7 SARAH SHAW
The Dhammapada commentary, whose series of pleasingly intricate stories are associated with the verses of that famous collection, describes a young man struggling unsuccessfully with meditation. He has been asked to recollect “the foul” by visually considering the sight of a decomposing corpse, a practice that from the earliest times seems to have been peculiar to Buddhism.1 He cannot progress. The Buddha, seeing him with his divine eye, a faculty associated with many awakened beings in these stories, realizes the boy will not succeed, and that his object is unsuitable. He divines that he is now, and was in many past lives, a hereditary goldsmith, and needs a different meditation. So he visits him and conjures a magical vision of a golden-red flower. The young man takes this object, and murmuring the words “red, red” soon enters jhāna, a meditation described in Buddhist texts as characterized by initial thinking, discursive examination, joy, happiness, and one-pointedness: a peaceful bodily, emotional, and mental unification. He attains three further jhānas: the second, where thinking is dropped and “internal silence” is present; the third, where joy is discarded, and happiness, mindfulness, or alertness and equanimity become strong; and finally the fourth, a state where feeling has been purified. The mind, untroubled by painful feelings or even excessively pleasant feelings, becomes fluid and flexible: the meditator is free to turn to insight, other meditations, or psychic powers. The Buddha sees that the man is now ready for insight. He causes the flower, the basis of his meditative attainments, to wither and blacken. The boy, established in calm (samatha), gains insight (vipassanā) too: he sees what are known in Buddhism as the three signs—impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and the lack of a solid and enduring self (anattā)—understood through the decomposition of this visual object. The Buddha leaves the boy, but now the young man’s mind is attuned. He passes a bank of flowers, some lustrous and fresh, others putrefying. He reaches further insight into these three “signs.” Finally the teacher returns: he sees the young man is ready for the last stage of insight. Making a magical image of himself, he brushes the boy’s cheek. Through the combination of surprise and the aptness of this external event, the boy is filled with devotion, the last necessary step in his own path, and attains arahatship—in Buddhist terms, the last vestiges of greed, hatred, and delusion drop away, and the boy is free. 123
Through such tales most Southern Buddhists, monks, and laity have historically been taught about meditation, its objects, and its practice: children hear Dhammapada stories as their first contact with Buddhist teaching.2 So it is a good starting point for this chapter, as it epitomizes a creative and adaptable attitude to meditation objects that is found in the canon and commentarial stories as well as in the varieties of technique in modern Southern Buddhism.3 As so often in early Buddhist discourse, the detail of sustained narrative communicates much that theory cannot. Specificity of object to individual, appropriateness of different objects at various stages of development, and variety of method in a graduated path are all characteristic of the texts and of much Southern Buddhist meditation teaching today. The meditator has been given an object that does not suit; he is given another, dovetailing with his predisposition and past experience. When he has achieved results in calm, he is asked to observe it differently: he sees the defects of his object, in a way that produces insight, rather than frustration, and, through a mixture of his own creative observation, of the bank of dead and live flowers, and the surprise of an odd and apposite step by his teacher inspiring a moment of faith (saddhā), achieves awakening. Modern interpretations might vary on features such as “magical” flowers, visits from a teacher who projects himself to the meditator to give guidance, or the occurrence of “past lives” that have active influence on present disposition. But whether these features are taken as metaphors, imaginative ways of describing idiosyncracies of temperament, or literal “truths” (and the story is rich on all of these levels), the incidents stress, as many texts do, that the individual is in part the product of past experience, that this affects what will work, that there is a right time to offer advice and intervene, that some objects are suitable at different times, and that the practice of meditation, as it is described in Buddhism, requires some spontaneous creativity on the part of the practitioner. In Dhammapada stories meditation objects are sometimes carefully chosen and prescribed, and sometimes, where there is also a graduated path that might be different for different people, they arise fortuitously. The underlying assumption is that it is up to the meditator to use advice skillfully and to exercise intuition in observing events in the world that can help his or her practice.
