Theravada Meditation: Visuddhimagga Jhanas
First Quarter Moon Uposatha Day , February 29, 2012
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In the Fifth Century AD in Sri Lanka, the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification), was compiled by Ven. Buddhaghosa from previously existing materials and would prove to have lasting influence on the meditation methods of Theravada school of Buddhism. A number of things must have been striking to any new reader familiar with the Buddha’s meditation method described in the Suttas but encountering this huge, very detailed meditation manual for the first time. Primary among these is that the Visuddhimagga describes not one but two distinct methods of meditation, each to be cultivated independently for distinct purposes. These are called samatha- (serenity) and vipassana- (insight) meditation. Now the astute reader will recognize both terms, samatha and vipassana, from the previous discussions of Buddha’s meditation and its Zen variant, but in each of those cases these were aspects of of a single method that were brought into balance but worked together.
In order to compare the Visuddhimagga’s approach to the Buddha’s I will make use of the template we used to make the same comparison for Zen, however since we are now dealing with two methods I will apply it twice, this week for samatha meditation, and next week for vipassana.
Prerequisites of Visuddhimagga Samatha Medititation.
These are things cultivated prior to meditation, over years or minutes.
Wisdom and Virtue. Virtue and aesthetic practices are prerequisites to meditation. The latter, endorsed but not strongly by the Buddha, are intended to “cleanse” virtue by developing fewness of wishes and contentment. What differs from the Buddha’s program, following the Eightfold Noble Path is that samatha meditation is developed prior to the development of wisdom as a conceptual pursuit.
Methods of Visuddhimagga Samatha Medititation.
These are the mental actions that give rise to meditative experiences or allow them to be steered once they have arisen.
Removal of the hindrances. This is roughly as in Buddha’s meditation.
Undistracted reflection on themes conducive to insight? Forty alternative objects or themes of meditation are enumerated that substantially overlaps with the different themes of the buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness which are not represented in the Suttas. Most remarkable is the inclusion of ten different kasinas, or artificial disks as meditation objects. Otherwise objects are included that one one expect to be, as in Buddha’s method, intended to support the investigating impermanence, suffering, insubstantiality and unattractiveness. However the experience of samatha meditation described below actually precludes their use in this way once jhana is attained. The choice of meditation object seems intended to match the meditator’s personality type rather than the development of a particular kind of meditation.
In general the method is to fix the mind on the object of meditation and as the mind settles a counterpoint sign (patibhaga nimitta) will arise, which is an idealized mental image, unblemished and unchanging, of the object itself in the mind’s eye. The mind fixes instead on the counterpoint image when this arises. Fixing on an image in this way is not mentioned in the Buddha’s meditation.
Encouragement of active factors. In the preparatory stages of meditation all of the jhana factors and the early factors of enlightenment including mindfulness, investigation, energy, delight and happiness are encouraged, much as in the Buddha’s meditation.
The Experience of Visuddhimagga Samatha Medititation.
As in Buddha’s meditation the experience of samatha meditation is concentration at varying levels. The Visuddhimagga describes a level of concentration called samadhi but actually prior to jhana, which the Suttas do not mention: Access concentration is close to jhana, is possible only when the hindrances are suppressed, involves clear undistracted awareness and a full range of mental experiences.
Concentration is centered, not fixed? In the Visuddhimagga jhana, also called fixed concentration, is so fixed on the counterpart sign that this is the entirety of experience. This means that all senses and awareness of the body are completely cut off. The jhana factors that define the different jhanas and that we are familiar with from Buddha’s meditation — thought and discourse, delight, pleasure and one-pointedness — are present, but they are functions for directing and maintaining concentration, awareness of these individual factors is possible only before and after leaving jhana.
We have seen that in the Buddha’s meditation concentration is centered, not fixed, there is broad awareness, particularly of the body and of many mental factors in every jhana, including the five jhana factors. Clearly jhana in the Visuddhimagga is a different experience than in the Suttas. Just to be clear, when I need to disambiguate these two kinds of jhana I will call them respectively VM-jhana and S-jhana, or Visuddhimagga-jhana and Sutta-jhana. Notice that S-jhana has more in common with access concentration than it does with VM-jhana.
Investigation continues in samadhi? No investigation or insight can occur in VM-jhana. This is clearly stated in the Visuddhimagga itself and must be the case because the counterpart sign is the entirety of experience and it is experienced as unchanging, without blemish. VM-jhana in this respect is quite distinct from S-jhana, which we have seen forms not only a basis, but the essential basis, for vipassana.
So, if samatha meditation is not a direct basis for insight, what is it used for? First, it provides a blissful abiding. Second, it provides a indirect support for insight meditation by developing qualities of mind that carry over after leaving jhana. Third it allows the development of supermundane powers such as walking through walls or touching the sun. Fourth, it can lead to rebirth in the Brahma World. Fifth, it provides the cessation of Nirvana here and now … temporarily.
The pre-jhanic access concentration can be used a a direct basis for insight. But insight is actually developed in vipassana meditation, not in samatha meditation. And in fact according to the Visuddhimagga VM-jhana is not even a necessary condition for the development of at all insight; it is optional. Vipassana does not require VM-jhana. A practioner who makes use of VM-jhanas is even specifically referred to as a samatha-yanika, a serenity vehicle guy. This contrasts with the suddha-vipassana-yanika, a pure vipassana vehicle guy, or a sukkha-vipassaka, a dry vipassana guy.
It should be clear that VM-jhana is quite different from S-jhana. First, the Buddha provides in the Suttas no comparable method to that of the Visuddhimagga to lead to jhana and no fixing on an object of concentration is described and the intermediary role of the nimittas in fixing concentration is completely absent. Second, the description of jhana in the Suttas reflect something in which many mental factors are active, for instance, 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.” This and the next passage describe things that would not be possible in VM-jhana.
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 9.36
Third, jhana is described as necessary for insight in the Suttas, not optional. For instance:
There is no jhana for one with no wisdom, no wisdom for one without jhana. But one with both jhana and discernment, he’s on the verge of nibbana. – Dhp 372
In fact the idea that samadhi would be optional as a full fold of the Noble Eightfold Path seems on the surface absurd.
Fourth, there is no reference in the Suttas to coming out of jhana in order to practice insight, which is what is required for VM-jhanas. I have come across only one instance in the large number of suttas dealing with jhana and insight of coming out of jhana to practice insight, but it is the exception that proves the rule: In M.I.435.26 the meditator comes out of jhana in order to observe the impermanence of jhana itself. Bhante Gunaratana has written an paper available on line on this issue in which he concludes:
“It is virtually impossible to find evidence in the Suttas that one should come out of jhana to practice vipassana.”
In summary, in the Visuddhimagga VM-jhana serves functions primarily different from the highest goal of final liberation, which requires insight, and for which jhana is helpful but optional. It only incidentally supports the development of insight. This is OK, since the Visuddhimagga provides a second form of meditation, which we will look at and assess next week.
What is a bit troubling is that the Visuddhimagga co-opts the Buddha’s terminology, “jhana” and “samadhi,” for its own ends. The Buddha had already co-opted “jhana” for his own ends, but it seems that in the Visuddhimagga it has reverted to what might have been its original non-Buddhist usage to refer to fixed concentration. What is a bit puzzling is the amount of attention given to VM-jhana, since it is not only optional for the highest goal and in fact rather outside of the logic of the Buddha’s system, but is also considered to be something few can actually attain. If any readers more familiar with the Visuddhimagga than I can explain away this trouble and puzzle I would appreciate it.
