Early Buddhist Meditation Read online

  The problem

  In the study of Buddhist meditation and in many translations of the early Buddhist texts into English, the word jhāna (dhyāna in Sanskrit) was mainly translated as ‘trance’, ‘absorption’ and ‘meditation’. However, it will become clear that the denotation of the jhānas as ‘trance’ or ‘absorption’ is problematic. Likewise, the fourfold jhāna model does not have the vague meaning of meditation; rather it is a technical term for specific psychosomatic experiences.12 In modern scholarship, the jhānas are also referred to as ‘altered states of consciousness’. In my view, using this idiom for describing the four jhānas is insufficient for understanding their transformative power. Many people experience various ‘altered states of consciousness’ during life. Still, not every altered state of consciousness transforms the mind and loosens attachments.13 Furthermore, Buddhist theories of meditation claim that one should not produce or desire specific experiences or meditative attainments since all experiences have the same nature: they are impermanent, not-self and dukkha. However, in many Buddhist texts, some experiences are more conducive to liberation than others. The obvious questions are: why are certain psychosomatic states conducive to liberation? Can we consider the four jhānas as such states? And, if so, why is this so? In other words, what is the special virtue of the jhānas – all four of them – that can bring about the realization of the unconstructed and unconditioned (asaṅkhata)?14

  This last question is philosophically problematic since nibbāna, the ‘unconditioned’, cannot have any causal connection with any meditational process. Yet, there must be some relation between nibbāna and the attainment of the jhānas (and other path-factors) as indicated in the quote that opened the introduction.

  The relation between the four jhānas and nibbāna also raises other important questions about Buddhist notions of awakening: are we to understand the end of the Buddhist spiritual path as having a specific conceptual content or are we to see liberation as non-discursive in nature? In other words, is paññā some kind of discursive knowledge of certain ‘Buddhist metaphysical categories’, as argued by Griffiths,15 possibly the Four Nobles’ Truths, or is it an ‘unspecified and un-specifiable kind of insight’ as suggested by Johannes Bronkhorst?16 Moreover, is there any cognitive content that can transform and liberate the mind?

  Furthermore, the polarized model of the meditative path into samatha-bhāvanā and vipassanā-bhāvanā has aroused tension surrounding the manner in which the jhānas can be combined and integrated with the practice of satipaṭṭhāna. Since there is unanimous agreement in Buddhist scholarship and within the Buddhist tradition that the arūpa samāpattis are not necessary for liberation, the issue of the four jhānas is much more challenging. This is because sammā-samādhi – one of the factors of the Eightfold Path – is another designation for the attainment of the four jhānas. Thus, the traditional interpretation of the jhānas as a narrow field of awareness – an absorption into one object of perception – evoked a difficulty in understanding the relationship between this path-factor (i.e., sammā-samādhi) and the practice of satipaṭṭhāna (i.e., sammā-sati). In a crude way, the practice of satipaṭṭhāna is regarded as the observation of the changing phenomenal field, conceptualized in the Nikāyas, into four categories of experience: body, feeling, mind-states and mental phenomena. The jhānas, on the other hand, have been depicted as meditative techniques that yield various spiritual powers but which are not necessary for liberation. The assumption has been that since the jhānas cannot involve ‘liberating insight’ – the insight into the nature of experience – they are not required for the attainment of nibbāna. This view has resulted in the Theravādic idea that one can ‘bypass’ the attainment of the jhānas on the path to liberation. Those who attain Arahantship without attaining the fourfold jhāna model are called in the Pāli commentaries ‘dry insight’ (sukkha-vipassaka) arahants: a type of arahants who are classified under the category of ‘liberated by wisdom’ (paññā-vimutti).17

  Research questions

  The classical interpretation of the jhānas raises several obvious questions: if the jhānas are a meditative procedure leading to one-pointed absorption that is disconnected from the experience of the five senses, how can they be combined and integrated with a meditative technique that aims at seeing (vipassanā) the true nature of phenomena? In other words, how can we integrate sammā-samādhi with sammā-sati if these two path-factors are seen as two different types of meditation techniques, directed at two different perceptual aims?18 Second, if the jhānas are extrinsic to the Buddhist path – a borrowed element from Indian contemplative traditions – how can we explain their central position in the Nikāyas’ liberation scheme while having a key role in the Buddha’s own awakening story? If, as argued by Walpola Rāhula, ‘all these mystic states, according to the Buddha, have nothing to do with Reality, Truth, Nirvana,’19 why are they described in eighty-six different places in the Nikāyas20 and mainly in the context of awakening?

  However, if we assume that the fourfold jhāna model is a ‘Buddhist’ innovation, that is to say, only the term itself was adopted from non-Buddhist sources, in what way are they actually Buddhist? What is the psychological and liberative value of the jhānas in the path of awakening? How do they express phenomenologically the unique Buddhist understanding of the path to liberation and the notion of an awakened mind? Is it plausible to argue against the claim of Paul Griffiths that the fourfold jhāna model ‘does not itself have soteriological effect’?21 That is, how do the jhānas benefit the practitioner, and if they do so, how do these attainments incline the practitioner’s mind towards nibbāna? With these questions in mind I ventured into this study.

