Early Buddhist Meditation Page 13

  Given these differences between the two versions, I do not think that it is possible to determine which version is more ‘authentic’ or early. Although one criterion for determining if a text is early or late is the fact that later versions usually contain additional material, in our case, the versions are not identical in their concerns, and hence, it might be misleading to compare them in terms of antiquity. Furthermore, an important presupposition in textual criticism is that, rather than add problematic elements, editors and scribes would tend to extract odd words and difficult passages and replace them with more familiar terms and less controversial ones. Thus, it is hard to imagine why the Theravāda tradition would add the description of the first jhāna as an explanation for eradicating kāma, when this path-element (i.e., the jhānas) was considered non-essential for liberation quite early in the history of this tradition. The view that one can bypass the jhānas in the path of awakening is evident already in the Paṭisambhidāmagga (Paṭis II, 92–103),129 which was dated by A. K. Warder to the third century and early second century BCE. The notion that the jhānas are not necessary to the attainment of awakening is well established also in the Aṭṭhakathā literature.130 Therefore, it is not very plausible to contend that the earliest version of the Cūḷadukkhakkhandha Sutta did not contain a description of the first jhāna, meaning that it was added later by the Theravāda tradition.

  In this regard, it is also interesting to note that other sūtras in the Chinese Āgamas lack descriptions of the jhānas. The Ariyapariyesanā Sutta contains a section in which the Buddha describes the jhānas, the samapattis and the attainment of cessation as a way to escape Māra. These descriptions are also absent in the parallel version in the Chinese Āgama.131 The same absence occurs in the Chinese parallel to the Mahāvedalla Sutta of the MN. The Pāli version describes eight questions that deal with the first jhāna and the signless liberation of mind. However, the Chinese version makes no reference to these questions. Therefore, it seems more reasonable to hypothesize that the Chinese version (or the source of the Chinese version) omitted these references, than to argue that the Pāli version added them later. It is quite obvious that the jhānas are not a later addition to the Buddha’s teachings.132 It may be deduced that even though the Chinese version of the Cūḷadukkhakkhandha Sutta lacks the reference to the first jhāna, this passage might be a remnant of an early understanding of the spiritual process. It might be that the Pāli suttas represent an old stratum of Buddhist teaching about the jhānas, which perceived these attainments as an essential component of the path to awakening.

  We concluded the last section with a question: do jhānic pīti and sukha have certain purpose in the path to liberation or are they only the fruit of clear seeing? We find that the Cūḷadukkhakkhandha Sutta and the Māgandiya Sutt a provide an answer: jhānic pīti and sukha, the result of clear seeing, also have a significant liberative role in the path of purification (as sammā-samādhi). By experiencing jhānic pīti and sukha, the practitioner can let go of ‘coarse’ attachments, such as the desire for sensual and divine pleasures. Furthermore, I would also observe that jhānic sukha – as a pleasurable wholesome physical factor – is important for the mind to relax, let go and see experience clearly. When one does not experience bodily pain, bodily pleasure arises and allows the mind to become steady for seeing phenomena as it is:

  Which nine things greatly help? Nine conditions rooted in wise attention: when a monk practices wise attention, gladness arises in him; being glad, joy arises. From his feeling joy, his body is calmed; as a result of his calming the body he feels pleasure. From his feeling pleasure, his mind becomes steadied; with his mind thus steadied, he knows and sees [things] as they really are. With his thus knowing and seeing [things] as they really are he becomes disenchanted; with disenchantment he becomes dispassionate, and by dispassion he is liberated.133

  Having said that, I would like to offer the following reflection. We all experience moments of ‘spiritual’ pleasure and joy, that is, happiness independent of sense gratification, which may be similar to jhānic pīti and sukha. 134 However, these moments are usually brief and therefore not able to loosen our attachment to sense pleasures. In other words, since this ‘spiritual’ pleasure is so brief, the ordinary mind cannot become familiar enough with it to abandon desire for sense gratification; it is a deep tendency of the human mind. What I would like to suggest is that the power of the jhānas and the experience of jhānic pīti and sukha lie in the description of the jhānas as attainments that one ‘enters into and abides in’ (upasampajja viharati).135 The verb viharati indicates that the practitioner dwells in – or better put, experiences ‘being in’ – this attainment for a period of time. This abiding enables one to be soaked by this spiritual joy and pleasure.136 Such a comprehensive experience allows the mind to experience fully and intimately a different mode of being, very different from ordinary experience. Knowing closely that there is a different type of pleasure – one which does not rely on pleasant sense experience – is the way to uproot our deep tendency to consider sense pleasures (kāma), as the most gratifying experiences.