Theravada Meditation
New Moon Uposatha Day , February 21, 2012
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Buddhism spread from its home in Northern India in all directions, north, east and west. We have considered some of what happened to Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia. Some two hundred years before reaching China Buddhism is purported to have arrived in Sri Lanka during the Second Century BC reign of Emperor Ashoka, possessor of the political will that made Buddhism perhaps the first world religion, that is, propelled Buddhism well beyond its boundaries from the land and culture of its origin. The traditional account has Emperor Ashoka’s son Ven. Mahinda, a Buddhist monk, first brought Buddhism to this southern island, along with a branch from which a Bodhi tree could be planted. Though Sri Lanka was isolated by water it was not so distant culturally as China for its culture and language were Indoeuropean.
Over the first centuries different schools of Buddhism came and went in Sri Lanka, but what emerged dominant is what we now know as the Theravada school, which would spread to Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, where it lives today. The Theravada school is often called the most orthodox school, or even “original Buddhism.” Indeed it is the one still existing school that does not fall into the reformist Mahayana camp. And indeed it has served more than any other school as the guardian of the original teachings, the Dharmavinaya, preserved in the Pali language as the early Suttas (discourses) and as the Vinaya (book of discipline).
Now, Theravada is not the only school to have inherited the Dharmavinaya — the Chinese have it too and the Tibetans most of it — but they are the primary guardians in at least two senses: First, the Theravada tradition preserves the Dharmavinaya in something close to the Buddha’s language or languages rather than in an unrelated language from with the original texts have been translated. For instance, if you wanted to find out in detail what the Christian Bible said about some esoteric point, you would prefer to look in the original Greek rather than the King James version. A similar higher degree of reliability falls to the Pali rather than to the Chinese. Second, the Theravada has devoted much more energy to the study of those texts than anyone else. These texts are chanted repeatedly in their original Pali. Pali scholars have discussed the meanings of words and phrases for centuries. These texts are actually read and even memorized.
I began this series by describing the Buddha’s meditation, based on the discourses. Although I relied almost exclusively on the Pali Suttas preserved in the Pali tradition, this does not mean that I was describing exclusively Theravada meditation. The Chinese Agamas seem, as far as I know, to say the same thing and outside of the last minute translation from Sanskrit to Chinese have as solid a pedigree as the Pali Suttas. What I presented seems to have been a part of the Buddha’s teaching in Northern India that defined the starting point for the evolution of each of the Buddhist schools, each of which introduced its own innovations. Buddha’s meditation is the root of both Zen meditation and of Theravada meditation, even though the Thervadins have the key right there on the shelf to unlock what the Buddha’s meditation was. In fact even as the primary guardian of these original teachings, the Theravada school underwent its own evolution, and was fully codified in Sri Lanka only in the Fifth Century AD in what is known as the Commentaries. This is a great body of texts that analyze the earlier canonical scriptures. Even though there is much debate about the reliability of the commentaries in every instance, the commentaries largely define the center of gravity in Theravada Buddhism. They are particularly highly regarded in Burma.
We will in fact be forced to plunge right into the Sutta/Commentary debate here, because it seems that meditation is handled quite differently in the Commentaries than in the Suttas. The commentarial Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) is a huge, very detailed and very influential meditation manual from the Fifth Century AD, compiled by Ven. Buddhaghosa about the same time Tian-tai Master Zhiyi Zhi was writing his voluminous meditation manual, the Mohe Zhiguan (Great Serenity and Insight) in China (which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago).
For an ardent student of the Suttas, or failing that, for an ardent reader of the early part of this series on the Buddha’s meditation, a number of common claims about Theravada, particularly what is called Vipassana, meditation have to raise eyebrows through the roof:
“The Buddha taught two kinds of meditation: Samatha and Vipassana.”
“The Buddha taught following your breath where it touches your upper lip but otherwise there is no teaching from the Buddha on how to do samadhi.”
“Jhana is the mental absorption in a ‘counterpart image’ [nimitta].”
“Thinking stops and the senses shut down in jhana.”
“You have to come out of jhana to do vipassana.”
“Jhana/samadhi is not necessary for insight,” or “… for higher attainments, … for Liberation.”
None of these claims seems to have any support in the Suttas at all and many seem to flatly contradict the Suttas, what I have presented as Buddha’s meditation. Less importantly, none of these claims has any semblance whatever of Zen meditation.
What gives? Has Theravada meditation gone woefully astray, or did it decide at some point to abandon the old ways for a method more adequate than the Buddha’s method? It turns out, I think, that neither of these is true. This is what I will discuss in the next couple of weeks.
The Experience of Zen Meditation
Last Quarter Moon Uposatha Day , February 15, 2012
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In summary the method of Zen meditation described last week compares with the Buddha’s method as follows:
In Zen meditation also begins with the removal of distracting factors of the mind, which are the Hindrances for the Buddha, but which are more vaguely and inconsistently identified as any grasping or aversion and thoughts of mundane affairs in Zen.
We conclude our subseries on Zen meditation by considering the fundamental qualities of the meditative experience..
Concentration in zazen is centered, not fixed. Recall that in fixed concentration the mind attaches unmovingly to a single meditation object into which the mind is absorbed. In centered concentration the mind itself seems to be unmoving, but experience comes and goes. The mind is pliant, open to everything that arises remains a while and falls, but what arises does not move the mind off center. The mind is calm and steady but sensitive and aware. The Buddha’s meditation and Zen both appear to be centered, not fixed. A method in either case which lacks a fixed object of mindfulness indicates that this would be the case. Sometimes this quality is called “sitting like a wall” or “wall gazing.”
A number of further descriptions of samadhi from the Zen literature suggests the broad opening of zazen to different levels of experience. Hongzhi wrote:
“Roam and plan in samadhi. Every detail clearly appears before you. Sound and form, echo and shadow, happen instantly without leaving traces.”
“Respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds.”
“Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements”
The implication here is that nothing is suppressed as it impinges on consciousness, but neither is it entertained, sought after or engaged in a conventional manner.
A clear difference in the Zen approach to samadhi is that it has no metrics. The Buddha spoke of four graded jhanas and movement from one to the other, and in fact the word “jhana” is used with primarily reference to the degree or depth of samadhi. Zen (from Sanskrit “dyana,” Pali “jhana”) never refers to the four jhanas as such that I am aware of. Experience bears out that there are different levels of intensity of samadhi, but Zen seems uninterested in tracking which level the meditator is at. Even for the Buddha there is no indication that the meditator should set her sights on the highest jhana.
Investigation continues in samadhi. For the Buddha samadhi itself encourages the development of insight knowledge. This is also reflected in an early Zen text, the Platform Sutra, in which the Sixth Ancestor is reported to have said:
Learned Audience, in my system Samadhi [Jhana] and Prajna [Wisdom or insight] are fundamental. But do not be under the wrong impression that these two are independent of each other, for they are inseparably united and are not two entities. Samadhi is the quintessence of Prajna, while Prajna is the activity of Samadhi. At the very moment that we attain Prajna, Samadhi is therewith; and vice versa. If you understand this principle, you understand the equilibrium of Samadhi and Prajna. A disciple should not think that there is a distinction between ‘Samadhi begets Prajna’ and ‘Prajna begets Samadhi’.
…
Learned Audience, to what are Samadhi and Prajna analogous? They are analogous to a lamp and its light. With the lamp, there is light. Without it, it would be darkness. The lamp is the quintessence of the light and the light is the expression of the lamp. In name they are two things, but in substance they are one and the same. It is the same case with Samadhi and Prajna.
Recall that with fixed samadhi there is little opportunity for developing insight except outside of samadhi. Here are some passages that describe the insight end of samadhi in Zen.
“To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.” – Dogen, Kenjokoan
In Dogen’s writings he typically identifies this mind with awakening itself. Here is Hongzhi, a master of images from nature.
“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountains appear. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains interpenetration without bounds.”
“When silent illumination is fulfilled, the lotus blossoms, the dreamer awakens, A hundred streams flow into the ocean, a thousand ranges face the highest peak.”