  Motivation

  My research was initially motivated by the questions already outlined that emphasize the tension between the representation of the four jhānas in the Nikāyas and their depiction in the Theravāda commentarial literature and by most modern Theravāda teachers. Initially this seemed a worn-out subject of exploration. However, when I delved into this research I realized that previous studies that treated the jhānas in the early Buddhist texts portrayed them mostly in general terms. Much less attention has been given to the emotive, cognitive and physical aspects that the jhānic process exemplifies in the Nikāyas theory of mental development, independently from commentarial perception, and within the Nikāyas’ mind-set. Several pivotal issues around their usual interpretation kept drawing my attention. I slowly began to notice that there is a lack of precision in the way key concepts such as samādhi, sukha, pīti, vitakka, ekodibhāvaṃ, upekkhā, vipassanā, samatha and so on are interpreted in the context of the Nikāyas’ theory of meditation. It became clear that many studies on this subject merely recapitulate the accounts given in the Visuddhimagga, but they do not advance our understanding of the Nikāyas’ teaching on this issue.

  Commentaries are an important contribution to any tradition. They clarify difficult issues and many times deepen our understanding of the root texts. However, every commentary is a product of a certain historical, spiritual and intellectual context; as such, each commentary expresses specific understanding and views. That is, every commentator is rooted in a specific milieu and expresses different interests. The Theravāda commentarial tradition is no exception. It was written in a different context and milieu than the Nikāyas and expresses views and concerns relevant to that point of time and specific understanding of Buddhist practice. When we look at the commentary understanding of the jhānas, I believe that it actually is problematizing rather than clarifying. Furthermore, I think that ideas of what constitute liberation in the Nikāyas – and what are the means necessary for attaining this liberation – were sometimes tainted by later conceptualizations.

  Although I do not think that conceptual reframing of the Nikāyas teaching is necessarily a distortion of the first ‘most genuine’ teachings, as pointed out correctly by Noa Ronkin,22 in the case of the fourfold jhāna model, later conceptualizations do seem to di
verge significantly from the Nikāyas’ understanding. I have come to believe that a fresh look at this model, as it is presented in the earliest strata of the Buddhist tradition, can offer a new perspective on the way the Pāli Nikāyas envision the unfolding of the spiritual path and provide different categories of thinking on the nature of the meditative process and its relation to the awakening event.

  What I have set out to do here became less attractive in the current state of Buddhist Studies in the West. Nevertheless, I believe it is an important enterprise that I hope will benefit both scholars of Buddhism and Buddhist practitioners. The Nikāyas are part of the normative literature of Buddhism, and they have an important role in shaping the way many Buddhists conceive their spiritual path. In the past few decades, the study of the Pāli suttas became relevant for many Buddhist practitioners in Asia and in the West. More and more people approach these texts directly and thus are motivated and guided by the practices and spiritual ideas they envision in ways that seem to have been long forgotten in the Buddhist tradition. For that reason, I believe critical textual study of these texts – an analysis that reevaluates common presuppositions – might be a valuable enterprise for many people who are not part of academia. This study is offered to them as well.

  It should be noted that this study does not explore contemporary jhāna practices or the experiences of contemporary practitioners of samatha meditation. It is also not a practical guide for attaining the jhānas. It might be that some of the material presented here will overlap with what contemporary meditators of samatha meditation experience in their practice, while some will probably not. My aim is not to argue that experiences and instructions depicted in the Visuddhimagga (and other meditation manuals based on this text) are wrong, or that reports of practitioners who follow these instructions are not true or genuine. What this study does challenge, however, is the assumption that Theravāda commentarial literature refers to the same jhānas as the Nikāyas. The question is, can we look at the jhānas, as they are described in the Nikāyas, with fresh eyes, not conditioned by later interpretations?23

  Having this last question in mind, what will be suggested here is that what the Nikāyas call jhānas seems to be different type of experiences; experiences that are the fruit of insight and what allow the meditator to perceive more and more clearly the nature of phenomena. This interpretation by no means negates the existence of the type of experiences the Theravāda tradition calls jhānas. Absorptions are part of the human experience and the contemplative life. Yet, what I am suggesting is that we should be open to the possibility that these two textual corpuses – the Nikāyas and the Theravāda commentarial tradition – might be talking about two different types of experiences brought about by two different types of practices.

  Having said that, the intention underlying this study is not to argue that only the Pāli Nikāyas represent ‘real’ or ‘pure’ Buddhism. This study is not concerned with Buddhism as a religious phenomenon or with what Buddhists really did ‘on the ground’. The main aim of this study is to try to understand the Nikāyas’ view of the path to awakening and the liberative role and interdependence of the various qualities, experiences and attainments that this textual corpus is presenting.

  Furthermore, I am less interested in the unresolved question whether the Pāli suttas were actually taught by the Buddha. Yet, I do believe that there is sufficient evidence for arguing that the four primary Nikāyas (along with the Sutta Nipāta, the Āgamas and some Sanskrit sources) are the earliest stratum of the Buddhist tradition, dated before the origination of the early schools. This argument has been presented in various studies and I will not repeat them here;24 yet, a few words are in order.

