Bhikkhu Cintita

Year: 2011

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 8

    Buddha’s Samadhi: The Shape of the Flame
    First Quarter Moon January 1, 2012                index to series

    In summary of last week, Buddha’s samadhi is at its core concentration, but it is not one-pointed concentration; it is broad. Its breadth is clear in the various descriptions of what factors give rise to Right Samadhi, most particularly Right Mindfulness, and of what factors are alive within Right Samadhi itself. It is also clear from the core function of Right Samadhi in the attainment of knowledge of vision of things as they really are, which would not come to fruition in one-pointed concentration.

    Conditions for Right Samadhi. Last week I listeda variety of factors that the Buddha described as conditions for samadhi, by way of demonstrating that one-pointedness, which would be almost sufficient in itself, is not needed. Let’s look at these factors in a bit more detail, mostly because they are really interesting.

    Systemically I see two functions for the broad conditioning of Right Samadhi: First, to weave wisdom and virtue into our meditation, and second, to displace one-pointedness. Both serve the larger functions of samadhi in promoting knowledge and view, and in ending the taints. To accomplish the first the entire Eightfold Noble Path prior to Right Samadhi is regarded as prerequisites for Right Samadhi, as stated in DN 18, MN 117, SN 45.28, etc. The mind thus prepared as it enters samadhi already inclines toward wisdom and virtue, toward viewing reality in terms of impermanence, suffering and non-self, toward renunciation, kindness and harmlessness, toward purification of the mind of unwholesome factors and toward wise consideration and mindfulness.

    Mindfulness is most generally regarded as the most immediate condition for samadhi.

    For one of right mindfulness, right samadhi springs up. – S.V.25-6

    It is indeed to be expected … that a noble disciple who has faith, whose energy is aroused, and whose mindfulness is established will gain samadhi … – S.V. 225.23-28.

    Seclusion, dispassion, renunciation, wise reflection, and of course good wholesome friends, are often mentioned. Right Effort is an especially critical factor, and in fact it is only with the stilling of the hindrances that samadhi arises.

    As he abides thus diligent, ardent and resolute, his memories and intentions based on the household life are abandoned; with their abandoning his mind becomes steadied internally, quieted, brought to singleness and concentrated. That is how a monk develops mindfulness of the body.– Kayagatasati Sutta MN 119

    Now, the Buddha describes mindfulness in terms of attending to alternative themes. Some of these themes may arouse samadhi more readily than others; this can be determined through personal experience, and I venture to guess there will be considerable variation in personal experience. However, probably no theme is incapable of arousing samadhi. For instance,

    … a monk guards a favorable basis of samadhi which has arisen: the perception of a worm-infested corpse, the perception of a livid corpse. – A II 17.1-6

    Notice that perception of a livid corpse is unlikely to be a one-pointed contemplation, another indicator that one-pointedness is not a necessary condition for samadhi.

    Elsewhere the transition from mindfulness to samadhi is viewed with finer resolution. The well known seven Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhangas) actually take us through a causal sequence from mindfulness to samadhi and beyond:

    1. mindfulness (sati)
    2. investigation of states (dhammavicaya)
    3. energy (viriya)
    4. delight (piti)
    5. calm (passadhi)
    6. concentration (samadhi)
    7. equanimity (upekkha)

    Actually these various factors snowball and are all present in samadhi, equanimity coming to the fore in the higher jhanas as delight recedes. Delight is again particularly noteworthy in this sequence.

    Constituents of Samadhi. Last week we considered concentration (ekaggata) as the essence of samadhi. In fact a variety of factors are present to varying degrees and sometimes absent. These need to be tuned in tending the fire of Right Samadhi, basically along two dimensions: jhana level and samatha-vipassana. Jhana in simple terms is the depth of concentration; the mind becomes stiller and more subtle and refined as one moves from first to second to third and finally to fourth jhana. The following are often listed as the factors of jhana used to describe this progression:

    discoursive thought (vitakka-vicara)

    delight (piti)

    happiness (sukha)

    singleness (ekaggata)

    This progresses from gross factors to more refined factors. It may be surprising to find discoursive thought in this list, since we think of that as the opposite of meditation, but there it is. In fact it is the grossest factor that can be present in samadhi, but is only present in the first jhana. Discoursive thought is actually two factors, applied thought (vitakka) and sustained thought (vicara), having a thought and running with a thought. This is identified as discursive in this passage:

    Applied and sustained thought are the verbal formation, one breaks into speech. -MN 44

    Also, the second jhana and beyond, in which discursive thought no longer arises, is often referred to as Noble Silence.

    Every meditator, I assume, is aware of the persistence discursive thought in meditation, but will notice that once the hindrances are removed, such as restlessness, it is a much more refined kind of discursive thought than our normal babbling. In fact it often represents some of the most creative and insightful forms of discursive thinking you will ever do, and commonly turns to the Dharma. It also plays a role in reviewing what we are doing on the cushion, adjusting our postures, clarifying our intentions for the sitting period, and of course following the contemplations of mindfulness. The Buddha could well have said that this is not yet samadhi and started counting the three jhanas after discursive thought has disappeared, yet he did not. This would seem to indicate that he thought of this factor as valuable and worth sitting with in itself.

    Be that as it may, progressing through the jhanas is simply a matter of progressively losing the currently most disturbing factor at each stage. Losing discursive thought puts you in the second jhana, where the elation of delight becomes the dominant factor. Now delight is a crucial factor in developing the stillness of concentration in the first place. However at this subtle stage is becomes an impediment to yet deeper samadhi; it is the most disturbing of the remaining jhana factors.

    Losing delight puts you in the third jhana, where the lift of happiness is the most disturbing factor. Losing happiness puts you in the fourth and highest jhana, in which singleness of mind remains. As jhana factors are lost is progressively higher jhanas they are replaced with inner composure, keener mindfulness and pure equanimity. Delight and happiness might not seem so disturbing prior to jhana, but when the mind becomes very subtle and refined these can be like acid rock or “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” blaring from a neighbor’s house.

    One way I generally think of depth of samadhi — maybe this will help — is as different parts of the mind progressively shutting or slowing down. The more active parts have to do with formations, that is, intentions and complex thoughts. Then feelings and perceptions might begin to stop. However, you discover that the mind has many very subtle layers of intentionality, of thinking, of feeling, so it is very difficult to pin down what happens at what point. But that’s OK: you don’t need to. The Buddha’s description of the jhanas is actually a very brief and coarse outline; the Buddha certainly understood he did not have to devote a whole a basket of leaves to describing the ineffable realm we will each explore for ourselves in our own meditative experience.

    Now, it is important to recognize that at least something we might call “thought” is present in all of the jhanas. For instance, MN 136 admonishes us to continue satipatthana practice in the second, third and fourth jhanas, but “without thought and examination.” So this must involve a non-discursive form of reflection, and intentionality, extending all the way to the deepest jhana. Also relevant here are the practices of suffusing the body with delight, happiness and equanimity discussed in previous weeks. In MN 111 the Buddha takes Sariputta as a model and says of him,

    Whatever qualities there are in the first jhāna … he ferrets them out one by one. Known to him they remain, known to him they subside…

    He then makes exactly the same statement but with regard to the “second jhana,” the “third jhana” and the “fourth jhana.” In AN 9.36 we have:

    A monk in each jhana regards whatever phenomena connected with form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications and consciousness as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an afflection, alian, a disintegration, a void, non-self …

    AN 8.63 describes the contemplation of each of the brahmaviharas in each of the jhānas. Why isn’t all of this discursive thinking? I would say, because it is clear of purpose and extremely concentrated. Yet the mind is moving, perhaps subtly.

    A question often arises in discussions of samadhi whether at some point the senses shut down, in particular whether there is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and bodily sensation in the different jhanas. Many meditators report this, but if they are engaged in some kind of one-pointed meditation practice their experiences are not relevant to this discussion. It nonetheless seems to be an individual phenomenon that does occur, but it is not a state to be worthy of development: In the Indriyabhavana Suttathe Buddha explicitly belittles a practice like this taught by the brahmin Parasiri:

    [Uttara:] “There is the case where one does not see forms with the eye, or hear sounds with the ear [in a trance of non-perception]. That’s how the brahman Parasiri teaches his followers the development of the faculties.”

    [Buddha:] “That being the case, Uttara, then a blind person will have developed faculties, and a deaf person will have developed faculties, according to the words of the brahman Parasiri. For a blind person does not see forms with the eye, and a deaf person does not hear sounds with the ear.”– MN 152

    On the other hand there is a reference in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta to the Buddha sitting in samadhi and failing to hear a lightning strike that killed two farmers and four oxen. In another passage Mogallana while sitting in meditation hears elephants plunging into the river and crossing it while trumpeting, to which the Buddha remarked that his samadhi was not fully purified. Brockhurst speculates that these are in fact “foreign intrusions,” that is, a non-Buddhist practice attributed to the Buddha, since similar qualities are attributed to the meditation of the Buddha’s two teachers, whose meditation the Buddha clearly rejects. Āḷāra Kālāma, for instance, did not perceive 500 carts going by.

