Author: bhikkhu cintita

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.

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.

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.

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?