The puzzle presented by Musīla and Nārada (both have attained the same knowledge/insight, but one is an Arhat, the other one is not) has raised questions regarding the Buddhist path to liberation from the time of La Vallée Poussin onward. The present paper argues that the final stages of this path had become obscure to at least certain members of the Buddhist community from an early date onward. It then raises the question of whether modern psychological understanding may shed light on this issue. It concludes with the observation that we may need some theoretical scaffolding, to be provided by modern scholarship, to understand what the early Buddhist texts are talking about.