    Another account of these cases is available: Hearing a lightning strike or elephants splashing and trumpeting is actually a complex event that involves mental processes at several levels. First, there is impingement on the ear and arising of a sound experience in consciousness. Then there is a process of perception as to the nature of this experience. Then there is an inference as to the external source of the experience. Then there is the arising of interest in, or distraction by, the external source. If any of these processes fails to complete the whole event of hearing as described will not be fulfilled. It is not necessary that the senses themselves have shut down.

    Next week we will discuss samatha and vipassana, two remaining and very critical features of Buddha’s samadhi.

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 7

    Buddha’s Samadhi: Concentration
    New Moon Uposatha,      December 24, 2012                  index to series

    Mindfulness is the method of meditation, samadhi is the resulting experience of meditation. The analogy is the tending of a fire, and the fire itself as the result. You never know what samadhi is from any description, but practice the method and you shall see; samadhi is ineffible.

    Nevertheless certain qualities of samdhi need to be highlighted because you need to be mindful of its proper shape. Again, this is like tending a fire: If the fire is for heating a house you want it to give off heat, but not too much, and to burn long and steadily. If the fire is for forging metal you probably want a small fire that you can bring to a very high temperature at critical times. Similarly, you want a samadhi that gives rise to knowledge and vision and to the ending of taints. To that end you need to be mindful of certain qualities of samadhi. For the next couple of weeks we will look at the qualities of Buddha’s samadhi.

    Concentration. The word samadhi derives from ‘sam + ā + dhā‘ , which means ‘bring together’, or ‘collect’. The mind, left on its own, tends to be scattered, jumping from here to there, relentlessly churning, generally beyond control. Samadhi is a controlled state of mind, arising from mindfulness, in which the various factors of mind seem to run in a common direction, it is often translated as ‘concentration of mind’. Again, as the enlightened nun Dhammadinna states in the suttas:

    Unification of mind, friend Visakha, is samadhi, the four foundations of mindfulness are the basis of samadhi, the four right kinds of striving are the equipment of samadhi, the repetition, development and cultivation of these same states is the development of samadhi therein. – MN 44, Cuḷavedalla Sutta

    Now, a powerful technique in the absence of a match or lighter for getting a fire to flare up quickly is to use a magnifying glass to focus the rays of the sun unmovingly on a single point of easily combustible fuel. Similarly a means of producing the flames of samadhi quickly is to focus the mind unmovingly on a single point of experience. Fixing the mind in this way brings it under strict control, it produces an extremely narrow and very effective concentration of mind. The method here is what I called one-pointed mindfulness. The result is a one-pointed samadhi. Now, I pointed out in our discussion of mindfulness that the Buddha never ever seems to recommend one-pointed mindfulness. I want here to make the complementary point that the Buddha’s Samadhi is similarly not one-pointed. In one-pointed mindfulness experience is fixed an unmoving; in its pure form that one point is all that is happening. In contrast in Buddha’s samdadhi the mind is unmoving, or we might say centered, but vast and perceptive as experience flows past, around and through it. The Buddha’s samadhi is a state that is open but stable and unified, a middle way between being scattered and fixed.

    This centered, but broadly aware and fluid basis for concentration is probably the most important point to understand about Buddha’s meditation. Most variants make at least some use of one-pointed mindfulness and one-pointed mind. When I teach meditation to beginners, for instance, I teach one-pointed focus on the breath, locating the point in the belly. This yields a fairly quick experience of concentration that gives the beginner confidence and inspires him to pursue meditation further, and that has many beneficial qualities by itself. But I also explain explain that it is inadequate as a basis for attaining knowledge and vision nor in ending the taints, nor attaining final liberation. As far as I can see the Buddha was very clear and consistent about this, … but he seems to have found no use for one-pointedness.

    To underscore the point that Buddha’s meditation is not one-pointed, I list the evidence.

    First, the suttas make no reference to a method of one-pointed mindfulness that would form a basis of one-pointed samadhi. I pointed this out a couple of weeks ago. I also mentioned on the other hand that there is a common contrary interpretation of Satipatthana and Anapanasati Suttas that alleges one-pointed mindfulness. This has to do with the interpretation of one word, parimukhaŋ in the Pali, which occurs in the phrase parimukhaŋ satiŋ upaṭṭhapeti. Satiŋ upaṭṭhapeti means ‘sets up mindfulness’; everyone agrees on that. Parimukhaŋ is alleged to refer to the experience of the in-and-out breath as it touches the nose or upper lip. Apparently the word derives from ‘mouth’, which would put it very roughly in the general vicinity needed, but mouth is not its normal interpretation. The on-line Pali Text Society dictionary provides the following entry:

    Parimukha (adj.) [pari+mukha] facing, in front; only as nt. adv. ˚ŋ in front, before, in phrase parimukhaŋ satiŋ upaṭṭhapeti “set up his memory in front” (i. e. of the object of thought), to set one’s mindfulness alert Vin i.24; D ii.291; M

    Under sati it also provides this interpretation:

    parimukhaŋ satiŋ upaṭṭhāpetuŋ, to surround oneself with watchfulness of mind

    Thanissaro Bhikkhu points out a use of parimukha in the Vinaya clearly conveys ‘in front of the chest‘. It seems like a stretch to interpret it as referring to the point where the breath touches the nostrils or the upper lip. If the Buddha wanted to set up a fixed point of concentration we would expect him to provide a more less casual description of what that point is in any case.

    Second, the suttas do not refer to one-pointed samadhi that I am aware of. The word ekaggata in Pali, used to describe concentration and equated with samadhi, is often translated as ‘one-pointed-ness’ but alternatively as ‘unified”. Now, eka means one, and agga can mean ‘point’, and ta means ‘-ness’. However agga means ‘point’ as of a knife and also means ‘peak’ as of a mountain, which is something that can be rather broad. And in fact the PTS dictionary defines aggata as follows:

    Aggatā (f.) [abstr. of agga] pre– eminence, prominence, superiority Kvu 556 (˚ŋ gata); Dpvs iv.1 (guṇaggataŋ gatā). — (adj.) mahaggata of great value or superiority D i.80; iii.224.

    There is nothing here to suggest a fixed very precise object of attention, only a prominence of a single theme.

    Third, the suttas provide a sufficient basis for samadhi independent of one-pointed mindfulness. One-pointed mindfulness is a powerful means of inducing samadhi and then attaining deep levels of concentration. This raises the question, Is one-pointed mindfulness necessary for samadhi? Can you attain samadhi at all without it? The answer is “Yes.”

    First, there are many yogis of greater authority than I who will answer affirmatively on the basis of personal experience.

    Second, the Buddha gives a wide variety of other, unpointed, factors as conditions Right Samadhi, which collectively seem to put you over the top. In fact it is remarkable how many conditions he describes as underlying samdhi. These include faith, mindfulness, ardency, alertness, seclusion, peace and quiet, investigation, delight, pleasure, inner composure, tranquility, virtue, wisdom andall seven steps prior to Right Samadhi in the Noble Eightfold Path. This is not to mention sitting at the root of a tree in meditation posture.

    Many of these conditions, aside from helping to induce samadhi, probably serve primarily to weave the qualities of wisdom and virtue into samadhi rather to induce a state of concentration, but I suspect that these conditions as a whole are intended to displace the necessity of one-pointed mindfulness.

    Fourth, the suttas refer to many mental processes that occur even in deep states of meditation, i.e., in the higher jhanas, that according to experience would be shut down by one-pointed concentration. One-pointedness narrows the range of consciousness to such a degree that there is little room for much else to go on.

    Yet in the Buddha’s samadhi “the repetition, development and cultivation of these same states [factors giving rise to samadhi in the first place] is the development of samadhi therein.” This means that the cultivation of Right Mindfulness, for example, continues in the jhanas. Furthermore, you are able to visualize delight, happiness and equanimity suffusing the body in all the jhanas, and to turn the attention selectively to an inspiring theme if the hindrances begin to intrude. You are able to “regard whatever phenomena connected with form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications and consciousness as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a disintegration, a void, non-self.” You are able to contemplate each of the brahmaviharas in each of the jhānas. You are potentially able to “ferret out one by one” whatever qualities arise in each of the jhanas and know them as they remain and know when they subside.You are able to “incline [your] mind toward realizing any state that may be realized by direct knowledge.” More about these things, including references, next week.

    Fifth, one-pointed concentration would seem to inhibit the process of cultivation of insight, of vipassana. You will appreciate that many of these mental activities listed in the last couple of paragraphs support knowledge and vision. The reason that it is important that these activities occur in samadhi is that the mind in samadhi is highly refined, still and clear, qualitatively different from the clunky common mind we usually use to bungle about in the world. It is the mind that is capable of considering things as they really are in and of themselves, without the bias of passion, habit or preconception. It is a mind that is subtle, but not shut down.