  We can safely say it takes more than intellectual understanding that sense pleasures are impermanent and not worth grasping before we are able to get beyond our enchantment for and attachment to them. When we familiarize ourselves deeply with another type of pleasure and joy, the mind is able to transform its basic inclination to seek delight in sense gratification, especially when unpleasant and painful feelings are experienced. According to SN IV.209, each time a noble disciple does not seek delight in sense pleasure, through his close experience with a different type of pleasure and joy (in all probability the first two jhānas), the mind becomes pure. According to SN IV.209, this is how a noble disciple does not create any new unwholesome underlying tendencies.137 This is further strengthened by the Cūḷavedalla Sutta from the MN, where the nun Dhammadinnā explains to Visākha that entering the jhānas is the way to abandon the underlying tendencies (anusaya).138 Dhammadinnā explains that in the first jhāna one abandons the underlying tendency to lust. She further states that in the next two jhānas one will abandon aversion and the underlying tendency to aversion, and when one abides in the fourth jhāna, ignorance and the underlying tendency to ignorance are abandoned. In other words, the jhānas cannot originate from lust, aversion and ignorance and do not create any new tendencies. They seem to spontaneously arise from the development of renunciation and insight. Thus, it is plausible to argue that these attainments are the actual fulfilment of the path of purification, and as such, they exemplify a mind which is wholesome and have clear perception of reality.

  VIII Vitakka and vicāra

  To conclude our discussion on the first jhāna, we turn our attention to vitakka and vicāra, which are said to accompany (savitakka savicāra) the two key factors: pīti and sukha. Vitakka and vicāra were translated in various ways, such as ‘applied and sustained thought’, ‘initial cognition and reasoned examination’ or ‘thinking and reflecting’.139 Note that all these translations point at the cognitive, discursive, conceptual and dualistic nature of vitakka and vicāra. In the Abhidhamma, vitakka and vicāra received a more meditative meaning in the context of the first jhāna. Vitakka was interpreted as the ability to apply the mind to a meditation object, while vicāra as the sustained attention on the chosen object.140 However, this interpretation overlooks the common meaning of vitakka and vicāra in the Nikāyas as conceptual thinking and reflecting.141 I am not suggesting that there is no meditative process in which the mind places its attention onto a meditation objects and sustains it for a period of time. However, I do not think that vitakka and vicāra express this meditative procedure in the Nikāyas.

  But before discussing vitakka and vicāra in the context of the first jhāna, let us first review few occurrences of vitakka and vicāra in the Nikāyas. No attempt will be made here to survey and discuss all the occurrences of vitakka and vicāra as I am concerned here with interpreting the ex
istence of these two mental factors in the first jhāna and not in ordinary cognitive processes. To narrow the discussion, I shall confine it to a brief reflection on the common usage of vitakka and vicāra as ‘discursive and conceptual thinking’.

  In the Nikāyas, the terms vitakka and vicāra usually describe thinking and reflecting upon an issue (wholesome or unwholesome). Interestingly, the term vitakka appears many times by itself.142 However, to the best of my knowledge, vicāra appears mostly, if not exclusively, with vitakka. It might be that the use of both terms together analyzes the process of thinking more accurately, while the use of vitakka alone designates ‘thinking’ in more general way.

  Vitakka and vicāra are also connected to verbalization,143 and they are defined as ‘verbal formation’ (vacīsaṅkhāra).144 MN I.301 explains this by stating that ‘first one thinks and reflects, and subsequently one breaks out into speech’.145 Although the process of thinking is a prerequisite to the ability to talk, it is also important to note that thinking cannot occur without language as a precondition. That is, without words, concepts and syntax, the process of thinking is impossible; they are co-dependent processes. DN II.277 further explains that the origin of vitakka are ‘words, conceptualization and mental proliferation’ (papañcasaññāsaṅkhā).146 It is stated that without papañcasaññāsaṅkhā there is no vitakka. 147 The compound papañcasaññāsaṅkhā is one of the most difficult compounds in the Nikāyas, and I will not discuss it here.148 What is relevant to our discussion is the apparent question of whether all three mental phenomena (i.e., papañca, saññā and saṅkhā) must exist for vitakka to exist. Although DN II.277 explains that without papañcasaññāsaṅkhā there is no vitakka, this statement was made in a specific context – as an answer to a question concerning the origin of jealousy and avarice. In this context, it is clear that thinking is bound up with the tendency to proliferate mentally. However, vitakka and vicāra are not always connected to papañca (contrary to saññā and saṅkhā, which seem to be imperative to the process of thinking). According to Buddhist psychology, the tendency to proliferate (papañca) is a mental function which has no real purpose in the human mind except from creating suffering and perpetuating desire and aversion. Vitakka, on the other hand, can be a wholesome mental activity, conducive to liberation.149

  Thus, it is interesting to reflect on the differences between saññā, vitakka and papañca. These terms seem to describe various stages in the process through which the world is created and made intelligible in the human mind.150 They describe a gradation in the way we interpret experience; they are the three types of ‘curtains’ which mediate, according to Buddhist epistemology, as well as hinder, our direct perception of the nature of reality, thus creating suffering. I use the word ‘mediate’ in the same way the constructivists use it; that is, every experience of an unawakened person is touched by language and concepts in a deep way. Ordinary cognition interprets the flow of experience through discrete conceptual units (saññā), and then supplements further conceptual interpretation (vitakka and papañca). This process of interpretation is based upon our previous experiences, proclivities, preferences, view, misconceptions, desires and will.151 Furthermore, according to Buddhist epistemology, one of the features of ordinary human cognition is to ascribe false reality to these concepts and thoughts, as though they describe the world. They are believed to relate to something real and to belong to a specific ‘self’. This false identification creates suffering.152 It also separates experience into perceiving subject and perceived objects, both of which are understood in Buddhist philosophy as mental fabrications.

