In the Pali Canon the practices conducing to Nibbāna are often elaborated into a more complex set comprising seven groups of intersecting factors. The later tradition designates them the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment (bodhipakkhiyā dhammā), but the Buddha himself simply speaks of them without a collective name as “the things that I have taught you after directly knowing them” (MN 103.3, MN 104.5). Towards the end of his life he stressed to the Sangha that the long duration of his teaching in the world depends upon the accurate preservation of these factors and their being practised by his followers in harmony, free from contention.
The constituents of this set are as follows:• the four foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna)
• the four right kinds of striving (sammappadhāna)
• the four bases for spiritual power (iddhipāda)
• the five faculties (indriya)
• the five powers (bala)
• the seven enlightenment factors (bojjhanga)
• the Noble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhangika magga)
Each group is defined in full at MN 77.15–21. As examination will show, most of these groups are simply subdivisions or rearrangements of factors of the eightfold path made to highlight different aspects of the practice. Thus, for example, the four foundations of mindfulness are an elaboration of right mindfulness; the four right kinds of striving, an elaboration of right effort. The development of the groups is therefore integral and not sequential. MN 118, for example, shows how the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness fulfils the development of the seven enlightenment factors, and MN 149.10 states that one engaged in insight meditation on the senses brings to maturity all thirty-seven aids to enlightenment.
Factorial analysis of the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment brings to light the central importance of four factors among them—energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom. From this a clear picture of the essential practice can be sketched. One begins with a conceptual understanding of the Dhamma and an intention to achieve the goal, the first two path factors. Then, out of faith, one accepts the moral discipline regulating speech, action, and livelihood. With virtue as a basis one energetically applies the mind to cultivating the four foundations of mindfulness. As mindfulness matures it issues in deepened concentration, and the concentrated mind, by investigation, arrives at wisdom, a penetrative understanding of the principles originally grasped only conceptually.
THE GRADUAL TRAINING
In the Majjhima Nikāya the Buddha often expounds the practice of the path as a gradual training (anupubbasikkhā), which unfolds in stages from the first step to the final goal. This gradual training is a finer subdivision of the threefold division of the path into virtue, concentration, and wisdom. Invariably in the suttas the sequence on the gradual training is shown to start with the going forth into homelessness and the adoption of the lifestyle of a bhikkhu, a Buddhist monk. This immediately calls attention to the importance of the monastic life in the Buddha’s Dispensation. In principle the entire practice of the Noble Eightfold Path is open to people from any mode of life, monastic or lay, and the Buddha confirms that many among his lay followers were accomplished in the Dhamma and had attained the first three of the four supramundane stages (MN 68.18–23; MN 73.9–22; the Theravādin position is that lay followers can also attain the fourth stage, arahantship, but having done so they immediately seek the going forth or pass away). However, the fact remains that the household life inevitably tends to impede the single-hearted quest for deliverance by fostering a multitude of worldly concerns and personal attachments. Hence the Buddha himself went forth into homelessness as the preliminary step in his own noble quest, and after his enlightenment he established the Sangha, the order of bhikkhus and bhikkhunīs, as the resort for those who wish to devote themselves fully to the practice of his teaching undeflected by the cares of household life.
The main paradigm for the gradual training found in the Majjhima Nikāya is that laid out in MN 27 and MN 51; alternative versions are found at MN 38, MN 39, MN 53, MN 107, and MN 125, and some of the more important variations will be briefly noted. The sequence opens with the appearance of a Tathāgata in the world and his exposition of the Dhamma, hearing which the disciple acquires faith and follows the Teacher into homelessness. Having gone forth, he undertakes and observes the rules of discipline that promote the purification of conduct and livelihood. The next three steps—contentment, restraint of the sense faculties, and mindfulness and full awareness—are intended to internalise the process of purification and thereby bridge the transition from virtue to concentration. Alternative versions (MN 39, MN 53, MN 107, MN 125) insert two additional steps here, moderation in eating and devotion to wakefulness.
The direct training in concentration comes to prominence in the section on the abandonment of the five hindrances. The five hindrances—sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt—are the primary obstacles to meditative development and their removal is therefore essential for the mind to be brought to a state of calm and unification. In the sequence on the gradual training the overcoming of the hindrances is treated only schematically; other parts of the Canon provide more practical instruction, amplified still more in the commentaries. The passage on the hindrances is graced in MN 39 by a series of similes illustrating the contrast between the bondage imposed by the hindrances and the joyful sense of freedom that is won when they are abandoned.
The next stage in the sequence describes the attainment of the jhānas, profound states of concentration in which the mind becomes fully absorbed in its object. The Buddha enumerates four jhānas, named simply after their numerical position in the series, each more refined and elevated than its predecessor. The jhānas are always described by the same formulas, which in several suttas (MN 39, MN 77, MN 119) are augmented by similes of great beauty. Although in the Theravāda tradition the jhānas are not regarded as indispensable to the attainment of enlightenment, the Buddha invariably includes them in the full gradual training because of the contribution they make to the intrinsic perfection of the path and because the deep concentration they induce provides a solid base for the cultivation of insight. While still mundane the jhānas are the “footsteps of the Tathāgata” (MN 27.19–22) and foretokens of the bliss of Nibbāna that lies at the training’s end.
