Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s2: 2. The Forms of Meditation

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c11.s2

Language: English

2. The Forms of Meditation

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The Canon is singularly rich in diverse devices intended to secure the production of a state of mind in which there shall be no presence of empirical reality. The Yoga practices of which India has ever been so fond were doubtless the object of eager study, and forms of self-hypnosis were the objects of research. We have in all likelihood echoes of these experiments in the records of the power to see heavenly visions and hear heavenly sounds, in the imagination of wrestlings in controversy with the evil Māra,¹ in whom the power of desire and the temptations of the life of the world are personified. The life of the monks and nuns, with their scanty nutriment and eager desire to secure experiences of rapture, must have tended to the abnormal development of psychic powers and the induction of hallucinations and self-hypnosis. All the methods seem to have aimed at one end; despite occasional combination in the texts they may fairly be held to have been originally independent modes of gaining a common end.

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¹ Windisch, Māra und Buddha; Oldenberg, Aus Indien und Iran, pp. 101 f.; SN. i. 103 ff.

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Simplest and least unattractive is the formal practice of regulated breathing accompanied by a simple assertion of the act, a device loved according to tradition by the Buddha himself as occupation for the rainy season when his wandering life of preaching ceased.² Repellent in the extreme is the meditation of impurity, demanding the presence of the monk at a cemetery, and the careful meditation on all the hateful aspects of a corpse in decay, a drastic measure of convincing even the greatest lover of human beauty of the vanity of the love of the flesh, but perhaps necessary for Indian monks, since even the highest ascetics are regarded by Brahmanical tradition as singularly apt to fall victims to female blandishments.³ Of much more attractive kind are the forms of meditation which lead with certainty to rebirth in the world of Brahmā, the Brahma-vihāras. In the wild one first practices the feeling of friendliness to all creatures; then develops sympathy as compassion in its place; then sympathy in their joy; and thence passes to the true end of the meditation, the attainment of absolute indifference of feeling (upekkhā), a striking warning against any conception of love as the end of man.⁴

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² VP. iii. 70 f.; SN. v. 326; Poussin, Bouddhisme (1898), p. 92.

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³ DN. ii. 292 f., 298 f.

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⁴ AN. i. 183; iii. 225; DN. iii. 224.

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More abstruse are the Positions of Mastery (abhibhāyatanāni)⁵ which are essentially modes of contemplating external forms finite or boundless, and coloured blue, yellow, red, white, and appreciating their true impermanence, and thus presumably rendering vacant the mind. Akin to these exercises are the first three of the Stages of Deliverance (*vimokkha*)¹ which seem to be, first the contemplation by a man of his own material form, then of external form, and then the attainment of intentness. Then by passing beyond any conception of matter or idea of sensation, and suppressing the idea of multiformity, he attains the state of mind in which the only idea present is the infinity of space (*ākāsānañca*). On this follows a stage in which the infinity or unboundness of intellect (*viññāṇānañca*) is alone present. The next stage is reached when there is nothing at all present to the mind (*ākiñcaññāyatana*). Then is achieved the stage when neither the presence of ideas nor the absence of ideas is specifically present (*nevasaññānāsaññāyatana*). Finally is attained the state where there is suppression of both sensation and idea (*saññāvedayitanirodha*). The same idea reappears in a different form in the doctrine of the seven Resting Places for Consciousness (*viññāṇaṭhitiyo*) and the two Spheres.² The first of the resting places or stages is that of men, some gods and dwellers in hell; the second of the gods, differing in body but uniform in intelligence, of the Brahma-loka; the third of the gods uniform in body but not in intelligence; the fourth of the All lustrous gods uniform in both; the last three and the two Spheres cover the four stages beginning with the infinity of space, the two Spheres being the realms without idea and where is neither ideation nor yet non-ideation. The four or five rank as the Āruppajhānas, for their essence is that they assume that the adept has left all conception of matter far behind, and advances step by step in the sphere of pure consciousness, and finally the disappearance of any content whatever. We have here an interesting historical record, which explains to us the presence of the fifth form in the shape of the suppression of both idea and feeling; Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, two teachers of the Buddha, had carried their power of meditation to the extent of attaining the meditation of nothingness, and neither the presence nor the absence of ideas; it followed therefore that the Buddha must go further and invent a fifth meditation, in which everything disappears save the life and the warmth of the body; that is, in effect, a cataleptic condition in the fullest sense.¹ We must assume, therefore, that the Buddha approved this form of meditation. But the addition of four of the forms to the ordinary Four Meditations in order to make up eight Perfections or Accomplishments is clearly artificial, for the two forms of meditation differ in essence and cannot be made rationally complementary. They must have been favoured for different purposes and occasions, though with one end.

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⁵ DN. ii. 110; iii. 260; DS. § 204.

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¹ DN. ii. 112 ff. ; 70 f. ; iii. 262 f ; AN. iv. 306, 349 ; DS. §§ 248 ff. ; Franke, DN. pp. 210, n. 4, 212, n. 6.

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² DN. ii. 68 ff. ; AN. iv. 39 f.

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¹ MN. i. 164 f. It is clear there is no disapproval of these states; Oldenberg, GGA. 1917, p. 170. Cf. BC. xii. 45 ff.

