Śrāvaka or Sāvaka means "hearer" or, more generally, "disciple". This term is used in Buddhism and Jainism. In Jainism, a śrāvaka is any lay Jain so the term śrāvaka has been used for the Jain community itself. Śrāvakācāras are the lay conduct outlined within the treaties by Śvetāmbara or Digambara mendicants. "In parallel to the prescriptive texts, Jain religious teachers have written a number of stories to illustrate vows in practice and produced a rich répertoire of characters.". In Buddhism, the term is sometimes reserved for distinguished disciples of the Buddha.
Buddhism
Early Buddhism
In early Buddhism, a śrāvaka or śrāvikā is a disciple who accepts:
the Buddha as their teacher
the Buddha's teaching, including understanding the Four Noble Truths, ridding oneself of the unreality of the phenomenal, and pursuing nibbana. See, for instance, the Anguttara Nikayas second Metta Sutta when, taken in consideration of the first "Metta Sutta", a disciple is described as one who "regards whatever phenomena there that are connected with form, feeling, perception, fabrications, & consciousness, as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, an emptiness, not-self."
In the Nikāya, depending on the context, a sāvaka can also refer to a disciple of a teacher other than the Buddha.
Theravada Buddhism
It refer to those who followed in the tradition of the seniormonks of the first Buddhist sangha and community. In the Pāli Canon, the term "disciple" transcends monastic-lay divisions and can refer to anyone from the following "four assemblies":
"Ordinary Disciple" : constituting the majority of disciples, while devoted to the Buddha and his teaching and while having planted seeds for future liberation, they have not yet irreversibly entered the path to emancipation and are still subject to infinite rebirths.
Ariyasāvaka
In the Pali commentaries, the term ariyasāvaka is explained as "the disciple of the Noble One ". Accordingly, Soma Thera and Thanissaro Bhikkhu translate this term as "The disciple of the Noble Ones" However Bhikkhu Bodhi interprets this term as "noble disciple", and according to him, in the Pali suttas, this term is used in two ways:
broadly: any lay disciple of the Buddha;
narrowly: one who is at least on the path to enlightenment. In this sense, "ordinary people" can be contrasted with this narrow definition of "noble disciple". Nyanatiloka writes, "sāvaka refers, in a restricted sense, only to the eight kinds of noble disciples."
The canon occasionally references the "four pairs" and "eight types" of disciples. This refers to disciples who have achieved one of the four stages of enlightenment:
In regards to disciples achieving arahantship, Bhikkhu Bodhi writes: For each of these stages, there is a "pair" of possible disciples: one who is on the stage's path ; the other who has achieved its fruit. Thus, each stage represents a "pair" of individuals: the path traveler and the fruit achiever. Hence, the community of disciples is said to be composed of four pairs or eight types of individuals.
Foremost disciples
In the "Etadaggavagga", the Buddha identifies 80 different categories for his "foremost" disciples: 47 categories for monks, 13 for nuns, ten for laymen and ten for laywomen. While the disciples identified with these categories are declared to be the Buddha's "foremost" or "chief", this is different from his "Chief Disciples" who are consistently identified solely as Sāriputta and Mahāmoggallāna. In addition, in SN 17.23, SN 17.24 and AN 4.18.6, the Buddha identifies four pairs of disciples "who have no compare" and who should thus be emulated. These four pairs are a subset of the 80 foremost disciples listed above, identified in the sub-section 14 of AN 1. These four pairs of disciples to be most emulated are:
The "community of monks and nuns" refers to a community of four or more monks or nuns who are living in a permanent or semi-permanent single-sex community. Within this community of monks and nuns there is a further sub-division containing practitioners possessed of some substantive level of realization. This core group is called the "noble sangha".
The "community of disciples" refers to the broad community of monks, nuns, and male and female layfollowers.
For an example of a traditional stock reference to the sāvaka-sangha in the Pali canon, in "The Crest of the Standard" discourse, the Buddha advises his monks that, if they experience fear, they can recollect the Buddha or the Dhamma or the Sangha; and, in recollecting the Sangha they should recall: A similar phrase can also be found in the lay disciple's daily chant, "Sangha Vandanā".
Mahāyāna view
In Mahayana Buddhism, śrāvakas or arhats are sometimes contrasted negatively with bodhisattvas. In the 4th centuryabhidharma work Abhidharmasamuccaya, Asaṅga describes those who follow the Śrāvakayāna. These people are described as having weak faculties, following the Śrāvaka Dharma, utilizing the Śrāvaka Piṭaka, being set on their own liberation, and cultivating detachment in order to attain liberation. Those in the Pratyekabuddhayāna are portrayed as also utilizing the Śrāvaka Piṭaka, are said to have medium faculties, to follow the Pratyekabuddha Dharma, and to be set on their own personal enlightenment. Finally, those in the Mahāyāna "Great Vehicle" are portrayed as utilizing the Bodhisattva Piṭaka, as having sharp faculties, following the Bodhisattva Dharma, and set on the perfection and liberation of all beings, and the attainment of complete enlightenment. According to Vasubandhu's Yogacara teachings, there are four types of śrāvakas:
The transformed and the converted are assured of eventual Nirvana in the Lotus Sutra. According to Je Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism:
Jainism
A śrāvaka in Jainism is a lay Jain. He is the hearer of discourses of monastics and scholars, Jain literature. In Jainism, the Jain community is made up of four sections: monks, nuns, śrāvakas and śrāvikās. The term śrāvaka has also been used as a shorthand for the community itself. For example, the Sarawagi are a Jain community originating in Rajasthan, and sometimes śrāvaka is the origin of surnames for Jain families. The long-isolated Jain community in East India is known as the Sarak. The conduct of a śrāvaka is governed by texts called śrāvakācāras, the best known of which is the Ratnakaranda śrāvakācāra of Samantabhadra. A śrāvaka rises spiritually through the eleven pratimas. After the eleventh step, he becomes a monk. Jains follow six obligatory duties known as avashyakas: samayika, chaturvimshati, vandan, pratikramana, kayotsarga, and pratyakhyana.
