Most spiritual paths quietly assume that progress comes from better perception: sharper mindfulness, cleaner awareness, finer discrimination. See more clearly, notice more precisely, identify more accurately. And for a long stretch of the Buddhist path, that assumption actually holds.
Then Sariputta reaches his eighth attempt—and the entire strategy collapses.
In the Aṇupadasutta, the Buddha gives us a rare, almost surgical account of Sariputta’s ascent through progressively refined meditative states. By the time we arrive at the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, Sariputta has already exhausted every recognizable object of meditation. There is nothing left to refine except the habit of identifying itself.
This is where the eighth attempt becomes so counterintuitive—and so instructive.
At this stage, Sariputta does not meditate on perception. Nor does he attempt to eliminate it. Instead, he gives complete deference to perception as it naturally attenuates. He does not label mind activities. He does not track factors. He does not ask, “What is present now?” Because in this state, that question no longer has traction.
Perception has become too subtle to grasp—yet not entirely absent. Awareness remains, but without the usual machinery of recognition. This is why the tradition describes the state negatively: not perception, not non-perception. Language breaks down because identification has broken down.
And this is precisely the point.
For most practitioners, this is where confusion or fear sets in. If I can’t identify what’s happening, am I doing it wrong? If I can’t perceive clearly, am I losing mindfulness? Sariputta does neither. He does not rush to restore clarity. He does not manufacture an object to feel productive. He allows the mind to rest in a state where the usual tools of progress—naming, distinguishing, evaluating—are unavailable.
What remains is something far more revealing.
Even here—even in this exquisitely refined, almost-silent awareness—Sariputta sees that the state is still conditioned. It still arises. It still fades. And because it fades, it cannot be liberation. No matter how subtle, no matter how peaceful, no matter how close it feels to nothing at all, it is still something that happens.
That recognition is devastating in the best possible way.
The Buddha emphasizes that Sariputta remained mindful, clearly aware, and undisturbed. This is not a trance. It is not blankness. It is clarity without commentary. And in that clarity, Sariputta sees what seven prior attempts could not fully expose: even the most exalted states of consciousness are not the end of suffering. They are conditioned events, not the unconditioned.
The eighth attempt matters because it dismantles the final refuge of the seeking mind—the belief that awakening lies in a more refined experience. Sariputta does not awaken because he finds the perfect perception. He awakens because perception itself can no longer support the illusion of a stable self.
Sometimes the path does not culminate in seeing more.
Sometimes it culminates in the mind discovering that there is nothing left it can reliably point to—and nowhere left for identity to hide.
That discovery, quiet and ungraspable, is what finally clears the way forward.
