婢、服習五欲、以香華嚴飾" — "living at home with wife and children, keeping servants, indulging in the five sensual pleasures, adorned with fragrant flowers" — can attain the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin by practicing the Dharma.
The most famous examples in the canon are Pūrṇa (富蘭那) and Ṛṣidatta (梨師達多). Pūrṇa maintained pure precepts (practicing the holy life, 梵行), while Ṛṣidatta had deep and vast wisdom (not practicing the holy life but content). The two walked completely different paths, yet at the end of their lives the Buddha predicted that both would be reborn together in Tuṣita Heaven (兜率天), both attaining sakṛdāgāmin, coming once more to the world and reaching the end of suffering. This shows that the causes and faculties for attaining sakṛdāgāmin differ in emphasis — some enter through the gate of discipline, some through the gate of wisdom — and only the Buddha can truly know the superiority or inferiority of beings' faculties.
Position in the Sequence of Noble Ones
The sakṛdāgāmin together with the "approaching sakṛdāgāmin" (向斯陀含, one currently practicing toward this fruit), along with the approaching/attaining srotāpanna, anāgāmin, and arhat, together constitute the "four pairs and eight types" (四雙八輩). Each of the four fruits has an "approaching" (向, one entering) and an "attained" (得, one who has attained) — eight types in total; they are called "pairs" because "approaching" and "attained" form pairs.
The *Dīrghāgama* explicitly calls these eight types the "assembly of the Tathāgata's noble sages" (如來賢聖之眾), the unsurpassed field of merit in the world. Within the hierarchy of noble ones, the sakṛdāgāmin occupies the middle — inheriting the "path of seeing" (見道) of the first fruit, the srotāpanna, and connecting to the "path of cultivation" (修道) of the third fruit, the anāgāmin.
The Prajñā Perspective of the Diamond Sūtra
Up to this point, we have been speaking from the perspective of "eradicating defilements and realizing the fruit" found in the Āgama scriptures. But when we come to the Prajñā (般若) scriptures — especially the well-known *Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra* (《金剛經》, the "Diamond Sūtra") — there is a deeper pronouncement about the sakṛdāgāmin:
「須菩提！於意云何？斯陀含能作是念，我得斯陀含果不？」 須菩提言：「不也，世尊！何以故？斯陀含名一往來，而實無往來，是名斯陀含。」
*"Subhūti, what do you think? Could a sakṛdāgāmin entertain the thought, 'I have attained the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin'?" Subhūti replied: "No, Bhagavān. Why? The sakṛdāgāmin is called 'one more coming and going,' yet in truth there is no coming and going; therefore he is called sakṛdāgāmin."*
(This is Kumārajīva's translation. Subhūti's meaning is: although the sakṛdāgāmin is nominally called "one more coming and going," in the ultimate reality there is no actual "coming and going" to be obtained. If a sakṛdāgāmin gives rise to the thought "I have attained the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin," that shows he has not truly attained it — because this grasping of "I have attained something" is itself a remnant of personality view and dharma attachment, 法執.)
The *Diamond Sūtra* lists the four fruits — sakṛdāgāmin, srotāpanna, anāgāmin, arhat — side by side and negates each with the same sentence pattern:
- The srotāpanna is called "entering the stream" (入流), yet "in truth there is nothing entered" (實無所入) — not entering form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or mental objects; - The sakṛdāgāmin is called "one more coming and going," yet "in truth there is no coming or going" (實無往來); - The anāgāmin is called "non-returner" (不來), yet "in truth there is no non-returning" (實無不來); - The arhat "in truth has no dharma called arhat" (實無有法，名阿羅漢).
This passage does not deny the existence of the fruits; rather, it points out a crucial insight: true realization occurs precisely at the moment when one no longer clings to "what I have realized." The Āgamas speak of "cutting off" (斷); the Prajñā scriptures speak of "not even dwelling in the cutting off" — these are two layers of the same path of liberation, the former being the clearing of views, the latter being the complete non-abiding of the mind.