    The mind is not one-pointed because that would not support insight.

    Assumptions in Presenting Evidence. Since the claim that Buddha’s meditation is not one-pointed is contrary to how many people practice Buddhism, let me reiterate my game rules in reaching these conclusions. I’ve used all three of the following methods in today’s post:

    1. We let the early suttas speak for themselves and try to read nothing into or out of them. This is not entirely reliable in itself because of the ancient history of these texts.

    I have tried to represent the early texts faithfully. Although these ancient texts are often subject to debate and confusion, concerning meditation I find them surprisingly consistent when interpreted quite simply. Notice I am scrupulously avoiding the evidence of later texts often taken as authoritative, such as the Pali commentaries. Otherwise we have no way of distinguishing Buddha’s meditation from its variants, since most variants make some claim to purity of pedigree. There will always be pressure among those who, like me, practice a variant to read the variant back into the early texts.

    1. We see if a coherent system shines through, with its own internal logic. This is like the jig-saw puzzle in which confidence in the result is established in spite of missing or extraneous pieces.

    I have been giving particular attention to this source of evidence, showing that the Buddha’s meditation has a brilliantly conceived internal logic, that all of the parts fit into a unified whole that functions to consolidate all of the rays developed in the initial five stages of the Noble Eightfold Path and progressively focus then toward liberation. Both wisdom and virtue, developed initially by other means, are combined to form the fuel of samadhi, the hyer-refined state of clarity and calm in which higher knowledge the loss of taints can be developed. This logic is surprisingly consistent with the simplest interpretations of the suttas as mentioned in (1).

    1. We see if the system and its parts work in practice.

    The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the system that seems to shine through in the texts fails to shine through on the cushion, then we need to reconsider what the texts say and what the underlying logic might be. If the same system shines through in both places, then we can be fairly confident are sitting on the bodhimanda (seat of enlightenment). I cannot verify the system that shines through in others’ practice; I need to ask each of you to do that for your own. I can report my limited experience of the various parts of the system I have described are quite consistent with the results of (1) and (2) above.

    Next week we will look at the various factors of samadhi in more detail.

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 6

    Six Remarkable Features of Buddha’s Mindfulness
    Last Quarter Moon Uposatha Day                              index to series

    Last week … er, two weeks ago, I provided an overview of Right Mindfulness as described in the Satipatthana Sutta and many other related suttas. Recall that mindfulness is essentially keeping something in mind. What and how you keep that something in mind is the heart of your meditation technique. Samadhi is the most significant part of your meditation experience. The Buddha defines four basic domains for applying mindfulness: body, feelings, mind or consciousness, and (mental) qualities. He provides specific exercises particularly with regard to body and more particularly breath. For each theme he admonishes us to practice as follows:

    The bhikkhu contemplates the body in the body, ardently, with full comprehension, mindfully and putting aside covetousness and grief for the world.

    … and as for “body” similarly to body for feelings, mind and qualities. He supplements this with some limited advice on dealing with distractions, and with encouraging certain mental factors like delight and happiness. He also suggests in a couple of the Pali suttas (but not the Agamas) giving special attention to the rising and falling of phenomena. Out of mindfulness stability of mind and ultimately samadhi arise.

    This week I want to highlight six features that are particularly characteristic of the Buddha’s method. It will be interesting to see which of these carry over to the variants of the Buddha’s meditation.

    Buddha’s Mindfulness is Fun. An Asian meditation teacher came to America for the first time to lead a retreat. Into the first day of the retreat he asked his American attendant about the meditators, “Why do they all look so grim?” Apparently before the Buddha’s time any pleasure was to be scrupulously avoided by the dedicated ascetic. Maybe we have a bit of the same attitude in this country: “No pain, no gain.”

    The Buddha, while recognizing danger in sensual pleasures, found spiritual pleasures to be of a quite different quality. Recall that shortly before his awakening the Buddha was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree and spontaneously “entered and remained in the first jhana: delight and pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation.” Then he thought,

    Why am I afraid of such pleasure? It is pleasure that has nothing to do with sensual desires and unwholesome things. – MN 36

    The meditation suttas make constant reference to delight (piti, what many translate as rapture) and happiness (sukka, what many translate as pleasure) as qualities of the early stages of meditation. “A pleasant dwelling in this very life,” “refreshing,” and other phrases are used as well. It sounds like fun to me.

    Unlike in the case of fun things like wild parties, just singing in the rain, tango, chocolate truffles, practical jokes or scary movies, fun in the case of Buddha’s meditation is not primarily a goal, it is an enabling factor. Tuning into refined levels of pleasure makes one more aware of the refined levels of suffering, helps recognize the disadvantages of sensual pleasures, gives a place of rest in practice, and provides an early incentive to making practice a habit.

    It is also a much different kind of fun, one that the uninitiated might perceive as boredom, but on close examination it is a much purer form of joyful happiness, untainted by stress, anxiety, fear and many other things that the uninitiated might not even recognize always accompanies wild partying, singing in the rain, and the others.

    Sariputta gives us a somewhat enigmatic hint of the nature of spiritual pleasure:

    Just that is the pleasure here, my friend, where there is nothing felt. – AN 9.34

    Buddha’s Mindfulness is Being Present. “Being present” is indeed often taken to be almost synonymous with “mindfulness.” However, mindfulness does not logically entail being present. We might envision an inspirational speaker suggesting a mindfulness exercise such as, “Now, imagine the big bag of money you have charmed out of people in five years time. Rest your mind right there. Imagine how heavy the bag is, …” Or, “When you find your mind has wandered away from the daydream bring it gently back to the daydream.” Mindfulness could also involve contemplations of abstractions, like goodness or honor, and who knows where they are?

    But the Buddha’s exercises are not generally like this; they are almost always very grounded in the present moment: almost every one takes a topic of current experience for contemplation, for instance, the breath, breathing in then out, the present posture, physical movements like carrying things, the composition of the body, current feelings, current states of mind, suffering or anxiety, and so on. In fact we are asked to attend to the rising and falling of phenomena as they occur for each of the four foundations of mindfulness. Distractions, on the other hand, tend to be thoughts about the past, such as regrets, or the future, such as plans and expectations. Elsewhere the Buddha admonishes us:

    You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. – MN 131

    Now, there are some peripheral exceptions in Buddha’s meditation; the Buddha does make use of certain visualizations of things that would not arise on their own. Metta meditation is generally like this; one imagines metta extending to an ever-widening circle of beings which must be brought to mind. The charnel ground contemplations ask us to consider that our bodies will be just like that at some future time. As we enter the jhanas we are asked in turn to imagine delight and happiness, happiness and equanimity suffusing the whole body.

    Buddha’s Mindfulness is potentially a Wall-to-wall, 24/7 Activity. Sariputta and his best friend Mogallana were young ascetics and students of Master Sanjaya but were becoming disappointed with the results. One day Sariputta spotted another ascetic in the village on alms round and was astounded by his mindful deportment. It was Assaji, one of the first five disciples of the Buddha. Curious, Sariputta inquired as to Assaji’s background and both he and his friend were on their way to becoming not only arahants but the two foremost disciples of the Buddha. In Burma today monks leave the monasteries by the hundreds every morning as if to reenact Assaji’s alms round. It is beautiful to watch their calm composure, even that of the little novice monks.

    The plot of the story of Sariputta’s introduction to Buddhism has undoubtedly played itself out in every generation since. An American ballet dancer was on tour in Japan and spotted a man at a train station not only of unusual attire but of remarkable deportment. Fascinated, she began following him around for a long time before she finally inquired as to who or what he was. He was a Korean monk. She ended up staying in Japan for many many years to study Zen. She is Dai-En Bennage, now abbess of a Zen center in Pennsylvania.

    Mindfulness in manifold postures and activities, while walking, sitting or lying down, while lifting an arm, even while defecating, is characteristic of Buddhism prescribed right in the Satipatthana Sutta. It is not just something we do on the meditation cushion. And it gives rise to the characteristic Buddhist deportment. (The public perception of one’s deportment, by the way, will vary considerably, even among yogis of great attainment. Some of them have a natural flair, while others seem to come off as hopelessly klutzy or dumpy no matter how much mindfulness they internalize.)

    Because mindfulness is an all-day and every-place practice in Buddhism, it entails an almost constant stillness and composure. The result is like hot coals, that retain their heat and provide warmth. But the flames of samadhi will then arise quite quickly and naturally with a log and a poke. Under controlled circumstances, such as that provided by your meditation cushion, samadhi will flare up.

