Archer🌱 simile

Comparing renunciates to archers chosen for skill rather than birth, the Buddha explains to King Pasenadi that gifts bear greatest fruit when given to ethical, fully liberated disciples.

The Buddha uses a simile of a man who can catch the arrows shot by well-trained archers before they touch the ground to illustrate that life-sustaining conditions wear away faster than that.

The wearing away of the taints is dependent on the jhanas and formless bases. A meditator enters these states, perceives all present phenomena as impermanent and not-self, and directs the mind toward the deathless element.