From the fourth jhāna three alternative lines of further development become possible. In a number of passages outside the sequence on the gradual training (MN 8, MN 25, MN 26, MN 66, etc.) the Buddha mentions four meditative states that continue the mental unification established by the jhānas. These states, described as “the liberations that are peaceful and immaterial,” are, like the jhānas, also mundane. Distinguished from the jhānas by their transcendence of the subtle mental image that forms the object in the jhānas, they are named after their own exalted objects: the base of infinite space, the base of infinite consciousness, the base of nothingness, and the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. In the Pali commentaries these states came to be called the immaterial or formless jhānas (arūpajjhāna).
A second line of development disclosed by the suttas is the acquisition of supernormal knowledge. The Buddha frequently mentions six types as a group, which come to be called the six kinds of direct knowledge (chaḷabhiññā; the expression does not occur in the Majjhima). The last of these, the knowledge of the destruction of the taints, is supramundane and thus properly belongs to the third line of development. But the other five are all mundane, products of the extraordinarily powerful degree of mental concentration achieved in the fourth jhāna: the supernormal powers, the divine ear, the ability to read the minds of others, the recollection of past lives, and the divine eye (MN 6, MN 73, MN 77, MN 108).
The jhānas and the mundane types of direct knowledge by themselves do not issue in enlightenment and liberation. As lofty and peaceful as these attainments are, they can only suppress the defilements that sustain the round of rebirths but cannot erad
icate them. To uproot the defilements at the most fundamental level, and thereby yield the fruits of enlightenment and deliverance, the meditative process must be redirected along a third line of development, one which does not necessarily presuppose the former two. This is the contemplation of “things as they actually are,” which results in increasingly deeper insights into the nature of existence and culminates in the final goal, the attainment of arahantship.
This line of development is the one the Buddha pursues in the sequence on the gradual training, though he precedes it by descriptions of two of the direct knowledges, the recollection of past lives and the divine eye. The three together, which figured prominently in the Buddha’s own enlightenment (MN 4.27–30), are collectively called the three true knowledges (tevijjā). Although the first two among these are not essential to the realisation of arahantship, we may assume that the Buddha includes them here because they reveal the truly vast and profound dimensions of suffering in saṁsāra and thereby prepare the mind for the penetration of the Four Noble Truths, in which that suffering is diagnosed and surmounted.
The process of contemplation by which the meditator develops insight is not explicitly shown as such in the sequence on the gradual training. It is only implied by the exhibiting of its final fruit, here called the knowledge of the destruction of the taints. The āsavas or taints are a classification of defilements considered in their role of sustaining the saṁsāric round. The commentaries derive the word from a root su meaning “to flow.” Scholars differ as to whether the flow implied by the prefix ā is inward or outward; hence some have rendered it as “influxes” or “influences,” others as “outflows” or “effluents.” A stock passage in the suttas indicates the term’s real significance independently of etymology when it describes the āsavas as states “that defile, bring renewal of being, give trouble, ripen in suffering, and lead to future birth, ageing, and death” (MN 36.47, etc.). Thus other translators, bypassing the literal meaning, have rendered it “cankers,” “corruptions,” or “taints,” the latter being the choice of Ven. Ñāṇamoli. The three taints mentioned in the suttas are virtual synonyms for craving for sensual pleasures, craving for being, and the ignorance that appears at the head of the formula for dependent origination. When the disciple’s mind has been liberated from the taints by the completion of the path of arahantship, he reviews his newly won freedom and roars his lion’s roar: “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.”
APPROACHES TO MEDITATION
The methods of meditation taught by the Buddha in the Pali Canon fall into two broad systems. One is the development of serenity (samatha), which aims at concentration (samādhi); the other is the development of insight (vipassanā), which aims at understanding or wisdom (paññā). In the Buddha’s system of mental training the role of serenity is subordinated to that of insight because the latter is the crucial instrument needed to uproot the ignorance at the bottom of saṁsāric bondage. The attainments possible through serenity meditation were known to Indian contemplatives long before the advent of the Buddha. The Buddha himself mastered the two highest stages under his early teachers but found that, on their own, they only led to higher planes of rebirth, not to genuine enlightenment (MN 26.15–16). However, because the unification of mind induced by the practice of concentration contributes to clear understanding, the Buddha incorporated the techniques of serenity meditation and the resulting levels of absorption into his own system, treating them as a foundation and preparation for insight and as a “pleasant abiding here and now.”