    Buddha’s Mindfulness Weaves Wisdom, along with Virtue, into Meditation. The sole function of mindfulness in many meditation traditions is to induce jhana, a serene state of mind. If this was the Buddha’s sole intent, he would not have given us such a wide variety of meditation subjects, nor asked us to consider them in a rather analytical way. He would not have given us mindfulness tasks that clearly relate to the training in Wisdom begun at the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path, in particular observing experiences that bear on impermanence, suffering and insubstantiality and the aggregates of body, feelings, perception, formations and consciousness.

    This is where the Buddha is at his cleverest and where the logic of his method shines forth. Consider: First the Buddha asks us to practice Wisdom through Right View and Right Resolve until the cows come home. Then he asks us to practice Virtue through Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood until we drop. This is prerequisite to meditation practice.

    Without purifying view it is impossible to cultivate Right Samadhi – AN 6.68

    When your virtue is well purified and your view is straight, based upon virtue, established upon virtue, you should develop the four foundations of mindfulness. – SN 47.15

    Now the Buddha asks us to consolidate that mind of Virtue in Right Effort and that mind of Wisdom in Right Mindfulness and then to weave them together, … into a sitting mat. Here is where the weaving takes place:

    The bhikkhu contemplates the body in the body, ardently, with full comprehension, mindfully and putting aside covetousness and grief for the world.

    Next the Buddha will ask us to place samadhi on that sitting mat. In this way the beginning practices of Wisdom and Virtue will be able to continue but within the mind of samadhi, that is, with a hyper-refined, serene and keenly aware mind. This is like kicking our practices of Wisdom and Virtue into hyperdrive, and this will lead, if we keep at it, to the arising of higher knowledge, to the removal of all taints and to ultimate liberation. More about samadhi and beyond in coming weeks.

    Buddha’s Mindfulness is Centered in the Body. Probably the most salient symbol in Buddhist iconography is the full-body posture of the Buddha in seated meditation. When I, along with perhaps most other Buddhist yogis, sit in meditation I am keenly aware I am emulating the posture of the Buddha (well, roughly: I never have been able to manage full lotus).

    Mindfulness anchors the mind in any of a variety of subjects, mental and physical. Aspects of the physical body and particularly the entire body play distinguished roles. Of the subjects of mindfulness, the largest number have to do with the body: Breathing, types of deportment (standing, sitting, lying down, etc.), bodily activities (going forwards and backwards, looking straight ahead, away, bending and the stretching of limbs, eating, bathing, urinating, etc.), composition of the body (body parts, and elements), and decaying corpses. Mindfulness of the body is specifically treated in the Kayagata Sutta (MN 119). Among the body contemplations in- and out-breathing is particularly distinguished, the observation of the whole breath. Mindfulness of the breath is specifically treated in the Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118). This sutta recommends watching the breath while simultaneously attending to each of the other three foundations of mindfulness, so the breath functions as a kind of anchor which still permits other forms of mindfulness.

    The Dhammapada tells us:

    With mindfulness immersed in the body well established, restrained with regard to the six media of contact — always centered, the monk can know Unbinding for himself. — Ud 3.5

    They awaken, always wide awake: Gotama’s disciples whose mindfulness, both day & night, is constantly immersed in the body. — Dhp 299

    Also, the whole body in many suttas is visualized as a container in each stage of jhana respectively for a characteristic set of mental factors. For instance, the first jhana involves the following visualization:

    He makes rapture and pleasure born of seclusion drench, steep, fill and pervade his body so that there is no part of his whole body unpervaded by the rapture and pleasure born of seclusion. – MN 119, etc.

    It is easy to appreciate how centering the mind in the whole body might provide a natural place for the mind to rest. The body provides the basic coordinates for relating to the physical world; it determines up, down, front, back, right, left, in the self and outside of the self.

    Buddha’s Mindfulness is Never One-Pointed. The Buddha describes a simile for the four foundations of mindfulness (MN 125), that of binding a forest elephant by a rope to a post to break the elephant of its wide forest habits. Notice that the elephant still retains some freedom of movement, but within a limited range. One-pointed mindfulness would be like the more extreme measure of putting the elephant into a container or a cage so that he cannot ever turn around, much like animals are often treated in factory farms. Recall that the common technique of one-pointed mindfulness involves fixing the attention unmovingly on a single small object or point of meditation. This is not the Buddha’s mindfulness.

    The Buddha offers us not fixed objects of meditation, but rather broader themes of contemplation. For instance, the breath is a process that involves much of the entire body. We consider the different forms of breath, and even what feelings and thoughts arise with the breath, but remain loosely teathered to the breath. We contemplate the mind as a whole, notice the state of the mind and become aware of whatever arises. We contemplate a rotting corpse from all aspects, then even consider that that will be us some day. And there is a logic to this: One-pointed mindfulness would do little for developing wisdom; awareness must be broad.

    Nowhere that I am aware in the suttas of does the Buddha ever ask us to focus the attention more narrowly than this, not on a candle flame, not on the breath perceived at a particular point in the body such as the upper lip or even in the belly, not on an image fixed in the mind (nimitta), not on a colored disk. I suspect one-pointed mindfulness is entirely foreign to his method.

    This last point will be a bit controversial, since much of Buddhist meditation is in fact one-pointed. However this is exactly one of the places where we need to distinguish Buddha’s meditation from its variants. Next week I would like to reflect a bit on my logic in making this distinction. Among other examples I will discuss the most likely counterexample to my claim that one-pointed mindfulness is outside of the Buddha’s method.

     

  • No Uposatha Day Post This Week

    Today’s post, which was called “Buddha’s Meditation and Its Variants 6: Five Interesting Features of Buddha’s Mindfulness” will have to wait until next week. Sorry. This is due to computer error, or perhaps errorful human response to computer error. In short, the text I was about to post is gone with no backup. I think I remember what I had to say more-or-less, but it will take a week to reconstruct it. Sigh.

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 5

    Buddha’s Mindfulness Overview

    First Quarter Moon Uposatha Day                              index to series

    Meditation in the Buddha’s discourses is described in terms of three aspects: effort, mindfulness and samadhi. Last week we looked at Right Effort in some detail. The next two weeks we will look at Right Mindfulness, the primary technique of meditation.

    Mindfulness. The Buddha composed a simile about mindfulness (SN 47.20): The most beautiful woman of the land also accomplished in singing and dancing is to give a public performance. Throngs of people show up. A man, however, is given a task: He must carry a vat of oil on his head between the audience and the stage where the most beautiful woman in the land is singing and dancing, … without spilling a drop! Just to add some incentive, a strong man will follow with raised sword. As soon as the swordsman sees a drop of oil on the ground, off comes the oil-bearer’s head!

    The root meaning of sati, which we translate as mindfulness, is ‘remembering’, but in the Buddha’s sense it can best be understood as ‘keeping in mind’. It is an active process of keeping the mind unwaveringly engaged in the task at hand. This simile brings out that the challenge to mindfulness is distraction. It also brings out the incentive we have for mindfulness; without it we will tragically not survive on the Path. Notice sati here is an active process, it is something you do. It is not just an aware state of mind (that is a part of samadhi) but clearly it maintains consistent awareness.

    Notice also that Right Effort is by this account also a form of mindfulness, one directed at keeping and letting out the unwholesome and keeping and letting in the wholesome. Mindfulness is also compared by the Buddha to a gatekeeper. The main difference is that whereas what we call Right Effort weaves in the strand of virtue, what we call Right Mindfulness weaves the strand of Wisdom into our samadhi.

    A specific non-Buddhist technique of mindfulness underlies much of the world’s meditation, and it is this: Focus the attention on a single small object or point of meditation — the object might be, for instance, a candle flame, the breath perceived at a particular point in the body, an image in the mind, a sound, or an imagined sound. If the attention wavers or something else intrudes, simply reestablish the attention on the object of meditation. Let’s call this one-pointed mindfulness. One-pointed mindfulness, like any kind of mindfulness, is not easy; the mind has great resources for distraction. But the instructions for one-pointed mindfulness are simple, direct, and reveal themselves as powerful when by brute force it overcomes all distractions: one-pointed mindfulness leads to deep mental absorption in the object of mindfulness and ultimately to the blissful shutting out of almost everything else that would otherwise arise in the mind. This is mindfulness, but Right Mindfulness is more sophisticated and far-ranging than this. One-pointed mindfulness seems incapable of carrying wisdom into the meditation practice.

    Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Right Mindfulness is at the center of the Buddha’s meditation technique. Recall that Right Samadhi is not a technique but a resultant state of mind that depends on Right Mindfulness, as well as on Right Effort. The Buddha offers detail instructions for Right Mindfulness in terms of four categories of contemplations, what are call the four foundations or establishments of mindfulness, or what Thanissaro Bhikkhu calls the four frames of reference. These contemplations are as follows:

    1. Body

    • Breathing
    • Deportment: standing, sitting, lying down, etc.
    • Activities: going forwards and backwards, looking straight ahead, away, bending and the stretching of limbs, eating, bathing, urinating, etc.
    • Composition of the body
    • Types of physical Materiality
    • Decaying corpses

    2. Feeling : arising physical or mental pain, pleasure or neutral feeling

    3. Consciousness : states of mind as they arise

    4. Mental qualities

    • The Five Hindrances : lust, anger, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, doubt
    • The Aggregates : form, feeling, perception,formations and consciousness
    • The Sense-bases: eyes, ears, tongue, nose and mind along with sights, sounds, tastes, odors and thoughts, etc.
    • The Factors of Enlightenment: mindfulness, investigation, energy, delight, serenity, samadhi, equanimity
    • The Four Noble Truths

    Pretty much, you can apply mindfulness to everything that arises in experience or that you are doing in these four all-inclusive realms, but certain topics, like breath, are highlighted as natural foci of attention or for what they teach us. Mindfulness characterizes the Buddhist life. Mindfulness brings stability and wisdom into Buddhist meditation.

    The primary description of the techniques of Right Mindfulness is the Satipatthana Sutta (Foundations of Mindfulness Sutta, MN 10), also embedded in the slightly longer Mahasatipatthana Sutta (DN 22), not the most commonly recited but certainly the most studied text in the entire Pali Canon. I suggest but don’t require that any reader of this blog series read it; it is only about two cups of coffee long and you can find it here.The general content of this sutta is also presented in brief in about seventy other suttas, some of which bring out specific aspects of mindfulness practice, including its relation to samadhi. The Anapana Sati Sutta (MN 52), which emphasizes use of the breath (anapana) in conjunction with all four categories of mindfulness should also be mentioned, as well as the Kayagata Sati Sutta (MN 119), which emphasizes bodily awareness and walks through the relevance of mindfulness to samadhi and to the realization of higher knowledges. My task here is not to teach mindfulness — books and teachers abound — but as elsewhere in this series to help orient.

    Basic Techniques. The same techniques with limited variations are applied to each of the various themes of contemplation, described for each in almost the same words. Each of the four Foundations of Mindfulness is introduced like this:

    The bhikkhu contemplates the body in the body, ardently, with full comprehension, mindfully and putting aside covetousness and grief for the world.

    And so on for “feelings in feelings,” “the mind in the mind” and “phenomena in phenomena.” The parts of this mean as follows:

    • “Contemplation” is “anupassana,” literally ‘seeing-along’, that is, ‘watching’, ‘contemplating’, ‘close attending’ or ‘observing’.
    • “The body in the body,” etc., means ‘in and for itself’. Normally we do not see things in themselves long before we begin to wrap them in feelings, ideas, plans and reasons for disliking them. We should strip away what is extra and look at things directly. Let them speak for themselves.
    • Ardency brings energy, an active curiosity or lively interest in the theme of contemplation.
    • Full comprehension encompasses the theme in every way it directly presents itself, not focusing too narrowly.
    • Mindfulness keeps the mind on task, watching.
    • Putting away of covetousness and grief for the world refers to letting go of the grossest of the distracting Hindrances, thus incorporating much of Right Effort into Right Mindfulness.

    This is the basic technique in a nutshell; it is not complex. However, the Buddha’s mindfulness, like any kind of mindfulness, is not easy; the mind has great resources for distraction. Its instructions are also not so simple as one-pointed mindfulness and probably do not lead so quickly to the same degree of mental absorption or to the blissful shutting out of what would otherwise arise in the mind. But it will be appreciated how all but ardency and comprehension among these factors work together to still the mind. Ardency and comprehension, as well as the choice of subjects of contemplation, for their part, begin to weave wisdom into meditation practice alongside serenity.

    Specific contemplations have further instructions, for instance directed toward awareness of the various parts of the breath, for assuming the meditation posture prior to practicing mindfulness of breathing, and so on. I will refer to some of these details in passing next week when relevant.

    Alongside the basic technique of Right Mindfulness, there are some secondary practices. A common second set of contemplations investigates impermanence. These are included in the Satipatthana Sutta, but apparently not in the equivalent Chinese Agama, and rarely in the many other Pali Suttas that deal with mindfulness. This would indicate that they are less central as one begins mindfulness practice, and are likely a later addition to the Sutta. Nevertheless, they do at some point become instrumental in the development of higher wisdom, especially in conjunction with samadhi.

    “He remains focused on the origination with regard to the body, on passing away with regard to the body, or on origination and passing away with regard to the body. Or his mindfulness that ‘There is a body’ is maintained to the extent of knowledge and remembrance. And he remains independent, not clinging to anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in and of itself.

    And so for feelings, mind and phenomena.

    Tending the Flames of Samadhi. Recall that “for one of Right Mindfullness, Right Samadhi springs up.” (SN 5.25-6) The Buddha repeatedly admonished practitioners to cultivate Samadhi, to enter the jhanas, for these lead to higher wisdom and the ending of taints. Like minding a fire, the cultivation of samadhi requires attention to the various factors of samadhi, to encourage factors appropriate to the current jhana, to balance certain factors and to respond quickly to any distraction. Although samadhi is a resultant state, its particular qualities can be shaped by mindfulness. In fact the various factors of samadhi are already themes of mindfulness of feeling, of mind and of mental qualities. While samadhi is monitored, additional techniques apply to modify these factors for desired results.

    We have seen that the first jhana arises with delight (piti) and happiness (sukka). Progressive states of jhana refine these until only equanimity is left. To help this process along, the Buddha recommends a a series of visualization, beginning with entry into the first jhana:

    He makes delight and happiness born of seclusion drench, steep, fill and pervade his body so that there is no part of his whole body not pervaded by the delight and happiness born of seclusion. – MN 119, and many other suttas

    The Buddha offers the simile of a bathman mixing soap powder by hand with water to describe this practice. A similar practice is repeated for each jhana, but adjusted as jhana factors are progressively lost, so finally in the fourth jhana the practice is simply,

    “he pervades the body with a pure bright mind.”

    The simile for the fourth jhana is that of the body covered completely by a white cloth. Notice how the Buddha makes use of the body as a repository of mental states.

    If sitting in meditation the fever of lust or sluggishness arises, or the mind becomes scattered pursuing external matters, the Buddha recommends directing the mind to some inspiring theme. He does not mention it, but such a theme might be the Buddha, or an image of the Buddha in meditation. This will arouse delight, then serenity, then pleasure, and concentration will be restored. After that the mind can withdraw from the inspiring theme. (SN 47.10)

    Two important qualities of mind that should be developed in samadhi are tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassana). These are the qualities of the still mountain pond.

    When tranquility is developed, what purpose does it serve? The mind is developed. And where the mind is developed, what purpose does it serve? Passion is abandoned. When insight is developed, what purpose does it serve? Discernment is developed. And when discernment is developed, what purpose does it serve? Ignorance is abandoned. – AN 2.30

    The Buddha admonishes us to keep these two factors in balance because the work together. For doing this the Buddha offers a startling technique: Ask someone else what to do!

    The individual who has attained internal tranquillity of awareness, but not insight into phenomena through heightened discernment, should approach an individual who has attained insight into phenomena through heightened discernment and ask him: ‘How should fabrications be regarded? How should they be investigated? How should they be seen with insight?’ – AN 4.94

    Analogous advice is offered to the individual who has attained insight into phenomena through heightened discernment, but not internal tranquillity of awareness.

    Next week I will make a second pass over Right Mindfulness, but this time I will simply point out Six Interesting Features of Buddha’s Mindfulness that give it its unique character. This will later serve as a checklist to identify ways in which variants of Buddha’s Meditation differ or do not differ from the original.

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 4

    Right Effort
    New Moon Uposatha Day                              index to series

    Buddhist practice often seems extremely austere to those, like myself, who grew up in the self-indulgent, instant-gratification West. However we should remind ourselves that this practice is already the Middle Way, and itself the product of backing away from a more extreme austerity. This particularly applies to Right Effort. Right Effort, it will be recalled, has to do with the cultivation of what in the mind is wholesome, like truthfulness, and the inhibition of what is unwholesome, like deceit. The Buddha once admonished a monk, who had as a lay person been a fiddle-player, or a player of some stringed instrument, but as a monk was putting too much push into his practice:

    “Now what do you think, Sona. Before, when you were a house-dweller, were you skilled at playing the vina?”
    “Yes, lord.”
    “And what do you think: when the strings of your vina were too taut, was your vina in tune & playable?”
    “No, lord.”
    “And what do you think: when the strings of your vina were too loose, was your vina in tune & playable?”
    “No, lord.”
    “And what do you think: when the strings of your vina were neither too taut nor too loose, but tuned to be right on pitch, was your vina in tune and playable?”
    “Yes, lord.”
    “In the same way, Sona, over-aroused persistence leads to restlessness, overly slack persistence leads to laziness. Thus you should determine the right pitch for your persistence, attune the pitch of the faculties, and there pick up your theme.”
    – Sona Sutta, AN 6.55

    Apparently the effort of the Bodhisattva had been very tight indeed, suppressing any hint of bodily or mental pleasure. It was recalling his experience of bliss in spontaneous jhana as a boy under the rose-apple tree that he recognized the error in this.