A Walkthrough in Daily Life
The classical definition is done, but the sakṛdāgāmin is after all a concept of fruition from over two thousand years ago, and modern readers may easily feel it is someone else's business. Let us try walking through it step by step according to the classical definition, and see what this concept actually means in concrete scenarios of contemporary life.
Scenario One: "Personality View" on the Commute
An ordinary morning: you are squeezed into the subway, your foot is stepped on, you are shoved, you smell a stranger's breakfast. At that moment a thought arises in your mind: "Why me?"
— This "me" is the moment personality view is at work. It constructs the event of "being stepped on" into "I was stepped on," giving rise to grievance, anger, and a victim narrative. The sakṛdāgāmin's three fetters being cut off means this kind of self-other discrimination can no longer dominate his reactions. He may still feel the pain in his foot (the feeling aggregate is still there), may still have brief aversion (lust, anger, and delusion still exist thinly), but the story "I was stepped on" can no longer take root — he will not take this grievance to write a social media post, will not let this incident poison an entire day's mood.
The easiest place to mis-map this: modern people easily understand "personality view cut off" as "not caring about one's own feelings." Wrong. The sakṛdāgāmin still has full capacity for feeling; he simply no longer equates feelings with "I."
Scenario Two: "Attachment to Rites" While Scrolling Short Videos
You have recently been working on self-improvement: you downloaded a meditation app and check in daily; you signed up for a writing course and submit homework weekly; you are also practicing some dietary regime (like 16+8 intermittent fasting), while following a fitness influencer's daily stretching routine.
— All of this is fine, but if you vaguely feel that "as long as I keep up these things, I will become a better person," that "as long as…" is the form of 戒取. It reduces practice to a checklist of behaviors and stakes liberation on the fixation "I did it."
The sakṛdāgāmin has already cut off attachment to rites and rituals. This means he does not disparage any practice method (the other face of 戒取 is denying all forms), but neither does he treat any single form as the endpoint. He maintains his precepts purely, yet does not let his purity become another kind of attachment.
The easiest place to mis-map this: understanding "attachment to rites cut off" as "no rules need to be kept." Wrong again. The sakṛdāgāmin's pure maintenance of precepts is explicitly stated in the canon; what he has cut off is the clinging to "the form itself," not the observance of forms.
Scenario Three: "Doubt" When Reading Distressing News
You scroll to a news story about war, disaster, injustice. A deep doubt surfaces in your mind: "Will this world really get better? Is kindness really useful? What is the end of all this?"
This doubt is not surface-level pessimism but vicikicchā — a fundamental distrust of the Three Jewels, of the Four Noble Truths, of the entire path of liberation. Its defining feature is: you do not know whether you believe or not; you simply rock back and forth between "maybe I believe, maybe I don't."
The sakṛdāgāmin has completely cut off this doubt. But note: "cutting off doubt" is not "becoming very firm" — it is a quieter state: you no longer need to repeatedly confirm whether this path is right, because your feet are already on the road.
The easiest place to mis-map this: understanding "cutting off doubt" as "blind belief." Completely backwards. The sakṛdāgāmin's cutting off of doubt is a settledness based on direct personal verification that needs no repeated confirmation — a completely different thing from "I am firm because I avoid looking at counter-evidence."
Scenario Four: "Weakened Lust, Anger, and Delusion" When Provoked by a Partner
You had a fight with your partner, and the other person said something hurtful. You feel anger — not performed anger, but the real heat rising from the pit of your stomach.
The sakṛdāgāmin at this moment will still have anger arise (thin but not eradicated). But this anger comes quickly and goes quickly. It no longer tangles, accumulates, and forms a story of resentment the way it does for a beginner. It arises, passes like a gust of wind, then dissolves — it no longer becomes a topic that carries on day after day.