The transition from vipassana, investigation and insight, while in samadhi to the higher attainments and ultimately to awakening is mysterious. There is no recipe. I am always reminded of the proverb, “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink it.” Samadhi leads the horse to water, and things as they are are neatly arrayed before you, yet we do not know how get the horse to drink the water, how the mind will click into deeper understanding beyond concepts.
Here Zen seems more interested than the Buddha in tracking these intermediate sudden understandings for which it often applies the word “kensho.” An interesting aspect of Zen is concern with seemingly arbitrary factors that can trigger kensho. Two well-know examples of such triggers from the early Zen literature is the sound of a pebble striking bamboo as a Zen student was sweeping and a Zen student suddenly noticing his reflection in water and wondering which one is real.
There seems also to have developed in Zen a pedagogical art understood by some Zen masters of contriving such triggers in order to evoke kensho in their students. I think this has no counterpart in the Buddha’s methods. Traditionally in Zen teacher and student develop a very intimate relationship over many years of intense zazen and mindfulness practice and the student is said to acquire the mind of the teacher. Zen koans are full of instances in which the teacher shouts, kicks or hits the student at just the right time, seemingly in anticipation of a felicitous result. Dogen refers to such methods in Fukanzazengi, listing some of the triggers famous in the early Zen literature:
“… the bringing out of enlightenment by the opportunity provided by a finger, a banner, a needle, or a mallet, and the effecting of realization with the aid of a whisk, a fist, a staff or a shout, cannot be fully understood by man’s discriminative thinking.”
I don’t know of clear examples in my own experience of teachers being adept in this skill. Rinzai teachers probably have a unique opportunity for triggering kensho (or for them, satori) as they work intimately with students in interviews accompanying meditative koan introspection practice, though my training does not qualify me to say much about this.
This method of contriving conditions for insight seems to be found even in the Zen arts, The following instance of clever modern Japanese landscaping perhaps serves to illustrate the method: This involved a path that lead high up a mountain from which there had at one time been a continuous magnificent view of the ocean. However the landscaper planted a hedge along the path that obscured this view, except at one point in which he provided a low break in the hedge. He placed a modern drinking fountain at that spot. At the moment the weary wanderer leaned over to sip the water the gap in the hedge is suddenly revealed and he sees a vast ocean of water at the moment he begins to take water into his own body. This is apparently an attempt to contrive an experience intended to evoke insight, much as an adeptly executed shout, thwap or tweak of the nose.
In conclusion, Zen meditation has some very distinctive qualities, and yet seems to retain the most essential elements and the internal logic of the Buddha’s method. Let me conclude with a moving quote from Dogen, who clearly was very excited about the potential of zazen with respect to awakening:
“When one displays the Buddha mudra with one’s whole body and mind, sitting upright in this Samadhi even for a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes Buddha mudra, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment. Therefore, it enables Buddha-tathagatas to increase the dharma joy of their own original grounds and renew the adornment of the way of awakening. Simultaneously, all living beings of the dharma world in the ten directions and six realms become clear and pure in body and mind, realize great emancipation, and their own original face appears. At that time, all things together awaken to supreme enlightenment and utilize the Buddha-body, immediately go beyond the culmination of awakening, and sit upright under the kingly bodhi tree. At the same time, they turn the incomparable, great Dharma wheel and begin expressing ultimate and unfabricated profound prajna.”
Next week I will begin to consider Theravadin methods of meditation.
Methods of Zen Meditation
Full Moon Uposatha Day , February 7, 2012 index to series
In our comparison between Buddha’s meditation and its Zen variant we turn to method. Last week we considered prerequisites and next week we will consider the experience of meditation.
Removal of the hindrances. This step just prior to meditation, which I had discussed as a part of Right Effort, seems to be pretty much equivalent in Zen, though the five hindrances (lust, anger, sloth and torpor, restlessness and regret and doubt) are rarely listed as such. Zen puts a strong emphasis on seclusion values the monastic lifestyle. Specific instructions prior to seated meditation like the folliwng are common.
“Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think of good or evil, do not deal with right or wrong. Halt the revolutions of mind, intellect and consciousness; stop the calculations of thoughts, ideas and perceptions.”
Undistracted reflection on themes conducive to insight. Tendai master Zhiyi’s (538-597) early manual of what he calls serenity-insight (Pali: samatha-vipassana, Chinese: zhi-guan, Japanese: shikan) meditation is supposedly based fundamentally on the Sanskrit Agamas (equivalent to the Pali Suttas), so effectively on the Satipattana Sutta and the like. This suggests the the Buddha’s method was properly studied in China at roughly the time the Visuddhimagga was compiled in Sri Lanka, and was not replaced willy-nilly by some Taoist method early on.
In an early Zen text, in words attributed to the Fourth Ancestor, we accordingly find the following instructions.
“When you are first beginning to practice sitting meditation, dwell in a quiet place and directly contemplate your body and mind. You should contemplate the four elements and the five skandhas, the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind, and desire, anger and delusion … and soon through all the various items. From the very beginning they are unsubstantial and tranquil, neither arising nor disappearing, being equal and nondual.”
Although the Buddha’s method seems clear in this early passage, there seems to have been a subsequent historical process of paring down to the root elements in the Zen tradition that perhaps cannot be reconstructed in the scant texts available. I will skip ahead a few hundred years to Dogen to exemplify this. According to Dogen:
In zazen don’t do anything, don’t meditate, meditation is done by our mind, don’t count breath, watch breath, don’t chant, don’t contemplate, don’t concentrate mind on a particular object. We have no techniques. We really just sit with both body and mind.
If you study Dogen you realize that he is prone to hyperbole, and also to self-contradiction, the full meaning of a passage properly recognized as a counterpoint to something else given in the particular context. But what he says here is still very nearly true. Here is Dogen’s method from Fukanzazengi (Universal Recommendations for Zazen):
“Sit in either the full-lotus or half-lotus position. … You should have your robes and belt loosely bound and arranged in order. Then place your right hand on your left leg and your left palm on your right palm, thumb tips touching. Thus sit upright in correct bodily posture, neither inclining to the left nor to the right, neither leaning forward nor backward. Be sure your ears are on a plane with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth, with teeth and lips both shut. Your eyes should always remain open, and you should breathe gently through your nose. Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady immobile sitting position.”
Notice that all of the instructions so far — and he is almost done — have to do not with placing or pointing the mind in any particular direction, but entirely with the body. Okumura has stated, “Zazen is not something you do with the mind; it is something you do with the body.” Fukanzazengi completes the passage with three sentences concerning what do do with the mind:
“Think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Non-thinking in itself is the essential art of zazen.”
Oh, great! We get to the good part and he gives us a koan to sit with! The koan is in fact not even his own; it is a well-known Chinese koan spoken by Yaoshan (745-828):
“Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking.”
How does all this relate to the Buddha’s method, for instance, as described in the Satipaṭṭāna Sutta? Actually there are some parallels which are more obvious in practice than from examination of the texts.
Both the Buddha’s method and Dogen’s emphasize the whole body. Whereas in the Buddha’s method we are optionally but generally asked to attend to the (full body of) breath, I know of no reference in pre-modern Zen literature at all to following the breath, and you will notice that Dogen specifically discounts it above, though some modern Zen teachers are known however to fall back on the breath. What is remarkable in Dogen’s description on the other hand is the attention to every detail of the posture.
Recall our discussion from last week about the use of ritual, regulated bodily behavior, in establishing everyday Zen mindfulness. For Dogen zazen is at core a ritual, the grand ritual of sitting like the Buddha. And ritual seems to have a powerful effect in steadying the mind and indeed, according to experience, does result in jhana/samadhi. My own experience with this is that the awareness of the body is constant, but one need not attend to the details once the posture is established. If the mind later becomes scattered, one simply checks and readjusts the body the mind popsimmediately back to center.