    Why am I afraid of the bliss which has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unbeneficial qualities? It occurred to me, ‘I am not afraid of the bliss since it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures and unbeneficial qualities. – MN 36

    Meditation has never been the same since. Right Samadhi is in fact built upon a bed of delight (piti) and pleasure (sukkha) that naturally arises not through pursuit of sensual stimulation, but through seclusion and virtue. The lowest level of jhana, the first jhana, is defined as containing four jhana factors and implicitly a fifth: thought, discursiveness, delight, pleasure and then unification of mind, and to be born of seclusion. The emphasis on delight and pleasure, according to the Suttas, encourages the practice of samadhi, encourages renunciation of wordly pleasures as these turn out to be shoddier than spiritual delight and pleasure, and gives us the opportunity to examine refined levels of pleasure and resultant stress while in samadhi. [AN 5.3]

    This gets interesting: Although initially encouraged, each of the first four factors still introduces a tiny bit of disturbance into the hyper-stillness of samadhi. As samadhi begins to deepen the most wildly disruptive factors are lost first, that is, not surprisingly, thought and discursiveness. The result is called the second jhana. In the stillness of the second jhana, even delight becomes a bit irksome. When that is lost the result is called the third jhana. In the even greater stillness of the third jhana, pleasure itself is revealed as a disturbing racket in the mind, that when lost brings us to the highest and imperturbable fourth jhana. In short, the levels of jhana are no more than the operation of Right Effort operating at increasingly refined levels of samadhi. In practice not much effort needs to be involved: just as a fire begins to dry out and improve the woodpile used to feed it, samadhi has a tendency given enough time to settle into deeper jhanas of its own accord.

    More generally, Right Effort is the ongoing practice that directly purifies the mind. It is a natural continuation at the mental level of the practice of virtue at the level of bodily and verbal action. It is itself based in mindfulness, a careful monitoring of thought and intention that turns toward the skillful, the beneficial qualities of mind and away from that which vexes and harms. Every time there is resistance to Right Anything, then Right Effort is called for. If it is time to meditate and you are just too lazy, laziness is to be weeded out and ardency needs to be watered. If you really want to eat Ted’s cookie and are about to snatch it when he is not looking, greed is to be weeded out, contentment watered. Often the effort required is enormous; you may be dealing with ingrained habits or natural instinctive behaviors capable of destroying marriages or causing bodily injury.

    There are some standard mental techniques involved in Right Effort, but you will probably discover some of your own, from substituting another thought for the one you are unskillfully entertaining, to deconstructing your present thought, from changing your perspective or conceptualization of the situation, to bringing the thought into the focus of attention until it dissipates of itself. Buddhism also makes use of visualization practices, for instance, metta (loving-kindness) meditations and contemplations of the qualities of the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, to inspire the development of wholesome qualities of mind, along with Buddhist ritual and devotional practices. A reliable guide to the arising of the unwholesome is the simultaneous arising of stress, anxiety, the edginess that through practice you become finely attuned to. Right Effort is karmically beneficial; its regular application shapes your character in beneficial ways. It is recommended that every Buddhist develop the skill of Right Effort to the point that it becomes a thread woven into the length and breadth of everyday life. It is Right Effort that also twists the strand of virtue into our meditation practice, that leads to the bright purity of mind required in Right Samadhi.

    Approaching meditation per se, that is, the development that results in samadhi, attention turns particularly to the five hindrances, which serve as a checklist for establishing the immediate preconditions of meditation, which are essentially mental seclusion from most of the things that are normally playing out in your head to one degree or another. The five hindrances are:

    • Lust. “Hubba-hubba.”
    • Ill-will. “That darn %&$*@!”
    • Sloth and torpor. “Zzzzzz.”
    • Restlessness and remorse. “If only I had …, I know, I’ll …”
    • Doubt. “What do I think I’m doing here anyway?”

    The hindrances pretty much cover the major factors likely to intrude into samadhi in a blatant way, and should they later intrude anyway, Right Effort is braced to drive them away.

    If the mind is freed of these five hindrances, it will be pliant and supple, will have radiant lucidity and firmness, and will concentrate well upon the eradication of the taints. – AN 3:17-18

    Although Right Effort can be viewed as a kind of mindfulness itself, it is Right Mindfulness that weaves the strand of wisdom into our samadhi. We will look at Right Mindfulness next week.


  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 3

    How to Build a Fire
    Last Quarter Moon Uposatha Day                              index to series

    Meditation in Buddhism is an integral part of the totality of Buddhist practice, as most commonly stated as the Noble Eightfold Path, and cannot be understood apart from it. The Path is as follows, eight folds falling into three groupings, the last of which concerns meditation:

    Wisdom Group

    • Right View
    • Right Resolve

    Virtue Group

    • Right Speech
    • Right Action
    • Right Livelihood

    Samadhi Group

    • Right Effort
    • Right Mindfulness
    • Right Samadhi

    Right Samadhi is the furnace in which the products of the previous seven folds are melded to produce knowledge and vision and ultimately liberation.

    There are Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness. The one-pointedness of mind equipped with these seven factors is called Noble Right Samadhi with its supports and accessories. – SN 45.28

    Samadhi comes in different forms, but it is not Buddha’s meditation unless it derives from straightening views and intentions, from purifying virtue and from kindling and stoking the flame with Right Effort and Right Mindfulness, that is, with Buddha’s effort and Buddha’s mindfulness.

    Ideally before beginning meditation practice you will begun to befriend the Dhamma, have learned about suffering and the ending of suffering, about the Noble Eightfold Path, about the contingent nature of reality, and have begun contemplating these and starting to observe these things in your own experience. You will have resolved to develop kindness and non-harming and a willingness to let go of personal advantage. You will also have begun to cultivate virtue in your deeds and words and established a lifestyle inclined to nonharming. Even without meditation virtue can be very strong, but wisdom based only on hearing and reflection will have an upper limit until it is melded in the furnace of samadhi.

    Right Effort is a deepening of the practicing of virtue from the physical level of speech and action to the mental level of thought and intention. It is an ongoing project undertaken by every Buddhist practitioner and is ideally maintained throughout the day, not just in the context of seated meditation. It works as a gardener cultivating that which is pure, skillful or wholesome in the mind: flowers of kindness and generosity and shrubs of equanimity and wisdom, while ridding the mind of what is tainted, unskillful or unwholesome: weeds of greed and ill-will and infestations of delusion. It plays a role in every other step in the Path insofar as each step represents what is skillful; that is why we call these steps “Right.” In the context of meditation Right Effort turns its attention particularly to purifying the mind of the five hindrances: lust, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. These are unskillful factors that, according to experience, have a particular talent for inhibiting or disrupting meditation.

    Right Mindfulness is a wonderfully skillful practice that the Buddhist practitioner is also encouraged to engage throughout the day, not just in the setting of seated meditation. It is the ability to stay on top of things, to discern appropriately, to remember what task is at hand, not to be distracted by what is irrelevant, to return the attention to the relevant should it go astray. Mindfulness is a stabilizing factor of the mind as well a faculty that keeps us out of trouble, a factor that keeps us from falling off of a ladder and that reminds us to buckle our seat belts and to close the door. Mindfulness is a factor in all steps of the virtue group, since each of these steps requires keeping on top of ethical decisions as situations arise. Right Effort is itself a kind of mindfulness focused on discerning and managing skillful and unskillful thoughts. Just as Right Effort is a deepening of virtue, mindfulness is used as a medium in the Buddha’s method for deepening the development of wisdom. In the context of meditation Right Mindfulness turns its attention to any of a set of delineated contemplations, in the four topic domains of body, feeling, mind and phenomena, the four foundations of mindfulness. Depending on the success of our practices of wisdom and virtue, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness will feed dense and fragrant logs into the flames of samadhi so that it burns hot and bright and smells good to boot.

    Right Samadhi is a resultant quality of mind, pure, refined and rarified. Right Samadhi is equated with the four jhanas (in Pali, dyanas in Sanskrit), progressive degrees of this remarkable quality of mind. Samadhi and jhana are often translated as concentration or meditative absorption, but the Buddha’s samadhi seems to be quite distinct from concentration or absorption in other meditative traditions, as are the other factors of the Path.

    Bhikkhus, these eight things, developed and cultivated, if unarisen do not arise apart from the discipline of a Bhagava (Buddha). What eight? Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi. – SN 45.15

    Unlike effort or mindfulness, but like fire, samadhi is not something you do directly, but arises at least partially from what you do. It is said to arise from seclusion, from the satisfaction that arises with virtue, as well as from Right Effort and Right Mindfulness.