The interplay of character, environments, and distinct, precisely delineated individual paths, in this and other Pāli collections, indicate that in Buddhist practice and theory, no technique stands alone. The young monk would also be living his daily life, with recommendations for bodily mindfulness and attentiveness to others, and often discussing and hearing talks to loosen views that, according to the Buddhist Abhidhamma, are associated with rigidity and lack of healthiness in body and mind.4 These would all be considered important to support the body and mind for meditation, ensuring the practitioner’s well-being for the return to “normal” life. The practice of awareness during daily life and the various kinds of chanting, often the recollections (anussatis) listed below, are comparable supports for the laity too. 124
The golden flower, “real” or “not real,” conjured, or perhaps visualized, is classified among the category of the first ten objects, the visually “beautiful” (which will be discussed later), the kasiṇa, but it should also be noted that as an external visual object, it does not quite match the contained carefully arranged kasiṇa disc Buddhaghosa prefers.5 And when it has been mastered, the object itself changes, “magically,” as a flower would in “real” life, so the boy can observe decay and putrefaction, features he could not grasp at the outset of the tale. Commentarial lists and advice in working with different techniques need to be read alongside such stories. They show the interchange of teacher, person, and object. In the texts and in much modern practice, “objects” are devised, crafted, and changed for particular situations and people. As so often in early Buddhist texts, the flower, perhaps imaginary, is a spontaneous creation for the moment, for the person concerned, “created” by both teacher and meditator.
This chapter considers briefly a large number of objects—the basic forty described by the commentaries—with the intention of identifying key features that contribute to what is called a “place of work,” a meditation object (kammaṭṭhāna). The objects will be discussed in the seven groups described under “enumeration” in the Visuddhimagga (Visuddhimagga III 104), and some broad indication given of modern variations. While each category is frequent in early texts, no such extended list exists in the canon.6 The groupings are the ten kasiṇas; the ten “unlovely” (asubha); the ten recollections; the four divine abidings; the four formless spheres; and, finally, two objects that, like the recollections, are intended to change views and understanding about the relationship between the practitioner and his or her bodily environment. The very range of categories and variations in teaching them are indicative of the diverse ways “objects” are regarded in canon, commentary, and modern practice.
These objects, like medicines or nutriments, are described in texts as assigned in combinations to encourage particular features and to eliminate those that are unhelpful or destructive. Within the space available, only a thumbnail sketch can be offered, but it is hoped that the adaptive nature of early Buddhist meditative practice manifest in such stories, and the modern adjustments and variations within some Southern Buddhist schools, will be demonstrated. Wherever possible, specific narrative instances will be given, as more true to the sense of individual applicability that animates meditation teaching as it is described within early Buddhist texts. The purpose of considering a wide range is to ascertain whether more general conclusions can be made about the nature of meditation objects and how they are used in Southern Buddhism. Texts cited will include the often overlooked Dhammapada-aṭṭhakathā (translated as Buddhist Legends), the manuals of Buddhaghosa (Visuddhimagga) and Upatissa (Vimuttimagga), and the Pāli canon.
So how would the boy consider the golden flower and address it as a meditation object? The object, a kasiṇa, is here “created” outside, found internally, and, later 125in the story, found again by the pupil externally and in “real” multiple form in the world around him. In early and modern Southern Buddhist practice there is a greater emphasis on the external, “real-life” starting object. Internally derived visualization practices do exist, however, and skill in such fields as a preparation for meditation are suggested by the Mahāsudassana-Sutta, the Piṅgiya-Sutta and the Mahāsamaya-Sutta, in which the listener is encouraged to create in the mind’s eye the contents of what in later Buddhist texts becomes the more frequent, formally constructed mandalas and visualized figures organized on predetermined lines.7
The commentaries and some modern monasteries advise the practitioner to construct a kasiṇa as part of the preparation. Buddhaghosa gives careful instructions: for a kasiṇa, a disc or a larger area of the color is made, or a means of containing the elements of earth, water, air, fire, or space. In Southern Buddhist countries, where many follow commentarial guidelines, discs for the colors are already constructed, and hang in monasteries. Buddhaghosa also discusses naturally occurring fields of objects, though cautiously. That they were used at the time of the Buddha, however, is suggested in very early texts: the canonical list of the spheres of transcendence (abhibhāyatana) compares the “external object” to the flowers of blue flax, the yellow kaṇṇikāra flower, the red bandhujīvaka flower, and the white morning star, as well as fine muslin of these colors (Majjhimanikāya II 12–15).8 The taking of a field of earth is described in the Culasuññata-Sutta as “just as a bull’s hide becomes free from folds when fully stretched with a hundred pegs” (Majjhimanikāya III 105).9 In the Dhammapada story told at the beginning, as well as in others, a meditator spontaneously finds a natural occurrence of an external object.