Also significant is the admonition to keep the eyes open. The Buddha never says what to do with the eyes, but most yogis naturally assume in meditation the eyes should be closed. Closing the eyes leads more easily to stillness, since the primary channel of sensual input for humans, and therefore a primary source for spinning off into thinking, is thereby cut off. Dogen asks us not to cut it off. If stillness is not thereby relinquished, this might just be part of the basis for insight.
“Think not thinking.” This is a wonderfully ambiguous koan, since it asks us both to think and not to think, but when we think it is a kind of not thinking, or rather non-thinking. It is not that thoughts are cut off, but that our relationship to them is different. Later on in the text he gives a further hint:
“… learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illumnate your self.”
This reflects something the great Chinese master Shitou (700-790) wrote about five hundred years earlier:
“Turn around the light to shine within, then just return… Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk innocent.”
This theme of holding back and simply watching our experience is reflected also in the following quotes.
“Thoughts well up in our mind moment by moment. But we refrain from doing anything with our thoughts. We just let everything come up freely and go away freely.” – Dogen
“To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.” – Dogen in Genjokoan (very famous)
“Respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds.” – Hongzhi
Zen literature on the experience of meditation is replete with references to mirrors. A mirror stands there and accurately reflects what passes before it, but never gets involved with whatever drama is unfolding there. Maybe this is thinking not thinking. It in effect steps back from, but is not oblivious to, these affairs. The natural question when we come from the perspective of Buddha’s meditation method is, What is being attended to here aside from the posture? The answer is awareness or consciousness itself, which is not in itself thought but simply a reflection of the six senses in the Buddha’s discourses. And this is completely consistent with Buddha’s very briefly presented and rarely discussed Third Foundation of Mindfulness, cittanupassana, mindfulness of mind. The cool thing about mindfulness of mind is that the mind reflects body, feelings and phenomena alike, but one step back, and in this sense satisfies the other Foundations of Mindfulness. This makes it a good basis for insight.
One last intriguing note seems relevant to Dogen’s essential method. He calls his method “shikan-taza,” often translated as “just sitting.” Word plays are very typical of Dogen and so whereas “shikan” means “just mindfully” or “wholeheartedly,” it also represents the Japanese pronunciation of “zhi-guan” (“samatha-vipassana”). Though Dogen writes “shikan-taza” with Chinese characters that disambiguate the meaning of “shikan,” his students would not have known aurally if he was asking them to sit wholeheartedly or to sit “samatha-vipassana.” Is this a clever allusion to the origin or true identity of his method?
Textually it is a challenge to bring Budhha’s method and the Zen method into concordance. Whew! But then the proof of the cooking is in the pudding: Next week we will compare the resulting experience of zazen with Buddha’s samadhi.
The Zen method I think speaks of an aspect of the East Asian mind: its ability to get directly at what is essential and put the focus there, to boil things down. If some readers have experience with East Asian literature, or with martial arts, you might want to weigh in with comments that deny or confirm this broad generalization.
Encouragement of active factors. I know of no specific practices for encouraging delight and other active factors; we will look at vipassana next week. But this quote of Hong-zhi is a typical description of the factors involved.
“Roam and play in Samadhi. Every detail clearly appears before you. Sound and form, echo and shadow, happen instantly without leaving traces. The outside and myself do not dominate each other, only because no perceiving [of objects] comes between us. Only this nonperceiving encloses the empty space of the dharma realm’s majestic ten thousand forms. People with the original face should enact and fully investigate without neglecting a single fragment.”
Adjusting and Balancing. The need to balance serenity and insight is well acknowledged.
“The ten thousand forms majaestically glisten and expound the dharma. All objects certify it, every one in dialog. Dialoging and certifying, they respond appropriately to each other. But if illumination neglects serenity then aggressiveness appears. Certifying and dialoging they respond to each other appropriately. But if serenity neglects illumination, murkiness leads to wasted dharma.” – Hongzhi
Zen Meditation: the Prerequisites
First Quarter Moon Uposatha Day , January 31, 2012 index to series
Today we begin looking at Zen meditation, or zazen (seated Jhana), and compare it point by point with the Buddha’s meditation as I have described it over the last weeks. I will try to follow the template I established two weeks ago to provide points of comparison.
This week: The Prerequisites!
Next week: The Techniques!
Prerequisites of Zazen.
Wisdom and Virtue. For the Buddha Samadhi depends on all previous factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, including the factors of Wisdom and of Virtue. This is also the case with Zen meditation, however each of these factors is treated differently in the Zen tradition. I mention the differences briefly.
First, Wisdom for the Buddhha begins with an intellectual understanding of the Dhamma. Traditionally Zen eschews intellectual understanding, and considers its tradition to be as Bodhidharma is reputed to have stated:
A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to [one’s] mind
It lets one see into [one’s own true] nature and [thus] attain Buddhahood.
The Chinese seem to have been holistic thinkers, unlike the analytical Indians, and Taoism, which clearly influenced Zen, had a decidedly non-dualistic understanding of things, so the appeal of Bodhidharma’s words should not be surprising. However, from the teachings and references of the ancient Zen masters I’ve always had the impression that they were doing a lot of studying of words and letters on the sly. Dogen, by the way, disagreed with Bodhidharma and was a great proponent of words and letters.
A prominent feature of Zen discourse are koans, very concise thought-provoking passages that are probably unique in the world’s scriptural traditions. An example is:
Once, hearing the sound of wind in the chimes in the hall, Sogyanandai asked Kayashata, “Is it the chimes ringing or the wind ringing?”
Kayashata said, “It is neither the wind nor the chimes—it is just my mind ringing.”
Traditionally koans have been used for consideration independent of zazen, and can be seen as a means of developing understanding much as reading the suttas develops understanding. Their genius is that their intention is less in conveying a rote teaching as in involving the Zen student in an active process of exploration; they lead the student so far then let him on his own to figure out what is meant. In a good koan it is difficult or impossible to pinpoint in intellectual terms just what is meant; the koan pulls the student this way and that and sometimes forces the student to accept two mutually contradictory theses at the same time. Sometimes the meaning is found between the concepts. Here is another:
A monk asked Master Yunmen, “What does ‘sitting correctly and contemplating true reality’ really mean?”
Yunmen said, “A coin lost in the river is found in the river.”
There are a number of traditional Zen commentaries on koans, but these never provide concrete clarification, only hints and spin-off koans. Koans are generally very playful. This one, starring the same Chinese Zen master, seems to be mostly fun:
A monk asked, “What is the meaning of ‘All dharmas are the Buddhadharma’?”
Yunmen said, “Country grannies crowd the road.”
The monk said, “I don’t understand.”
Yunmen said, “Not only you. Many others don’t understand.”
The significance of the shift from sutta to koan in Zen is that it gives an additional way to weave Wisdom into meditation, in the guise of short phrases that can rest in the mind and begin to do their work in meditation. In the later history of Zen the koans actually became objects of meditation, especially in the Rinzai school.
Second, Virtue gets an unsolicited boost in East Asian Buddhism by the Confucian society in which it is embedded. Confucian ethics specifies behavior clearly in almost all circumstances as obligations of children to parents, parents to children, employers to employees, kings to subjects, and so on that regulate behavior in detail. This does not entail that Buddhist precepts are not also observed; in fact monastics follow the traditional Vinaya precepts in most of East Asia (no longer Japan) and additionally follow a second set of “Bodhisattva Precepts.” However there tends to be much less specifically Zen discussion of Virtue, perhaps because it is redundant in a Confucian society. Shohaku Okumura, one of my teachers from Japan, reports that he was surprised to find so little attention given to Virtue or ethics in American Zen centers. He then realized what the problem might be: Zen Buddhism came to America, but it left Confucianism behind. Western zennies may have some backfilling to do here.