What does "thin" feel like? An analogy: previously it was a prairie — a wildfire would spread for miles once ignited. Now the weeds have been trimmed down to shallow grass hugging the ground; the fire flares up quickly and dies out quickly, unable to spread far.
The easiest place to mis-map this: understanding "lust, anger, and delusion weakened" as "almost gone." The sakṛdāgāmin's greed, hatred, and delusion will arise again; they are simply too weak to dominate decisions. If a practitioner claims to be "completely free of greed, hatred, and delusion," he is either an arhat or self-deceiving.
Scenario Five: "One More Coming and Going" Alone at Night
A deeper question: "Do I really need to come one more time?"
If you are a sakṛdāgāmin, the answer is: the direction is set; at most one more time. This means that when facing death, facing loss, facing the immense impermanence (無常) of life, there is something very strange in your heart — not a grand declaration of "I am not afraid of death," but a deeper kind of knowing: "Wherever this life ends, the next ending will be the final one."
This is not fatalism, because the sakṛdāgāmin still strives diligently in this life; but neither is it uncertainty, because he knows the course is locked. It is a state very difficult to explain clearly to others.
The easiest place to mis-map this: understanding "one more coming and going" as "being able to live twice more." No. "Coming and going" refers to rebirth — the length and form of the next life are not a continuation of this one, but another new life. When a sakṛdāgāmin's life ends, he may rise to a heaven or return to the human realm, but either way, it is "the last time."
Why Contemporary People Need It
You might think: this is a fruition concept from over two thousand years ago, not something attainable in the present; what practical relevance does understanding it have for contemporary people?
There are at least three layers of meaning.
First, it provides a clear coordinate for inner observation.
Contemporary people pursuing self-growth often fall into two predicaments: either defining "I have become better" by worldly attainments (promotion, buying a house, stable relationships), or defining "I have awakened" by some mental state (calm, acceptance, non-judgment). The definition of sakṛdāgāmin offers a completely different coordinate — it is not about "what I possess" or "how I feel," but about "whether several specific wrong views are still at work."
Specifically, you can use the "three fetters" as a mirror for examination:
- Am I still using the story of "I" to explain my suffering? (personality view) - Do I equate some practice method, precept, or ritual with salvation itself? (attachment to rites) - Deep down, am I still doubting this path, this endeavor, this way of living? (doubt)
Three questions asked honestly are worth more than reading a hundred self-help books.
Second, it models a kind of "diligence within incompletion."
The most admirable thing about the sakṛdāgāmin is that he continues walking in the state of "lust, anger, and delusion weakened" — he knows greed, hatred, and delusion have not been completely eradicated, but he is no longer dominated by them. This state of "knowing one still has them but not being dragged along by them" is actually very practical for contemporary people.
One of the most common psychological predicaments of our era is "all-or-nothing" thinking — either I am completely calm (and collapse the moment anxiety arises), or I am a terrible person (and negate myself entirely the moment I make a mistake). The sakṛdāgāmin demonstrates a third possibility: greed, hatred, and delusion are still present, but they have become thin — thin enough that they can no longer hijack the entire life. This is a very honest diligence within incompletion.
Third, it connects the path of seeing with the path of cultivation.
In contemporary practice discussions, the word "awakening" (開悟) is badly overused — many people think some spiritual experience is the endpoint. But the canon tells us: the srotāpanna is at the stage of seeing the path; the sakṛdāgāmin is the first step of continuing cultivation after seeing the path. From srotāpanna to sakṛdāgāmin, it may look like merely a change of greed, hatred, and delusion from "still capable of arising violently" to "already thinned," but this step often requires a very long time of repeated refinement.
This structure of "after seeing the path, one must still cultivate the path" is an important reminder for contemporary people: there is no instant awakening in life, only continuous, gentle, cumulative transformation.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading One: "A sakṛdāgāmin is just an ordinary good person."