In the commentaries, the practitioner is asked to allow the eyes to rest on the external visual object, placed at a set distance away, so that it occupies his whole attention: the word kasiṇa is derived from the Sanskrit word meaning “entire” or “whole.”10 The eyes should not be so open as to cause strain, or half-closed, inducing drowsiness: it should be like seeing one’s face in a mirror (Visuddhimagga IV 28). The meditator then shuts the eyes, with the same rested attention as if they were open (Visuddhimagga IV 30), until a counterpart image (uggaha-nimitta) of the object appears spontaneously in the mind’s eye. He repeats this a “hundred, a thousand times.” This is a delicate process and may take time and require guidance: too much strain and the mind becomes tense or tired. The boy in the story is described as following such guidelines, as given by Buddhaghosa and Upatissa (Ehara, Path of Freedom, 76). From the outset, as the boy settles his attention and examines the flower, he would bring to mind the descriptive denoter “red, red,” an aid to sustaining alertness. Although Buddhaghosa does not specify this, it involves an “internal,” perhaps auditory factor.11 For each object a comparable descriptive formula is taught, though no significance or mantric power is associated with this. As indicated earlier, meditation objects are chosen to suit specific temperamental needs: the canonical Mahāniddesa says that the “beautiful” object, the kasiṇas of earth, water, fire, air, blue-black, yellow, red, white, space, consciousness, 126and, in some lists, light, are regarded as an antidote to dispositions inclined to ill will.12
In time, when jhāna factors start to develop, an image arises spontaneously in the practitioner’s own mind (patibhaga-nimitta), when the eyes are shut. Now it is not necessary to return to the external object; the image is made stable, and the factors of jhāna begin to strengthen and support one another. Advice from the meditation teacher and care in behavior are recommended at this sensitive stage of practice (Ehara, Path of Freedom, 76–79). Two qualities come to balance: the application of the mind to the object (vitakka) and examination (vicāra), usually associated with speech and internal dialogue, become cooperative in wholehearted engagement and examination of the object. When this occurs, joy, happiness and one-pointedness (ekaggatā, literally “gone-to-oneness”) are said to arise, as the interest the mind takes in outside distractions and internal hindrances, such as hatred, resentment, or restlessness, falls away. In time vitakka and vicāra drop away, then joy and happiness, while other qualities, such as mindfulness and equanimity, intensify and grow. This is what the boy in the story would have been practicing, in a process preparing him for insight, after establishing calm first.13
Throughout early stories, such objects are used as means of producing unification of mind. The size of the object is carefully considered: both Upatissa and Buddhaghosa recommend a specific size.14 The great variety of the methods described in the Dhammapada commentary, however, supports the possibility that more fluid forms were employed in early times. The Dhammasaṅgani associates skill in the limited (paritta) and the immeasurable (appamāṇa) with the kasiṇa, and describes making forms large and small, perhaps an indication that techniques, in extending an object to make it wide or diminishing it to make it tiny, contribute to mastery in these meditations (Dhammasaṅgani 160–247).15 These features of early and later texts suggest the use of varied naturally occurring objects. Certainly some meditation teachers in Thailand today also teach samatha meditation using simple objects, principally naturally found features, such as a candle flame, the space between trees, and running water. The object is used to arouse a nimitta, an image, that can then be applied, changed, extended, and moved around in the mind’s eye.16 Alongside this, five masteries—adverting, entering, sustaining, emerging, and recollecting—are also enjoined for flexibility and nonattachment. These ensure that the object for calm is easily entered into but also left behind at the end of meditation practice. Meditators in texts always “emerge” (vuṭṭhati) from meditation. This practice is usually conducted as a sitting, or occasionally a standing, practice, in seclusion. It is not usually undertaken in what we call “daily life,” though Buddhaghosa notes the mastery of arahats who could enter and emerge from such states for a moment. Variations involving skill and mastery over the object and its appearance are taught at Wat Dhammakaya, Bangkok, with the internally visualized “crystal ball” techniques, as well as by some other meditation teachers in Thailand.