  Comparisons between the Pāli Nikāyas, the Chinese Āgamas and the fragments of the Saṃyukta Āgamas preserved in the Senior Collection provide an important source for the antiquity of the Pāli Nikāyas; such comparisons also support the view that the Nikāyas do represent early Buddhist practices and ideas.

  Bhikṣu Thich Minh Chau, who has studied the Madhyama Āgama of the Sarvāstivāda in its Chinese translation, has concluded that

  [T]he high percentage of similarities between the Chinese and the Pāli versions, and the presence of many literally identical passages show that there existed a basic stock, not only of doctrines, but also of texts, agreeing in all essentials with both the Chinese and the Pāli versions.25

  He has pointed out that the fundamental doctrines, such as the satipaṭṭhāna, the jhānas, the rūpa and arūpa worlds, the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths are similar, and the wording is identical.26

  Andrew Glass has studied the relationships between the Saṃyuktāgama type sūtras preserved in the Senior Collection and the other extant versions of the Saṃyuktāgama/Saṃyutta Nikāyas preserved in the Pāli, Chinese and Tibetan.27 After comparing these versions, Glass has concluded that the Gāndhārī text is not identical with any other tradition; nevertheless, in almost all cases, the Pāli provides the closest match.28 Although he points out that the Gāndhārī collection has a stronger connection to the arrangement of the Chinese Saṃyuktāgama, the contents of the four sūtras on Scroll 5 have a closer match to the Pāli. He states that if this is typical of the Gāndhārī collection, and not limited to the texts on this manuscript, we must come to one of the following conclusions:

  The three traditions, Gāndhārī (Dharmaguptaka), Pāli (Tāmraśāṭīya), and Chinese (Sarvāstivāda), stem from a common source. The Gāndhārī and Chinese collections split from Pāli. Some rearrangement in the sequence of the Connected Discourses took place in either or both traditions. The Gāndhārī and Pāli texts preserve separate witnesses to this post-rearrangement phase. The tradition preserved in Chinese underwent textual developments (some of which are also seen in the Pāli Majjhima-Nikāyas), up to the end of the fourth century A.D. when the text transported to China.29

  Bhikkhu Anālayo, who studies the Chinese Āgamas and the Pāli Nikāyas, has stated recently that

  [T]he most important finding so far is the close resemblance of the parallel versions as far as essential aspects of the teachings are concerned. This makes core teachings found in the Pāli discourses the common heritage of all Buddhist traditions and an important reference point for the follower of any Buddhist school.30

  To conclude, if we put aside the marginal differences noted by these various studies, we find that the Pāli Nikāyas, the Chinese Āgamas and the parallel fragments of the Saṃyukta Āgama are almost completely identical in doctrinal issues and that they most probably were preserved the Buddhist teachings prior to the first schism. Even though the different collections are not in the same exact layout, the existence of the same texts in the different schools suggests they were the common heritage of the various early Buddhist schools.31 It seems, then, that Thich Minh Chau’s hypothesis, that none of the existing versions have anteriority but all of them are manifestations of the earliest Buddhist canon, might be a valid hypothesis.32 However, since we do not have any concrete evidence for this hypothesis, the Pāli Nikāyas, the Chinese Āgamas and the Saṃyukta Āgama are quite enough for demarcating the early Buddhist textual tradition (i.e., mainstream Buddhism), without the need for an earlier common canon. They can be viewed, however, as versions of an earlier nucleus,33 while the minor differences reflect the different environments in which these versions were preserved and eventually arranged and closed.

  The Jhānas in Theravāda Meditation Theory: Pivotal Discrepancies with the Nikāyas

  Much has already been written on the subject of the jhānas in the commentarial literature and in the Visuddhimagga. A thorough summary of Buddhaghosa’s account of the jhānas, and the practice leading to their attainment, has already been conducted by Roderick Bucknell.34 Hence a simple summary is sufficient for our purposes.35

  Bucknell’s summary shows quite clearly that for Buddhaghosa the jhānas are the absorption into a specific object of meditation. According to Buddhaghosa, after gazing upon th
e chosen object (or, for example, by observing the breath), the object becomes a clear mental representation; this is an image in the mind as a vivid reality (this is the uggaha nimitta). This stage is termed ‘preliminary concentration’ (parikamma samādhi). When the image is turned into a concept (paññatti) or an ‘after-image’, it can no longer be imagined concretely; it is now termed the ‘counterpart sign’ (paṭibhāga nimitta).36 At this stage, the meditator extends the sign in two stages: first, for attaining ‘access concentration’ (upacāra samādhi), in which the mind is unified upon its object, and then for attaining ‘absorption concentration’ (appaṇā samādhi), in which the mind sinks into the object. With the perfection of the latter, the meditator enters into the first jhāna. 37 Buddhaghosa identifies the attainment of the jhānas as the absorption into a meditation object. Appropriately, he entitles these states ‘absorption samādhi’ (appaṇā samādhi).38 The same series of sub-stages of concentrating on a chosen object is practiced for entering the other jhānas and arūpa samāpattis39 (which the commentaries identify as arūpa jhānas).