The attainments reached by the practice of serenity meditation are, as mentioned in the preceding section, the eight absorptions—the four jhānas and the four immaterial states—each of which serves as the basis for the next. Strangely, the suttas do not explicitly prescribe specific meditation subjects as the means for attaining the jhānas, but the commentarial literature such as the Visuddhimagga enables us to make the connections. Among the meditation topics enumerated in the suttas, eight of the ten kasiṇas (MN 77.24) are recognised as suitable for attaining all four jhānas, the last two being the respective supports for the first two immaterial attainments. The eight bases for transcendence seem to be a more finely differentiated treatment of meditation on the colour kasiṇas, as are the first three of the eight liberations (MN 77.22–23). Mindfulness of breathing, to which the Buddha devotes an entire sutta (MN 118), provides an ever accessible meditation subject that can be pursued through all four jhānas and also used to develop insight. Another method for attaining the jhānas mentioned in the suttas is the four divine abodes (brahmavihāra)—boundless loving-kindness, compassion, altruistic joy (i.e., gladness at others’ success), and equanimity (MN 7, MN 40, etc.). Tradition holds the first three to be capable of leading to the three lower jhānas, the last of inducing the fourth jhāna. The immaterial attainments are to be reached by fixing the mind on the specific object of each attainment—infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and the state that can only be described as neither percipient nor as non-percipient.
Whereas in serenity meditation the meditator attempts to focus upon a single uniform object abstracted from actual experience, in insight meditation the endeavour is made to contemplate, from a position of detached observation, the ever-shifting flux of experience itself in order to penetrate through to the essential nature of bodily and mental phenomena. The Buddha teaches that the craving and clinging that hold us in bondage are sustained by a network of “conceivings” (maññita)—deluded views, conceits, and suppositions that the mind fabricates by an internal process of mental commentary or “proliferation” (papañca) and then projects out upon the world, taking them to possess objective validity. The task of insight meditation is to sever our attachments by enabling us to pierce through this net of conceptual projections in order to see things as they really are.
To see things as they really are means to see them in terms of the three characteristics—as impermanent, as painful or suffering, and as not self. Since the three characteristics are closely interlinked, any one of them can be made the main portal for entering the domain of insight, but the Buddha’s usual approach is to show all three together—impermanence implying suffering and the two in conjunction implying the absence of self. When the noble disciple sees all the factors of being as stamped with these three marks, he no longer identifies with them, no longer appropriates them by taking them to be mine, I, or self. Seeing thus, he becomes disenchanted with all formations. When he becomes disenchanted, his lust and attachment fade away and his mind is liberated from the taints.
Instructions for the development of insight in the Majjhima Nikāya, though concise, are many and diverse. The single most important lesson on the practice conducing to insight is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness (MN 10; also found in the Dīgha Nikāya with an amplified section on the Four Noble Truths). The sutta sets forth a comprehensive system called satipaṭṭhāna designed to train the mind to see with microscopic precision the true nature of the body, feelings, states of mind, and mental objects. The system is sometimes taken to be the paradigm for the practice of “bare insight”—the direct contemplation of mental and bodily phenomena without a prior foundation of jhāna—and, while several exercises described in the sutta can also lead to the jhānas, the arousing of insight is clearly the intent of the method.
Other suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya describe approaches to developing insight that either elaborate upon the satipaṭṭhāna contemplations or reach them from a different starting point. Thus MN 118 shows how the practice of mindfulness of breathing fulfils all four foundations of mindfulness, not the first alone as shown in MN 10. Several suttas—MN 28, MN 62, MN 140—present more detailed instructions on the contemplation of the elements. MN 37, MN 74, and MN 140 contain illuminating passages on the contemplation of feeling. In some suttas the Buddha uses the five agg
regates as the groundwork for insight contemplation (e.g., MN 22, MN 109); in some, the six sense bases (e.g., MN 137, MN 148, MN 149); in some, the two combined (MN 147). MN 112 has sections dealing with insight based on the five aggregates, the six elements, and the six sense bases, and as resulting from the gradual training. MN 52 and MN 64 show that insight can also be aroused with the jhānas, the immaterial attainments, and the divine abodes as its objects: the disciple enters any of these states and contemplates its constituent factors as subject to the three characteristics.
Several sequences of meditative states mentioned in the Majjhima culminate in an attainment called the cessation of perception and feeling (saññāvedayitanirodha). Although this state always follows the last immaterial attainment, it is not, as may be supposed, merely one higher step in the scale of concentration. Strictly speaking, the attainment of cessation pertains neither to serenity nor to insight. It is a state reached by the combined powers of serenity and insight in which all mental processes are temporarily suspended. The attainment is said to be accessible only to non-returners and arahants who have also mastered the jhānas and immaterial states. Detailed canonical discussions of it are found in MN 43 and MN 44.
THE FOUR PLANES OF LIBERATION
The practice of the Buddhist path evolves in two distinct stages, a mundane (lokiya) or preparatory stage and a supramundane (lokuttara) or consummate stage. The mundane path is developed when the disciple undertakes the gradual training in virtue, concentration, and wisdom. This reaches its peak in the practice of insight meditation, which deepens direct experience of the three characteristics of existence. When the practitioner’s faculties have arrived at an adequate degree of maturity, the mundane path gives birth to the supramundane path, so called because it leads directly and infallibly out of (uttara) the world (loka) comprising the three realms of existence to the attainment of “the deathless element,” Nibbāna.
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha Page 4