Beautiful visual objects are the classic means of arousing calm in secluded jhāna practice in early Buddhism, but they are also considered restorative 127outside sitting meditation and likely to elicit a response in the human mind that resonates with their auspiciousness. They are thought to produce a corresponding health and well-being in the mind for daily life as well as for meditation, provided there is mindfulness. It is usual for meditation centers, if they are particularly associated with samatha practice, to be set in natural surroundings. The risk of attachment is recognized in canon and commentary: Buddhaghosa, for instance, suggests one given to desire should not be placed in surroundings that are too well regulated, decorated, or beautiful (Visuddhimagga III 97). The underlying assumption, however, is that where mindfulness is practiced, kusala-citta, wholesome mind, is thought likely to be aroused by continued observation of the movement of sensory experience in response to the natural world, and the consequent alertness to the “beautiful” resultant (vipāka) objects received at the physical sense-doors. The practitioner is considered able to find the mind’s innate health or balance through such mindfulness of external objects, where attention is appropriately and alertly applied (yonisomanasikāra).17
In addition, “beautiful” features—both internal, in the nimitta, and in the external world—can also be viewed for insight, too, the other side of meditative practice. The meditator is encouraged in the canon to see defects after the meditation in the external form of the object, to discourage attachment. In Dhammapada stories and other stories of the monks and nuns who attain arahatship, all kinds of natural objects elicit the attainment of arahatship. In one such story, an unsuccessful meditator, given a meditation object that does not work, goes in search of his teacher to receive a better one, but he sees a great forest fire on his way, so he climbs up a mountain and says to himself, “Even as this fire advances, consuming all obstacles both great and small, so also ought I to advance, consuming all obstacles both great and small by the fire of knowledge of the noble path” (Buddhist Legends 1 ii 8). The Buddha, seeing this man’s insight, sends a luminous image of himself, and reassures him: “The monk who delights in heedfulness and views heedlessness with fear / Advances like a fire, consuming attachments both small and great” (Dhammapada 31). The monk, now suddenly awakened, soars through the air to thank the Buddha in person. In yet another story, a whole group of monks see a mirage and realize the truth of impermanence of events; then, seeing the bubbles forming in the cascades of a tumbling waterfall, they all become awakened. In another story a nun, Kisā Gotamī, who has lost her child and joined the order, lights a lamp and sees the flickering of its flame, and notices that that some lamps flare, while others flicker out. She takes this for her subject of meditation and meditates as follows: “Even as it is with these flames, so also is it with living beings here in the world: some flare up, while others flicker out; they only that have reached nibbāna are no more seen” (Buddhist Legends 2 viii 13). The Buddha appears magically to her and confirms her own formulation of her spiritual path, at which she becomes an arahat.