  It should be remembered, however, that words (saṅkhā), concepts (saññā) and thoughts (vitakka and vicāra) are not problematic in themselves according to Buddhist psychology. When one understands their functional role, without considering them as referring to something real and without identifying with them, they are important cognitive faculties.153 Sue Hamilton has explained clearly this cognitive process by explaining that

  [D]elineating and identifying things, verbally differentiating them – making them manifold – is the way we reify our experiences: by naming them as we do we as it were pin them down so they can become a real part of our total reality.154

  However, I think Sue Hamilton has also expressed beautifully the necessity of the cessation of ‘making manifold’ through the thinking process by arguing that

  knowledge of the absence of activity gives one knowledge of what the nature of the activity usually is.155

  In other words, the cessation of the thinking process, and the observation of this cessation, is an important realization for loosening attachment and clinging to subjective experience – experience that is based upon our thinking process. Seeing the cessation of thinking lends insight into the origin and nature of thinking, and therefore into the origin and manifestation of the sense of self. It allows one to see clearly how thinking creates subjective experience, and how this reality is insubstantial in nature.156 I would argue that this insight occurs in the transition between the first and second jhāna, where vitakka and vicāra fade away.

  To clarify this idea, and to reflect upon the advantages, disadvantages and limits of conceptual thinking, let us consider the first discourse of the Sutta Nipāta. This discourse describes a bhikkhu who becomes liberated. Although each verse of the sutta ends with affirming that this monk ‘leaves this shore and the far shore as a snake leaves its old worn-out skin’, it nonetheless seems to describe a gradual process of liberation from various disturbing emotions and cognitive misconceptions. I would suggest that the phrase repeated after each verse was added for mnemonic purposes, perhaps for helping the reciters to remember that these verses are part of the same discourse.

  The sutta begins by describing the various disturbing emotions which a bhikkhu abandons on the path to liberation. These include anger (kodha), passion (rāga), craving (taṇhā) and conceit (māna). The sutta then continues by describing the overcoming of the various cognitive misconceptions. This portrayal presents a process in which conceptual thinking is utilized, but then has to be abandoned for clarity and insight to deepen. The first attitude that must be developed is that which ‘does not find any essence in existences’ (nājjhagamā bhavesu sāraṃ). We can assume that ‘not finding essence in existences’ can be achieved by contemplating the impermanent nature of all conditioned phenomena. For such contemplation one must use cognitive discursive faculties such as vitakka and vicāra (that seem to support the arising of viveka, ‘discernment’). That is, one employs the power of conceptual thinking and reflecting for contemplating the transitory, dependent and unsatisfactory nature of phenomena.

  The next verse makes it quite clear, however, that thinking should cease (vitakkā vidhūpitā) in order to attain liberation.157 The subsequent verse goes even further and identifies that same ‘thinking’ with papañca by declaring that a monk ‘overcomes all this papañca’158 (presumably referring to vitakka from the previous verse). This is an intriguing statement, since as I pointed out earlier, thinking can be conducive to liberation, while papañca cannot. However, I believe that this verse suggests something more subtle. It implies that even though vitakka and vicāra have less ‘suffering potential’ than papañca, they still hinder our perception;159 they tell a story about the experience and can create a sense of self. This is the reason why the Buddha declared that ‘thoughts build the world’160 and that one has to arrive at the ‘end of the world’ for attaining liberation.161

  I would suggest that the difference between vitakka and papañca is a difference in intensity and the power of clinging and ignorance. Thoughts, either wholesome or obsessive, have always a point of reference – the self. In a very basic way, thinking is the way we create and sustain a sense of self. Descartes expressed this notion by declaring, ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ – I think, therefore I am. Thinking, even if it is wholesome, separates the flow of experience into a subjective ‘I’ who experiences an objective reality – a
‘thinker’ and a ‘thought’. We can even go further and argue that most of our thoughts (if not all of them) are constructed in relation to a ‘self’. They are the manifestation of wanting, planning and remembering, which has most frequently ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘mine’ as their centre. According to Buddhist philosophy, concepts (saññā) and thoughts do not describe the world; they create the world. Put differently, thinking and conceptualizing do not refer to anything real ‘out there’. This seems to be the reason for the statement in the next verse that ‘having known with regard to the world that all this is unreal’ (sabbaṃ vitathamidanti ñatvā loke) – that is, thoughts, concepts, ideas and so forth – one is liberated. In other words, for seeing reality as it is, thinking, which is a type of papañca, must cease.162 Thus, the cessation of the thinking process is imperative for seeing the true nature of this mental phenomenon and for realizing how subjective experience and the sense of self originates and is sustained.163