This is the farthest off the mark. The cutting off of the three fetters and the thinning of lust, anger, and delusion is a fairly strict criterion, by no means achievable by simply "being a good person." An ordinary good person may not have cut off even one of the three fetters, and may still have very intense greed, hatred, and delusion. Equating the sakṛdāgāmin with a "morally good person" degrades the path of liberation into moral instruction.
Misreading Two: "A sakṛdāgāmin is almost an arhat."
Also wrong. Although the three fetters are cut, the three poisons remain in thin existence — the sakṛdāgāmin is still disturbed by greed, hatred, and delusion, only to a greatly diminished degree. The arhat has completely eradicated greed, hatred, and delusion, never to arise again. From sakṛdāgāmin to arhat, at least one more round of coming and going is required, after which one attains arhatship or anāgāmin (depending on conditions).
Misreading Three: "One must become a monastic to attain sakṛdāgāmin."
Wrong. The canon repeatedly emphasizes that upāsakas (優婆塞, laymen) and upāsikās (優婆夷, laywomen) can equally attain sakṛdāgāmin. Pūrṇa and Ṛṣidatta were both laypeople — the former maintained pure precepts, the latter did not practice the holy life but had deep and vast wisdom — two different paths, the same result.
Misreading Four: "'One more coming and going' means one more life, so I can relax now."
This is a dangerous misreading. "One more coming and going" does not mean this life can be coasted through; it means the direction of liberation is locked, and whatever follows — life or death — will reach the endpoint at the next ending. But in this life, the sakṛdāgāmin still strives without remission — this is not the opportunistic "I am almost there anyway," but "precisely because I am almost there, I must walk the rest steadily."
Misreading Five: "Sakṛdāgāmin is the thing I have attained, so I must hold onto it tightly."
This is the subtlest misreading, and precisely what the *Diamond Sūtra* is meant to break. "The sakṛdāgāmin is called 'one more coming and going,' yet in truth there is no coming and going" — nominally called one more coming and going, but in ultimate reality there is no coming-and-going to cling to. A true sakṛdāgāmin will not give rise to the thought "I have attained the fruit of sakṛdāgāmin" — once this thought arises, it shows he still has grasping, which is the remnant of personality view and dharma attachment.
In this passage of the *Diamond Sūtra*, the Buddha describes all four fruits with the formula "called X, in truth no X, therefore called X" (名X，實無X，是名X), meaning: true realization occurs at the very moment when one is no longer fixated on "what I have realized." This is a profound "holding without holding" — you have walked the entire path, but you do not turn back to embrace the trophy.
Misreading Six: "Sakṛdāgāmin belongs only to the śrāvaka vehicle and has nothing to do with the bodhisattva path."
From the name of the stage, the sakṛdāgāmin is the second of the four fruits of the śrāvaka path, seemingly belonging only to the "lesser vehicle" (小乘). But in the Mahāyāna classification of teachings, the cultivation process of the four śrāvaka fruits is itself part of the bodhisattva path — if a bodhisattva chooses to first attain some deep concentration or a certain degree of liberation in this life, it does not prevent him from continuing toward buddhahood in the future. What matters is the actual content of practice and realization, not the name of the fruit stage.
Finally, a lighter note.
What moves me most about the concept of sakṛdāgāmin is its sense of "one round short of home" — a kind of settled conviction. It is not the final endpoint (that is the arhat), nor the beginning entry (that is the srotāpanna), but an intermediate state — the three fetters removed, the three poisons still thin, the direction set, with one last coming and going remaining.
This state actually has its reflection in contemporary life: a person who has undergone long-term self-awareness is no longer dominated by certain fundamental wrong beliefs (personality view, attachment to rites, and doubt have been broken), but occasionally ripples of greed, hatred, and delusion still arise; he knows the direction is right, knows that a bit more walking will get him there, but he does not pretend he has already arrived.
This "settledness within incompletion" may be closer to genuine practice than any declaration of "I have awakened."