จตฺตาริ โสตาปตฺติยงฺคานิ
Four things the Buddha called finer than a world-ruler's treasures — unshakeable confidence in the Triple Gem, and virtue that doesn't break.
The factors of stream-entry are unshakeable confidence in the Buddha, in the Dhamma, and in the Saṅgha, together with the virtue dear to the noble ones: unbroken, untorn, unblemished.
In the Rāja Sutta he compared someone possessing these four to someone possessing the treasures of a wheel-turning monarch, and called the four finer — because outer treasure can always be parted from you, while these four do not turn.
Confidence that he was genuinely awakened and taught rightly — arrived at through checking, not by submitting without thought.
Build it by reading the discourses at the source and trying what they say. Confidence grounded in your own results is the hardest to shake.
Confidence that the teaching is visible here and now, timeless, inviting inspection, and to be experienced by each person for themselves.
Take one teaching and test it for thirty days. Verifying one item at a time keeps confidence resting on solid ground.
Confidence that those who practise well genuinely exist and are a field of merit — not blind attachment to any single individual.
Get near those who practise well from time to time. Seeing a living example convinces more than reading that the path can be walked.
Virtue unbroken, untorn, unblemished, conducive to concentration, maintained by oneself without supervision.
Measure it in two situations: when nobody sees, and when keeping it costs you. Passing both means it is becoming stable.
Even short of awakening, these four work as a direction straight away. The first three are built by study and by verifying through practice; the fourth begins with keeping precepts consistently without anyone enforcing them.
A simple test for the fourth: is your virtue the same when nobody is watching, and when keeping it costs you something?
Tap to read the actual passage on the page cited.
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