    For one of Right Mindfullness, Right Samadhi springs up. – SN 5.25-6

    It is also also encouraged by assuming a still bodily posture. Accordingly, how-to meditation instructions in the Suttas are primarily framed in terms of mindfulness, while meditation in broader contexts, such as the entire Path or the life of a bhikkhu is almost always framed in terms of the jhanas.

    I am using fire today as a simile for samadhi in order to capture the causal connections among the factors involved, but fire poorly expresses the actual experience of samadhi. The experience of Right Samadhi is serene and keenly aware, that is, relaxed, calm, open, sensitive to, but unperturbed by, whatever arises. It is often referred to in the Suttas as calm abiding. For a clearer idea let’s switch to the Buddha’s own simile of a pond in a mountain glen, which also captures two critical factors that arise in samadhi: samatha, or serenity, and vipassana, or insight.

    Just as if there were a pool of water in a mountain glen — clear, limpid, and unsullied — where a man with good eyesight standing on the bank could see shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also shoals of fish swimming about and resting, and it would occur to him, ‘This pool of water is clear, limpid, and unsullied. Here are these shells, gravel, and pebbles, and also these shoals of fish swimming about and resting.’ In the same way — with his mind thus concentrated, purified, and bright, unblemished, free from defects, pliant, malleable, steady, and attained to imperturbability — the monk directs and inclines it to the knowledge of the ending of the mental fermentations. – Maha-Assapura Sutta MN39

    It is in Right Samadhi that serenity is established and at the same time that the highest knowledge and wisdom are cultivated, leading to the total eradication of taints, and ultimately to the attainment of final liberation. In short, Samadhi provides the conditions for working with the mind at a very pure, refined and intimate level that then turns back to complete the development of wisdom begun at the start of Noble Eightfold Path.

    That one could fulfill the wisdom group without having fulfilled the samadhi group that is not possible. – DN18

    The Noble Eightfold Path provides a natural flow from wisdom and virtue, progressively refined to the level of thought, intention and contemplation then melded in the flame of the very refined mental state of samadhi to begin the path anew with a refined degree of cognitive and affective purity. The result is that all of the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path build on and support each other. This is the genius of the Buddha’s Path of training.

    How to build a fire. To make a fire you need to find or create a place free of smothering dampness and cooling wind and access to dry wood. Preparing to make a fire is like Right Effort. Right Effort tames the distracting mental factors, the hindrances , which could easily inhibit the fire, like wind and dampness.

    You then place and adjust kindling and logs and other flammables, and blow air, in a way that encourages the embers of the previous fire (assume that embers already exist). Tending to the fire is like Right Mindfulness and the fire itself is like Right Samadhi. Right Mindfulness stabilizes the mind by providing a focus, bringing the mind into alignment like carefully placed logs.

    Finally a flame arises and grows and, if the first two steps are skillfully performed, it provides constant and ample heat and light. Right Samadhi is the flame that arises in at least partial dependence on the things that you do to burn hot and bright. Take note that whereas preparation, tending, effort and mindfulness are things you do, fire and samadhi each arise of its own accord in at least partial dependence of the things you do. In fact that can even arise spontaneously as factors happen to come into line in the presence of the ever-present embers.

    Singleness of mind is samadhi, the four foundations of mindfulness are its themes, the four right efforts are its requisites, and any cultivation, development and pursuit of these qualities are its development. – MN44

    The process of tending, aided by preparation, not only gives rise to the fire, it also determines the particular qualities of the fire, the heat, light, smoke, oder and type of ash it produces, whether it flares up and quickly dwindles, the size of the flame, how the flame spreads, and so on. You tend to the fire in a way that produces the desired qualities. The process of mindfulness, aided by effort, not only gives rise to samadhi, it also determines the particular qualities of samadhi, the intensity or level of samadhi, the levels of delight and pleasure, concentration, arising thought processes and other features, how supportive it is of samatha or of vipassana, and so on. Part of tending a fire is to monitor and adjust the qualities of the fire and part of being mindful is to monitor and adjust the qualities of samadhi.

    Although there is a causal progression from Right Effort through Right Mindfulness to Right Samadhi, as samadhi grows it begins to dominate and assume a life of its own. In its early stages the flame of samadhi must be kindled carefully and adverse influences, such as too much wind or anger, need to be controlled. For a while after that logs still must be placed carefully and attention carefully focused. However when samadhi is burning fiercely, when the fire has become deep and serene, effort and mindfulness flow of themselves: samadhi dries out any moisture in its vicinity and determines itself the flow of air, from all sides then skyward, the hindrances are pretty much locked out and tending to samadhi entails merely tossing in a log every once in a while any which way. In samadhi the mind eventually settles in imperturbably pulling mindfulness along.

    This has been a concise pass through Buddha’s meditation. In the next weeks I will report in a bit more detail in turn about Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi, and about the attainment of knowledge and vision in Right Samadhi, giving particular attention to the uniquely Buddhist features of each of these.

     

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 2

    Discovering Buddha’s Meditation
    Full Moon Uposatha Day                              index to series

    The Suttas report that the Bodhisattva left home to become a wandering ascetic, and lived and practiced much like other wandering ascetics, until he rebelled against the prevailing wisdom, boldly plunged into his own way of doing things, … and succeeded. I think of the wandering ascetics as much like those of our contemporaries who engage in extreme sports or extreme dieting, performing wondrous feats like starving the body of all but the smallest crumb of nutrition. The Buddha’s was the Middle Way. This applied to meditation as well.

    The Suttas report that the Bodhisattva studied with two meditation masters and attained all of the jhanas (progressive state of meditative absorption) they could dream up until he decided, in his blend of frustration and daring, to let the child be master to the man, … and succeeded. We know little about what techniques the bodhisattva had learned, but presumably they entailed extreme states of concentration, starving the mind of all but the smallest crumb of experience through focusing the attention as narrowly as possible and stripping away any joy that this was in danger of bringing. Then the Bodhisattva remembered an experience he had had quite spontaneously under a rose-apple tree as a child.

    I thought: ‘I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then — quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental qualities — I entered and remained in the first jhana: rapture and pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Could that be the path to Awakening?’ Then following on that memory came the realization: ‘That is the path to Awakening.’ MN 36

    What he envisioned was something much more broad and giddy than what he had been taught as jhana.

    The Buddha is known for the habit of giving traditional vocabulary new meaning, as when he appropriated the brahmanic term “karma,” meaning ritual action, and but used it for volitional action. He continued to use the term term “jhana” for his new discovery, but there is some evidence that he also invented a new brand new word to be used alongside jhana. It has been observed that the term “samadhi” seems to occur nowhere in the literature of India before the Buddha (Walsh, The Long Discourses of the Buddha, p. 556), though it was subsequently appropriated in the Hindu literature. Now samadhi, or jhana, is not something the yogi does; it is a resultant quality of mind that arises through doing something else the yoga does do, primarily exercising mindfulness. For the wandering ascetic mindfulness would have been very primitive and direct: Just keep your attention in one place, don’t let it wander. For the Buddha mindfulness became something much more open, something that can be practiced throughout the day, while walking, when stretching limb, while eating, when defecating, or when sitting with crossed legs attending — in a relaxed way, mind you — to the breath. Virtue and wisdom also were incorporated in the Buddha’s method as necessary preconditions for the arising of Right Samadhi, a very rare and pure state of mind, at once still and keenly aware.

    In the following weeks I will highlight the main features of the Buddha’s discovery. However given the daunting plethora of meditation techniques referred to last week, it is incumbent upon me to clarify how most reliably we can know what method or methods, exactly, the Buddha taught.

    We rely on a huge body texts presumed to have been spoken some 2,500 years ago, Scholars tell us that the texts that most clearly originated from the time of the Buddha are roughly the Vinaya, except for the final chapter, the first four Nikayas (the Digha, Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara, when I quote the suttas I generally use DN, MN, SN and AN to refer to these) and the Sitta Nipata of the Khuddhaka Nikaya. For all other Buddhist Buddhist scriptures an origin at least hundreds of years later has been reliably established. These later texts include most of the Khuddhaka Nikaya, such as the Jataka stories, the Abhidhamma and the Abhidharmas of various traditions, the Mahayana Sutras, and less controversally, the Pali commentaries and the Sanskrit shastras. Now, this does not mean that the later works are not authentic in the sense of accurately reflecting the intentions of the Buddha, only that they are less reliable than the earlier texts at determining what those original intentions are. Some of them are doubtlessly brilliant reflections of the the Buddha’s thought.