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This other set of four² occurs with great frequency in set phraseology, and without the variations in enumeration of the other set. They seem often even in the early school to have been preceded by a form of concentration intended to aid entry into them, the Kasiṇas,³ the essential feature of which is the contemplation, say of earth, water, fire, wind, dark blue, yellow, blood-red, white, light or a narrow aperture. By intense concentrated gazing on the object chosen he obtains a mental reflex, which is devoid of the specific character of a simple mental image. The process is to be carried on to the accompaniment of thoughts on the wretchedness of sensual pleasure, which produce indifference to such pleasures; with reflections on the merits of the Buddha, the doctrine, and the community of monks, which produce joy and gladness; and with the deliberate effort thus to become a partaker of the blessings of isolation. The attainment of this mental reflex opens the way to the first Meditation or Trance.

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² DN. i. 73 ff.; HEILER, KF., pp. 357 ff.

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³ MN. ii. 14; AN. i. 41; v. 46 f., 60; VM. in Warren, HOS. iii. 293 ff.; DS. §§ 160 ff; Poussin, *Bouddhisme* (1898), pp. 94 ff.

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This condition, is one in which, freed from all desire and evil dispositions, the adept enjoys, as a result of isolation and concentration, a condition of zest and pleasure (*pīti-sukha*), while engaged in initial and sustained application, doubtless to the truths of the system. By the suppression of either form of application, he obtains inner peace, the concentration (*ekodibhava*)⁴ of thought (cetas) produced by deep reflection (samādhi), and characterized by zest and pleasure. The third stage is one in which zest with the activity which it implies disappears; the adept remains mindful and intent (satimān), but indifferent (upekkhaka), enjoying, however, pleasure; the interpretation of indifference here is not evidently hedonistic; the state is not one of neutral feeling, but intellectual; the adept looks with impartial tolerance on all mental states. Then, by the putting away of all pleasure and pain, by the destruction of elation or dejection, he attains the fourth state which is one of pure or complete self-possession and indifference (upekkhāsatiparisuddhi) without pleasure or pain. This last state is not altogether easy of interpretation, for the term, which may indicate the purity or completeness of self-possession and indifference, has also been interpreted as denoting the removal¹ of these qualities from the adept, which would result, therefore, in a condition somewhat akin to that produced by the last of the other type of Meditations. In favour of this interpretation can be cited the fact that otherwise the fourth Meditation appears to leave us with a condition which seems indistinguishable from the final intuition of the saint, which it is certainly not to be identified with,² as that is represented as following on the last Meditation; but this objection is not fatal, for intuition is more than self-possession and indifference, which may well be treated as leading up to it. If so, then this series of Meditations clearly leads to a different result spiritually than the first, as it starts with a different procedure, for, although artificial aids to mental concentration are used, the adept engages in mental reflection on Buddhist truths, and not in a mere effort to isolate thought.³ Perhaps this fact was regarded as making it inferior, for the other Meditations appear later to have been preferred to it. Like the former set, it is not doubtful that the Meditations are taken over from Brahmanic practice; there are traces of them in the Yoga and the *Mahābhārata*, and they are not claimed as original or as inventions in Buddhism.

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⁴ On this cf. Franke, DN., p. 39, n. 6; Kern, SBE. XXI. xvii; Lévi, MSA. xiv. 14; Oldenberg, GGA. 1917, p. 170, n. 1.

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¹ Senart, RHL. xlii. 349 f. On sati cf. Rhys Davids, SBB. iii. 322 ff. Cf. Franke, DN. p. 76, n. 5.

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² DN. ii. 156; i. 38. Intuition includes definite recognition of non-rebirth; DN. i. 84. Cf. Beckh, Buddhismus, ii. 48 f.

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³ Meditation (Jhāna) is a narrower idea than Samādhi, concentration, which includes it and is generic; Buddhism has not the YS. iii. 1 ff. distinction of Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, Samādhi.

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Both sets of meditations are deemed to be distinguished by happiness, a view which seems in obvious contradiction with the absence of pleasure from the last stages in the latter set, and the catalepsy of the last stage of the former set, but the difficulty may be resolved by accepting the distinction between the actual pleasure of the state, and the value of it as tending to the final end; this double use of happiness is another proof of the logical weakness of the Canon.¹

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¹ Ledi Sadaw, *Yamaka*, ii. App., p. 248; *Buddh. Psych.*, pp. 83 ff.

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It is, however, essential to note that there is nothing necessary in regard to these trances, though their use was constant among the monks, and directions are given in the Vinaya to secure that monks adept in meditation should be located together so as not to interfere with one another in trance.² A similar form of meditation is contained in the threefold concentration (*samādhi*), with initial and continued application; with the latter only; without both, and another set of three views things as void, probably of lusts and evil dispositions; without taking note of any special peculiarity, that is indifferently; and without predilection.³ Ānanda, who carried out the former kind of concentration, seems to have had the vision of an aura and of forms. There is much similar matter recorded in the mysticism of the west,⁴ but Christian mystics show distinct characteristics which have been traced to the double origin of their views in Neo-platonic philosophical conceptions and the prophetic tradition; their aim is union with God; they recognize the grace of God in the course of the progress of their meditations, as does the *Kaṭha Upaniṣad*; they show a personal element which distinguishes the state of each mystic from that of another.

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