The significance of of the Confucian system of ethics I think is that it blends seamlessly with a similar Confucian influence on the practice of mindfulness, as discussed below.
Delight and pleasure. This template heading reserves a place for how these might these be encouraged independently of meditation itself. I will only state that these are encouraged at least in meditation. Hongzhi admonishes us to “Roam and play in Samadhi.” Dogen describes zazen as, “the dharma gate of great ease and joy.”
Everyday Mindfulness. Buddhism seems to have tapped into a very rich resource in East Asia: Confucianism and perhaps a more general tendency to ritualize or regulate nearly all aspects of behavior. This blends ethics and etiquette. For instance, anyone who has practiced in a traditional Japanese Zen center in the West, will learn exactly how to hold the hands while walking in the area around the meditation hall, which foot leads in crossing the threshold, when to bow, which direction to turn, even how to place chopstick and spoon while eating. The entire Zen experience is infused with etiquette, ritual, right ways of doing things, and there are people at hand who will correct your mistakes. This is why I compare the Confucians with Victorian aristocrats, who for their part demand that their various forks and crystal drinking glasses be placed in a particular order, and who take care to wear attire appropriate to the current situation, be it theater, brandy and cigars or fox hunting.
Ritual is regulated behavior, and this is a bit different than the everyday mindfulness described in the Satipattana Sutta, which simply keeps the mind attentive to movements that are themselves presumably unregulated, for instance, knowing you are lifting your arm as you lift your arm because you want to close the window. Nevertheless ritual entails this same close attentiveness and reminds you to be mindful lest you mangle the minutiae.
Now Indian Buddhism was never without a level of ritual and etiquette, it is just not so pronounced. The Buddha notably declared clinging to rules and rituals as the third fetter, to be eliminated prior to stream entry, however his concern was with the assumption encouraged by the brahmins that these things had a kind of supernatural efficacy or ability to manipulate the deeper forces of the universe. He certainly encouraged etiquette and appropriate gestures of respect. In fact all the lesser rules of the Vinaya are essentially rules of etiquette.
A good source for the way conduct is regulated in the monastic context is Dogen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community, which is in fact a rough rewriting of a much earlier Chinese text. It describes even how to do the various physical tasks involved in running a Zen monastery, such as cooking. I worked in the kitchen at Tassajara Zen monastery in California during a three-month practice period about ten years ago, and I can report that you can attain samadhi while chopping carrots! I have always regarded this ritualization of everyday tasks as typically East Asian, but was surprised more recently to find a large section of the Theravada Vinaya that has a very similar flavor, presumably representing the intent if not the very words of the Buddha. This section had to do with the duties of a junior monk to his preceptor and includes very detailed instructions about washing and drying robes, when to open and close windows, etc., for instance, to hang a robe over a horizontal rod always by reaching under and throwing it toward yourself, rather than over and away, and making sure the two lower edges of the hanging robe are not aligned. All of these have pragmatic motivations, like much of Japanese ritual. If Vinaya was not written on the cover of the book I was reading I would have thought I was reading Pure Standards. It seems the history of everyday mindfulness is deserving of further study.
Dogen is known to have emphasized repeatedly that zazen is the entirety of Buddhist practice. Famously, but not quite as famously, he also said that ritual conduct is the entirety of Buddhist practice. Which is it? I think the answer is that he conceived of zazen as ritual practice, as we will see, and ritual practice as something that encompasses Virtue, as the Confucians see it. We have to be careful in the West because we often think Dogen advocated abandoning Virtue in favor of meditation only, and whatever wisdom might emerge from that.
Effort but not striving. Here is another famous koan for you:
Once, as a monk named Mazu Daoyi was assiduously engaged in zazen, his priestly teacher Nanyue Huairang happened along and asked what he was doing.
“Zazen,” replied Mazu, “I am practicing seated meditation to become a Buddha.”
Huairang picked up a tile he found lying on the ground and began energetically rubbing it with a stone. Perplexed, Mazu asked why he was doing it; and Huairang said, “I’m polishing the tile to make a mirror.”
When Mazu asked whether that was possible, Huairang replied, “Is it possible to become a Buddha by practicing zazen?”
Dogens commentary on this koan is that the entirety of Buddhist practice (or literally what is “preserved in the bones and marrow of former Buddha’s”) is polishing a tile to make a mirror.
This koan naturally has to do with effort. Zen has a mixed history with respect to striving, or meditating with a goal in mind. It began as a “sudden enlightenment” school, in contrast to the Buddha’s gradualist approach. It has been suggested that the appeal of sudden enlightenment has to do with the social mobility of Chinese in contrast to Indians: their expectations tended to be higher. Americans would certainly fit into the Chinese pattern. Perhaps as a counterbalance there has been a strong trend to deemphasize sitting with a goal. Equating practice and enlightenment is one way this is done; it is something like Gandhi’s “Become the change you seek.” Soto Zen people are often critical of Rinzai zennies for being too goal-oriented. Twentieth Century Japanese Soto master Kodo Sawaki puts it quite simply:
Zazen is useless …
Then he adds, creating a nifty koan in the process,
… and until you fully realize that, zazen really is useless.
Buddhism in the Land of the Chopstick
New Moon Uposatha Day , January 23, 2012 index to series
The well-known late German Theravada monk Nyanaponika Thera wrote many years ago, I think in the Fifties or Sixties, in the Heart of Buddhist Meditation (p. 14):
“Among the Mahayana schools of the Far East, it is chiefly the Chinese Ch’an and Japanese Zen that are closest to the spirit of Satipatthana. Notwithstanding the differences in method, aim and basic philosophical conception, the connecting links with Satipatthana are close and strong and it is regrettable that they have hardly been stressed or noticed.”
This seems to be the case to this day. But we can do something about this regrettable circumstance, or at least start to. I would like to shift gears this week. My intention in this series on Buddhist meditation has a strong historical aspect. So far I have tried to take a snapshot of Buddhist meditation at the time of the Buddha, that is, Buddha’s meditation, relying exclusively on the earliest Buddhist texts. I think a clear picture of the Buddha’s system has emerged. Particular passages in the suttas may be debatable, but overwhelmingly the suttas support a clear model, that makes systemic or functional sense, and that can be verified in practice.
Now, Buddhism spread in its early centuries over a large geographical area, coming under the influences and demands of exotic innovators and brilliant cultures, it evolved. I want to look at the ways meditation seems to have evolved to give us the daunting plethora of meditation methods. And to make it interesting, I would like to speculate about why it evolved.
Let me recount some history of Buddhist in China. I am not an expert in this history, so if any readers are, or are inclined to look things up, please post comments correcting my account or, more likely, enhancing it.
Buddhism began to enter China in the First Century A.D., so maybe six hundred years after the death of the Buddha. The primary influence came along the Silk Road through Central Asia, actually passing north of Tibet and into China. Buddhist merchants carried not only goods and Buddhist practices, but also monks, probably initially for good luck as caravans made the long and dangerous trip. Mahayana Buddhism did not yet exist as a recognizable school in India; this was about the time of the earliest sutras, such as the Prajnaparamita Sutras, that would one day be regarded as Mahayana. In the centuries that followed Northern India seems to have been a hotbed of innovation, producing much scholarship and literature. The Buddhist universities flourished, and philosopher-monks like Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu and Shantideva, were exploring and extending Buddhist philosophy, much like Western philosophers have been doing in a separate tradition over a similar span of time. Alongside this new sutras were being composed, and attributed to the Buddha. These tended to be much more colorful than the old ones, with a much richer mythology, and with new recurring easily befriended characters, like Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri and Samantabadhra.