    But even the earlier texts are of questionable pedigree: They were committed to memory, then transmitted from generation to generation for hundreds of years, through recitation and memorization, before attaining written form. Then they were transmitted from scribe to scribe for many further hundreds of years before we arrive at the earliest extant copies of significant portions of the corpus that is available to scholars for examination today. Throughout this long period of oral and orthographic transmission these texts were undoubtedly subject to error, to intentional modification, to rewording, to insertion, deletion and rearrangement, certainly to embellishment, and even to wholesale incorporation of original new works of later composition. Linguistic vicissitudes further complicated matters of interpretation as these texts have been either translated into new languages along the way or preserved in long dead languages that the reciters and scribes could at best imperfectly understand.

    With so many sources of fuzziness, how do we know that any given teaching found in these ancient texts is authentic? How do you know that your gerbil is authentic and not just fur all the way? Luckily there are a number of additional factors that shore up our confidence in what we know of the Buddha’s teachings.

    First, there are separate transmissions of this early corpus which separated themselves geographically and linguistically at an early date and when compared can help identify what has been inserted, modified, deleted, and so on, over the centuries in one or the other transmission. The most important versions of the early corpus are the Pali, preserved in Sri Lanka in something close to the language(s) of the Buddha, and the Chinese, originally maintained in Sanskrit in Northern India, but translated into Chinese before most of the Sanskrit texts were lost through historical circumstances. Reassuringly these two versions are in surprisingly close, but still not in perfect, agreement in all details. Techniques of text analysis developed particularly by biblical scholars provide further clues as to authentic and modified passages.

    Second, and probably most importantly, the yogi’s practice is not based on texts alone, but also on the experiences that arise through practice. The text is like a map, the experience like the terrain that the map purports to describe but which the yogi actually sets his feet in. Attention to both text (or at least words of a teacher) and experience are necessary, since one provides a check on the other. The text is easily subject to misinterpretation especially if it has been transmitted across time, culture and milieu, and experience is even more easily subject to misinterpretation as it is transmitted through the haze of the yogi’s own delusions, at least until he reaches higher levels of attainment. However, those parts of the map that cannot be made to accord with experience are quickly abandoned or rewritten in the yogi’s mind to bring them into line with experience. From an historical perspective, practitioners are likely have maintained the integrity of the texts. If most of the reciters and scribes that have transmitted the ancient texts to us over the generations were also practitioners we can expect that any mistransmissions will tend to have been quickly corrected to restore the original intention if not the letter, that there will have been a constant pressure to bring the texts into line with experience should they go astray. This empirical aspect of the Buddhist scriptures allows them to escape the Buddha’s own blind-leading-the-blind criticism of brahmanic scriptural tradition found in the Canki Sutta (MN95). I suspect that it is only when the reciters or scribes are pure scholar-monks, not yogis, for repeated generations, that the blind will lead the blind and the texts will begin to diverge alarmingly from their original intention.

    Third and finally, the ancient texts do not simply consist of a list of independent elements free to vary in any direction, but rather express a coherent and integrated system. The Buddha was a very systematic thinker and his genius shines through quite vividly and unmistakenly in this corpus in spite of any fuzziness. This is like a jigsaw puzzle in which all the pieces fit into place to reveal a particular scene. If at some point we clearly recognize the Golden Gate Bridge even with missing or left-over pieces, it is unlikely that some permutation of the pieces will reveal instead a Swiss village. Any extraneous pieces that do not fit in probably got mixed in from a different jigsaw puzzle that also got some of our pieces. Buddhist scholars can and do argue endlessly about the extraneous or missing pieces, even seeking out obscure passages to argue in favor of the Swiss village. There is no proof that they are wrong; but the shining forth of a coherent picture is darn compelling.

    My intention in the coming weeks is to describe what the Pali Suttas themselves seem rather directly to say, occasionally pointing out where inauthenticities (missing and left-over pieces) may have crept in, in order to reveal the coherent system present therein as something that maps reliably onto actual meditative experience. Although this interpretation is clearly recognized by many contemporary teachers, it is often confused or even rebutted by others. I hope that reference to to the Suttas, to the coherence of their most straight-forward interpretation, and to its reflection in meditative experience, will clear make clear what the Buddha actually taught. I will later show how confusion arises in the attempt to reconcile later variants, often no more than terminological variants coherent in themselves, of the Buddha’s teaching with the Suttas.

    Does this sound reasonable?

  • Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants 1

    Introduction

    Uposatha Teaching for First Quarter Moon

    A number of people have asked if I would write about meditation in this blog. Meditation practice is a very individual thing, opening deep levels of personal exploration, hopefully in communication with an engaged and understanding teacher. The audience for this blog is moreover likely to come from a daunting plethora of perspectives, each with its own vocabulary, conceptual framework and representative teachers. Although I balk at the thought of trying to teach meditation in this venue, the existence of this daunting plethora is itself of some interest and I would like to spend some weeks writing about this.

    This daunting plethora has proved itself a source of bewilderment, doubt and contention in Asia but particularly in the West where a large sample of Buddha’s meditation and its variants can often be found within a single community. As a result meditators bandy about many terms, like “mindfulness,” “insight,” and “jhana” with little agreement on what these mean, and with much uncertainty about the relative merits of alternative techniques or doubts about the viability of their own chosen practices. Often knowledgeable meditators talk right past one another with an uneasy feeling that something is out of accord but unable to determine what.

    For the most part I contentedly practice shikantaza, just sitting, the predominant form of meditation in the East Asian Soto Zen school in which I long practiced and was once ordained. I find myself now, however, in the Theravada tradition and am therefore frequently asked questions like, “Do Zennies practice vipassana or samatha?”or “What is your object of meditation?” As simple as the questions seem to the Theravada practitioner they do not make much sense in the framework of Zen. Even within the relatively orthodox Theravada tradition there are profound disagreements concerning, for instance, what exactly samadhi or jhanas are, whether samadhi is really necessary in Buddhist practice, and whether insight can arise only after leaving jhana. Then there are things like koans as practiced in Soto’s sister, the Rinzai Zen tradition, as objects of meditation, and all these esoteric Tibetan practices I keep hearing about.

    In spite of the modern daunting plethora of methods, the Buddha actually gave some us some very clear instructions about meditation, available to us today in the Pali Suttas and in the Chinese Agamas. I will spend the first few weeks on the Buddha’s meditation. Radically innovative in its day, the Buddha’s meditation forms a coherent and comprehensive system, fully an expression of the remarkable genius of the Buddha. He describes a framework that gathers and focuses the rays of the entirety of Buddhist practice, in its conceptual, ethical and affective dimensions, and turns them ineluctably toward Nirvana.

    Not many Buddhist practitioners actually follow the letter of the Buddha’s meditation, fewer than claim to do so. Every major school of Buddhism that I am aware of has introduced significant changes into the Buddha’s description of meditation. However this is not necessarily a bad thing: Many changes seem to have been a pedagogical necessity as Buddhism has been transmitted over time and culture to people with radically different world views and conceptual habits than those of the Buddha’s time and place. Many other changes were probably due to misunderstandings or miscommunications, for instance, as a purely intellectual understanding transmitted in a period of slump without verification through practice. However, some of these misunderstandings seem in subsequent periods of resurgence to have evolved further into new methods that restored the Buddha’s original intention. Other changes involve swapping in elements from the techniques of non-Buddhist traditions. And finally, some changes may be intentional modifications of what had come before because someone had a good idea that may even produce improved results. Just as human languages evolve across time and place yet maintain their function, Buddhism has shown itself capable of similar change.

    Next week I will begin this project by outlining my understanding about what the Buddha taught about meditation. I will let the early suttas for the most part speak for themselves. I would like to spend the final few weeks of this series on the variants to Buddha’s meditation, especially shikantaza and some modern “vipassana” techniques. I will consider how they preserve the elements and structure of the Buddha’s meditation and speculate how and why they may have deviated from it.

    Since my knowledge of the range of the daunting plethora is limited, I encourage others who have knowledge of techniques beyond my small scope of familiarity to apply the exercise I will exemplify here to them as well. I expect that we will find that almost every technique preserves the Buddha’s original intention.

  • The End of Blog Vacation

    I will resume my weekly series of Uposatha Day posts next week, for the First Quarter Moon on November 3.

    I have used my little vacation to put some ideas into order, to visit family and the attend the Seventeenth Annual Western Buddhist Monastic Conference in Sacramento, CA. In the meantime the weather here in Austin, Texas has turned from bake to chill very quickly.

    A lot of construction is disrupting the accustomed stillness at the Sitagu Buddhist Vihara where I live, which will produce a pagoda, a Dhamma hall, many more cottages, and, my particular interest, a dedicated brick library building! There are some sketches HERE. I have for a few months undertaken to catalog our books and implement a check-out system, and growing out library. We will soon be a fully functional retreat center, for both meditation and retreat. Then the peace will return. The plan is that a very eminent Burmese meditation teacher will lead a long retreat here next May after the opening of the new pagoda. More about that later.

    My new Uposatha series will be entitled “Buddha’s Meditation and its Variants.”