Many Northern Indian influences trickled into China over the years and occasionally a Chinese pilgrim would make the journey to India to stock up on books. China was a highly literate land for its time and the Buddhists were eager to absorb as much as possible from India and to translate it into Chinese. Formidable translation project were set up. The best known translator was an Indian monk named Kumarajiva, who was originally captured in a Chinese raid in Central Asia in the Fourth Century, but stayed voluntarily in China for many years. The Sanskrit Agamas, corresponding to the first four Pali Nikayas (Sutta collections) were translated, along with philosophical works and Mahayana Sutras.
Now the primary indigenous cultural/religious influences in China were Taoism and Confucianism. Taoists were something like beatniks and Confucianists were more like Victorian aristocrats. The former seemed to be more accepting of Buddhism, and in fact much of the new Buddhist vocabulary, the Chinese translations of Sanskrit Buddhist terms, were adapted from Taoism. Both Taoism and Confucianism became strong influences in shaping Chinese Buddhism.
Schools of Buddhism in China formed for the most part by championing a particular Mahayana sutra. Early on in China four main schools of Buddhism stood out: Pure Land (based on the Amitabha Sutra), Chan (Japanese, Zen), Hua Yen (Japanese Kegon, based on the Flower Ornament Sutra) and Tian-tai (Japanese, Tendai, based on the Lotus Sutra). Zen was unusual in that people seemed to have trouble making up their minds about which sutra to champion, but the Diamond Sutra, whose topic is emptiness, stands out as a Chan favorite. Chan is particularly interesting for us because it is the “Meditation School.” “Chan” is short for “Channa,” which was a transliteration of Sanskrit “Dyana,” which corresponds to Pali Jhana, a word that we have seen quite often in this series. Chan spread, like most of the other schools, along with Taoism and Confucianism throughout the Land of the Chopstick, which includes Korea, Japan and Vietnam, where I think it is known as Son, Zen and Tien respectively. Of course its Japanese variant is best known in the West, particularly in America. I’ll call the entire school Zen, since that word is common in English. Many people do not realize that Thich Nhat Hanh represents the Vietnamese branch of Zen.
There are a number of challenges in tracing the evolution of meditation in East Asia. First, there are relatively few meditation manuals. This is not surprising, since one generally learns meditation under the tutelage of a teacher who can personalize it according to one’s own proclivities. I cannot recall any Indian Mahayana meditation teachings, for instance. One of the earliest works on meditation from China is the Mohe Zhiguan (Great Serenity and Insight) by early Tian-tai Master Zhiyi (538-597), written roughly about the time the Visuddhimagga was being composed in Sri Lanka. This very detailed and analytical work is said to have had some influence on the early Zen school.
However Zen itself has generally eschewed all things analytical or intellectual; its writings tend to be poetic. And rather than presenting doctrine directly it tends to dance around it in such a giddy and playful manner that you can barely tell what it is not saying. This inscrutible expository method spun off the well-known but poorly understood koan literature and is almost certainly due to a strong Taoist influence. We find various references to meditation in the historic Zen literature, but it tends to be more descriptive of experience than technique. Next week I will site some references.
We know that around 1100 AD a new innovation arose in Zen meditation in China, the use of koans as actual objects of meditation, which became all the rage within the Lin-Chi (Japanese, Rinzai) subschool school of Zen. The great poet of Zen, Master Hongzhi of the Tsao-Tong (J. Soto) subschool of Zen provided a more conservative counterpoint to this new innovation, writing some wonderful descriptions of samadhi which I will also cite.
Born in 1200, Dogen Zenji, the great Japanese Zen master, received his most significant training at the monastery where Hongzhi had been abbot a century before, and brought Soto Zen to Japan. Dogen also wrote some significant descriptions of Zen meditation, which have had more influence on the Western understanding of Zen meditation than anything other single source. I would like to cite some of what Dogen has to say as well.
Because I trained for years in Dogen’s Soto Zen tradition I am able to supplement his descriptions with my own experience according to how it has been taught to me. I will try to make use of (this modern understanding of) Dogen’s meditation as a snapshot for comparison with Buddha’s meditation. I have relatively little understanding of Rinzai koan-based meditation and would welcome it if anyone out there who does would attempt a similar comparative analysis.
Summary of Buddha’s Meditation and Template for its Variants
Last Quarter Moon Uposatha Day , January 16, 2012 index to series
In the last weeks we looked at what the Buddha taught and described in the Suttas concerning meditation. This week we will summarize the main points in a way that also give us a means to catalog the variants of Buddha’s meditation, the daunting plethora of meditation practices within the broad Buddhist tradition that will differ in one or more of these points.
Prerequisites of Buddha’s Medititation.
The Buddha placed meditation clearly within the greater context of practice and understanding. Accordingly it presupposes or benefits from certain developments.
Wisdom and Virtue. The wisdom factors and the virtue factors of the Noble Eightfold Path precede those of meditation, so that you will begun to befriend the Dhamma, have learned about suffering and the ending of suffering, about the contingent nature of reality, and have begun reflecting on these things on the basis of your own experience, also so that you will have resolved to develop kindness and non-harming and a willingness to let go of personal advantage, so that you will also have begun to cultivate virtue in your deeds and words and established a lifestyle inclined to nonharming. In this way before meditation the mind is already inclined toward wisdom and virtue, so that meditation can meld wisdom and virtue along with serenity into a very refined kind of mind that leads to final liberation.
Delight and pleasure. These are factors (piti and sukha) developed in the Buddha’s method as critical to the entry into meditation and count as jhana factors. What counts here is spiritual joy, the explorer’s delight in possibilities and pleasure in experience. I mention them here because these may also be cultivated by other means to the benefit of meditation practice. Faith, or refuge in the Triple Gem, for instance, give these a boost.
Everyday Mindfulness. This is the mindfulness you carry with you through your daily tasks, not just on the cushion and with the intention of entering samadhi. This is covered in the Buddha’s method, rather seamlessly, but again I mention it here because this kind of mindfulness may also be cultivated by other means. Much of our daily mindfulness, for instance, is determined by the culture we live in; Western culture is often weak in this respect where multitasking and push-button “convenience” are pervasive. How we care for and order our surroundings, how well our mind stays with the doorknob as we open a door in front of us then close it behind us, are indicators of everyday mindfulness.
Effort but not striving. I did not include this in my description of the last few weeks, but it occurs to me that it can be an important factor in distinguishing certain variants from Buddha’s meditation. The most thrilling way to build a tall building is to build the top story first. It will indeed give an immediate sense of accomplishment, but is not very practical. Yet we are often tempted to do this in our meditation. Americans who begin a Tibetan practice, for instance, often want to jump right into the esoteric tantric practices before they’ve even gotten a chance to warm their cushions. This was not the Buddha’s way.
First, the Buddha advocated a gradual path.
Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch, in the same way this Doctrine and Discipline (dhamma-vinaya) has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual progression, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch. – Ud 5.5
Furthermore, the Buddha emphasized in manny contexts that in establishing an appropriate foundation the next story seems to build itself. For instance, he famously stated that kalyanamitta, good spiritual friendship, is the entire path. This does not mean there is no goal or effort necessary once you meet the right inspiration, but that you will be inspired to set that goal and exert that effort; success on the path will follow (almost) inevitably in this way.
Just as, monks, when rain descends heavily upon some mountaintop, the water flows down along with the slope, and fills the clefts, gullies, and creeks; these being filled fill up the pools; these being filled fill up the ponds; these being filled fill up the streams; these being filled fill up the rivers; and the rivers being filled fill up the great ocean — in the same way, monks, … [I’ve omitted the first half of the sequence; the second relates to practice] suffering is the supporting condition for faith, faith is the supporting condition for joy, joy is the supporting condition for rapture, rapture is the supporting condition for tranquility, tranquility is the supporting condition for happiness, happiness is the supporting condition for concentration, concentration is the supporting condition for the knowledge and vision of things as they really are, the knowledge and vision of things as they really are is the supporting condition for disenchantment, disenchantment is the supporting condition for dispassion, dispassion is the supporting condition for emancipation, and emancipation is the supporting condition for the knowledge of the destruction (of the cankers). – Upanisa Sutta, SN 12.23
Methods of Buddha’s Meditation.
Removal of the hindrances. Lust, Ill-will. Sloth and torpor, Restlessness and remorse, and doubt are kept at bey.
Undistracted reflection on theme conducive to insight. This is never fixing the mind on one thing, but narrows the range of thought enough to induce samadhi.
The themes the buddha recommends tend to be centered in awareness of the body, but also include feeling, mind and dhammas. They are variously conducive to insight of:
Impermanence. These include the themes of breath, deportment, decaying corpses, feeling, consiousness, dhammas.
Suffering. For instance, feeling, five Hindrances, aggregates, the Four Noble Truths.
Insubstantiality. Including composition of the body, elements, decaying corpses, the aggregates, the sense-bases
Unattractiveness. For instance, decaying corpses, composition of the body, elements.
Mental factors. Focus on feeling, mind and dhammas also includes the wholesome and unwholesome, the factors of meditation itself, including concentration, mindfulness, investigation, discursiveness, and so on, as well as the arising of distractions.
Encouragement of active factors. These include spiritual delight, ardency and clear comprehension. These encourage investigation and discourage sluggishness and bedazement.
Adjusting and Balancing. These techniques provide way to respond to intruding distrations, to balance active factors like vipassana or investigation with still factors like samatha or serenity, to let go of factors or move into more intensive states of samadhi, and so on.
The Experience of Buddha’s Meditation.
Samadhi is the primary experience of meditation. I only consider two distinguishing aspects here:
Concentration is centered, not fixed. In fixed concentration the mind attaches unmovingly to a single meditation object into which the mind is absorbed. In centered concentration the mind itself seems to be unmoving, but experience comes and goes. Ther mind is pliant, open to everything that arises remains a while and falls, but what arises does not move the mind off center..
Investigation continues in samadhi. Mindfulness practice and investigation assume a subtler level in a stiller, more refined mind. Vipassana, seeing things as they really are, occurs in samadhi. This level of investigation is permitted because concentration is centered, not fixed.
Template for Considering Variants of Buddha’s Meditation.
What I hope to do in the coming weeks is to consider some variants of Buddha’s meditation in turn to see where they might differ from Buddha’s meditation and where they differ in what way they might actually be doing something equivalent by other means. Accordingly I propose the following template of points of possible variation. I am hoping this will provide a useful tool for asking critical questions about each of these variants (I don’t know yet, because I am doing this on the fly, but let’s see).
Prerequisites of a Variant of Buddha’s Medititation.
Wisdom and Virtue. How are these practiced?
Delight and pleasure. How might these be encouraged independently of mindfulness itself?
Everyday Mindfulness. Is there an independent basis for this?
Effort but not striving. Is this observed?
Methods of a Variant of Buddha’s Meditation.
Removal of the hindrances. What are the recommendations for this?
Undistracted reflection on themes conducive to insight. What are the opportunities for investigating impermanence, suffering, insubstantiality, unattractiveness and mental factors?
Encouragement of active factors. Are investigation and delight encouraged and how?
Adjusting and Balancing. What balances and movements are implemented during meditation?
The Experience of a Variant of Buddha’s Meditation.
Concentration is centered, not fixed. Is this the case always, sometimes or never?
Investigation continues in samadhi. How does investigation with a still mind occur?
Next week I will begin trying to discuss Zen meditation in these terms.
I have finished a draft of Through the Looking Glass, Book Two: “The Young and the Samsaric.” The first two books can be found here. This represents about half of the complete work. Since my last post of these episodes I’ve added chapters 7-8 and revised chapters 5-6. The previously posted chapters are in a different format, but the content is not significantly changed.
This slowly ongoing work is autobiographical and focuses on the process whereby an ordinary American kid ends up doing a strange thing: becoming a Buddhist monk, and taking a long time to do it. I’ve chosen this means to at least attempt to convey what still bewilders many a Western Buddhist. I hope you find it helpful, or at least entertaining.
Buddha’s Vipassana
Full Moon Uposatha, January 8, 2012 index to series
Full Moon Uposatha Day index to series
Centered Samadhi. Last week I began discussing Buddha’s samadhi and today I would like to talk about serenity and insight (samatha and vipassana) as features of samadhi.
In the meantime, I hope you will read or have read the replies to last week’s post, in which Michael has introduced some interesting and helpful discussion. Michael also expresses some confusion with how I describe samadhi that is one-pointed as opposed to samadhi that is not one-pointed, and would like to backup here for a moment to address.
If you recall, I claim that the Buddha’s description of samadhi points to something that is not one-pointed. Now, most later variants of Buddha’s samadhi are either one-pointed or integrate one-pointedness one way or another into samadhi. Again, I don’t want to suggest thereby that the variants are “wrong;” Buddhism has shown an enormous capacity for adaptation and sometimes I daresay improvement. But this does mean that for most readers this will be an important distinction to consider. So let me repeat here how I responded in my reply to Michael, which seems to have been helpful. This will however not be the end of the issue, because we would like to examine how one-pointedness works in the variants. I am from now on using the term “centered” to contrast with “one-pointedness.”
One-pointed concentration can be described as absorption into the meditation object. The mind becomes narrowly focused so that taken to its logical conclusion the meditation object eventually becomes all of experience. Often that object itself will lose its dynamic nature, a pure unmoving mental image will stand for it.
In the experience of centered concentration the mind itself seems to be unmoving, but experience comes and goes. There is openness to everything that arises remains a while and falls, perhaps within the bounds of some theme, as in full-body awareness, but what arises does not move the mind off center. The mind is vast but unified in its function; it is vast in its awareness but unified in its undistractedness. “Free from desire and discontent,” is an accurate description of the centered mind; it is the mind that is not grasping after experience, just mindful of it.
Shankman’s book, Samadhi, is concerned with this very distinction within Theravada Buddhism. He cites evidence, as I have here, that the suttas intended centered concentration, but that the very influential but much later Visuddhimagga describes one-pointed samadhi.
It is important to recognize that centered samadhi is not a more distracted version of one-pointed samadhi. In practice distractions arise in each and and in each are ideally put aside. Purely centered samadhi without distraction is unified, in that the mind is exactly where it is supposed to be and reflects everything that arises appropriately. But more is going on. Although the experiences are quite distinct they are also related, and the practitioner attempting one type of samadhi may find herself spontaneously flipping into the other. Now on to samatha and vipassana.
Knowledge and Vision. Samadhi sits on a mat woven of wisdom and virtue and is itself the basis of the knowledge and vision of things as they really are and of the loss of all defilements. Here are some representative passages that attest to the function of samadhi, or jhana, in the Buddha’s system.
When right samadhi does not exist, for one failing right samadhi, the proximate cause is destroyed for knowledge and vision of things as they really are. – A.V.4.9-11.
Bhikkhus, develop samadhi. A monk with samadhi understands in accordance with reality. – SN 22.5
The knowledges are for one with samadhi, not for one without samadhi. – AN 6.64
A monk who develops and makes much of the four jhanas slopes, flows and inclines toward Nibbana.
There is no jhana for one with no wisdom, no wisdom for one without jhana. But one with both jhana and discernment, he’s on the verge of nibbana. – Dhp 372
I say, bhikkhus, that the knowledge and vision of things as they really are too has a proximate cause; it does not lack a proximate cause. And what is the proximate cause for the knowledge and vision of things as they really are? It should be said: samadhi. – SN 12.23
The Samadhi Sutta (AN 4.41) states that samadhi leads to:
The development of psychic powers through samadhi, like reading minds and being able to jump up and touch the sun or moon, are also commonly attested to in the suttas.
Samatha-Vipassana. Two features arise in samadhi that are particularly relevant to its primary functions, serenity and insight, also often known by the Pali words samatha and vipassana. Beware that sometimes the word vipassana is used as roughly equivalent to Buddha’s mindfulness, and samatha is used for samadhi. This is not the Buddha’s usage. There is a close relationship between mindfulness and vipassana, but they are also quite distinct: Vipassana involves the subtle refined pure mind of samadhi. Vipassana is also not a common word in the suttas, but taken along with its synonyms — nyana, dassana, yatha-bhuta-nyana-dassana, the last meaning literally ‘insight into things as they are’ — turns out to be a critical element of the Path.
These two qualities have a share in clear knowing. Which two? Tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassana). 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
Samatha and vipassana almost always go hand in hand in the suttas. In one sutta they are referred to as “two swift messengers,” that in a rather complex simile travel together. They are often hyphenated. A number of suttas discuss the need to keep the two in balance, for instance AN 4.94, 4.157. Sujato has an great metaphor for the need to conjoin them: He writes that if the goal is to cut down a tree, applying vipassana without samatha is like trying to do this with a razor blade. Applying samatha without vipassana is like trying to do this with a hammer. Applying both together is like trying to do this with an axe.
How do they work together? A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the simile of the still mountain pond. Because of the stillness (samatha) you can see (vipassana) all the pebbles and fish in the pond. It is actually a bit more elaborate than that. The following couple of paragraphs are my own explanation, and is perhaps still an approximation, but it allows us to make systemic sense of the buddha’s statements on samadhi and vipassana in functional terms. The human mind is a wonderful thing: we can perceive and reason at many different levels. However, it is at the same time flawed: it creates reality at the same time it observes or interprets it. To see things as they really are we need the mind, but it will also always try to introduce a bias, trying to fit reality into its own categories, distorting through the passions. My series on non-self discussed the mind’s tendency to misperceive whenever it perceives.
Now, generally we do not see the faults of the mind any better than the eye can see itself. Most people in fact think they have plenty of insight into how things are, and think they are unique in this regard, that is, they are surprised at how badly that insight is lacking in others. Teenagers are noted for this. Most people claim an uncanny ability to judge the intentions of others, who is right and wrong, fair and unfair. They think they understand the nature of reality, what is true, what exists, and what don’t They even claim great insight about abstract domains like politics and economics. They are very sure of themselves. This is for the most part this is the deluded mind at work. They usually cannot see the limits of their own minds. It is usually only in seeing that life does not add up that people turn to Buddhism. Buddha’s meditation overcomes the deluded mind.
In samadhi many mental processes begin to shut down or slow down one by one. Discursive thought disappears, intentionality becomes subtle, perceptions are much more grounded and the senses may even shut off. Each time one of these stages happens, reality changes, at least our perspective on reality. As we see more directly, at the same time we lose some of our faculties, like the intellect, that otherwise help us make sense of what we see, albeit in this faulty way. All of this is instructive because we learn the way the mind biases our perception and understanding and we are thereby better able to appreciate things as they are, to see beyond those biases. At the same time we are learning the nature of reality, we are learning the nature of the mind. We need to do these together. This is vipassana. Now to sustain vipassana we have to be vigilant not to shut down the mind completely, nor to lose that active curiosity or sense of exploration. We also cannot get too excited about our explorations either, because we begin to become distracted and pop out of samadhi altogether. For these reasons we need to balance samatha and vipassana.
One of the interesting things about the Buddha’s discussion of the jhanas is how little he favors one jhana over another. One might expect him to strongly advocate the ability to attain the fourth and highest jhana, and to remain or return there as much as possible. Now, abiding in one jhana rather than another involves studying the mind’s biases at a different level; I suspect he intended for us to practice each of the jhanas and return to each. And again, it is significant that he also permits the discursive mind in the first jhana. In sum, we can attend the flames of samadhi in order to move along two dimensions: jhana and samatha-vipassana.
Notice that vipassana involves retaining a certain degree of mental functioning, with discernment and a degree of intentionality, through all the jhanas. Intentionality in this subtle and refined mind is often expressed as “inclining the mind.”
When his mind is thus concentrated in samadhi, is purified, bright, rid of blemishes, free of taints, soft, workable, steady and attained to imperturbability, he bends and inclines his mind toward knowledge and vision. He understands ‘this my body is material, made of four elements. … Just as if a man with good sight were to examine a beryl gem in his hand, saying ‘this beryl gem is beautiful, well made, clear and transparent, and through it is strung a blue, yellow, red, white or brown string.’ In just the same way he inclines his mind to knowledge and vision … to psychic powers … understands the Four Noble Truths.– DN 2
Interestingly the states of jhana are figuratively referred to sometimes in the suttas as a kind of nirvana (e.g., AN 4:453-54). The Samadhanga Sutta(Factors of Samadhi Sutta, AN 5.28) describes the four jhanas as the first four of five factors of samadhi. It then describes the fifth factor as follows:
Just as if one person were to reflect on another, or a standing person were to reflect on a sitting person, or a sitting person were to reflect on a person lying down; even so, monks, the monk has his theme of reflection well in hand, well attended to, well-pondered, well-tuned by means of discernment. This is the fifth development of the five-factored noble right concentration.
When a monk has developed and pursued the five-factored noble right concentration in this way, then whichever of the six higher knowledges he turns his mind to know and realize, he can witness them for himself whenever there is an opening.
The idea seems to be that the mind has harnessed enormous power that is available with only slight effort. Today, in this electronic age, we would say that this power is “at your fingertips.” The Buddha offers three similes for wielding this power:
Suppose that there were a water jar, set on a stand, brimful of water so that a crow could drink from it. If a strong man were to tip it in any way at all, would water spill out?
…
Suppose there were a rectangular water tank — set on level ground, bounded by dikes — brimful of water so that a crow could drink from it. If a strong man were to loosen the dikes anywhere at all, would water spill out?
…
Suppose there were a chariot on level ground at four crossroads, harnessed to thoroughbreds, waiting with whips lying ready, so that a skilled driver, a trainer of tamable horses, might mount and — taking the reins with his left hand and the whip with his right — drive out and back, to whatever place and by whichever road he liked; in the same way, when a monk has developed and pursued the five-factored noble right concentration in this way, then whichever of the six higher knowledges he turns his mind to know and realize, he can witness them for himself whenever there is an opening.
I speculate that the mind that has harnessed this kind of power led to the attribution of psychic power to it. Notice that mind like this is difficult to reconcile with one-pointed samadhi. For some practitioners of variant meditation practices it is assumed that samadhi is one-pointed, but that the yogi must leave samadhi for considerations of this kind. Aside from fact that leaving samadhi is never mentioned in this sutta or in any other as a prerequisite for vipassana, exercising vipassana with the clunky pre-samadhic mind is like trying to meld metal without fire or heat.
Samadhi as the Melder. Samadhi continues the two threads of virtue and wisdom that begin in pre-samadhic states. Wisdom begins with study and reflection of the Dhamma, for instance, the three qualities of existence (impermanence, suffering and unsubstantiality) and the Four Nobel Truths. It continues with Right Mindfulness, as the direct observation in the here and now of relevant themes are contemplated in a more disciplined, focused and present way. It then continues in samadhi in a highly refined state of mind that allows seeing beyond the biases of the mind itself, and this is vipassana. Similarly, virtue begins with behavior and continues with Right Effort, attending to the wholesome and unwholesome in the mind. The grosser unwholesome elements are largely excluded in the still mind of samadhi, yet intentions at a very refined level will arise and are subject to investigation also as vipassana. In this way samadhi is the foundation of ultimate liberation. (How exactly you get to final liberation is ineffable; just as you can develop the knowledge, exposure and other conditions that might enable you to appreciate a work of art or a piece of music, whether you “get it” in the end is up to you.)