So, do we say that such incidents are the product of samatha or vipassanā? What sort of object is a bubble dissolving in water, a flickering flame, a mirage, or an uncontained fire? These are “beautiful objects”—but also triggers to 128awakening that defy conventional classification. Perhaps they are intended to. These meditators seem to find insight through a fusion of samatha and vipassanā, which they see and articulate for themselves, and that is then supported and confirmed by the teacher. The Dhammapada-attakaṭṭhā has many stories of people, after meditative work, intuitively formulating for themselves the very insight, made on the basis of the externally observed object, that brings their meditations to fruition. In some cases the meditators have been pursuing unspecified meditations; their apprehension is so sharpened, however, that they attain enlightenment through some external natural object, undergoing natural processes of change. So the bereaved nun sees water trickling, and compares it to life ebbing away, or a group of monks see jasmine flowers bloom and die in one day (e.g., Buddhist Legends 2 viii 12 and 3 xxv 7).
One important additional property of “beautiful” objects is that they are often invoked after awakening, in delighted observation of the natural environment, a feature of Southern Buddhism that is sometimes less appreciated. In such verses, the speaker finds in the landscape the objects that can describe or mirror his enlightened state: the world is described as observed, without desire or craving, and auditory, visual, and tactile elements in the natural surroundings are evoked. The monk Ramāṇeyyaka speaks this verse on attaining enlightenment: “Amidst the sound of chirping and the cries of birds, this mind of mine does not waver, for devotion to solitude is mine” (Theragathā 49). The monk Vimala speaks this verse: “The earth is sprinkled, the wind blows, lightning flashes in the sky. My thoughts are quietened, my mind is well-concentrated” (Theragathā 50).
In conclusion, the “beautiful” visual object, the kasiṇa, is regarded as the paradigm of the meditation object for secluded jhāna practice. On a general level, as an object of mindfulness rather than of concentration, in manifold forms, it is also, along with other objects of the physical senses, implicitly considered to offer a restorative influence in daily life. Joy and happiness arising from observing beauty seem key: beauty in the natural world provides a counterpart to an auspiciousness considered latent within the skillful human mind (kusala-citta). As these stories indicate, the meditation object can, when linked to a sense of impermanence and to unsatisfactoriness, awaken insight. In its varied and complex manifestations, the natural world then contributes to a rich field of observation for awakened beings.
After the attainment of the fourth jhāna, the mind is described as purified, malleable, and ready for work. The boy in the story that the Buddha taught proceeded to further investigation of the object, insight, and arahatship. Four other meditations can be pursued, however, exercising the flexibility and mastery of the mind in different ways. They are described here, as they are classically considered dependent on kasiṇa practice, though in the list of forty they are numbers 12935 through 38, and can follow a number of jhānic meditations described in this chapter, such as the brahmavihāras.18
That these meditations are a natural progression from the simplicity of the beautiful object is implied by a canonical list, the “deliverances” (vimokkha; see, for instance, Majjhimanikāya, II 12–15). Found frequently in the canon, this series of eight means by which the mind is “delivered” describes the meditator first seeing forms within his own body, then seeing them externally, and then, in the third “deliverance,” of “releasing the mind onto the beautiful,” which is said by the commentaries to be the beauty of the kasiṇa object, after which he enters into formless meditation.19
All formless meditations are described in the Abhidhamma as involving the same mental factors as the fourth jhāna, which appears to act as a crossroad for meditators described in the canon and the commentaries, before the final stages of insight, the development of psychic powers, or the attainment of formlessness (Dhammasaṅgani 265–268). In the first formless meditation, the sphere of infinite space (ākāsānañcāyatana), objectness itself is examined through an infinite and undifferentiated ground within which objects usually occur. In the second, the sphere of infinite consciousness (viññāṇañcāyatana), subjectness, or nāma, is explored to an infinite extent, through examining the infinite ground of the very means by which objectness is usually apprehended. A modern teacher, Ajahn Lee Dhammadharo, describes this as “being absorbed in boundless consciousness as one’s preoccupation, with no form or figure acting as the sign or focal point of one’s concentration.”20 In the third formless meditation, the sphere of nothingness (ākinñcaññāyatana), denoters or categories of “subject,” “object,” or “thingness” cease to apply. Dhammadharo describes this as “focusing exclusively on a fainter or more subtle sense of cognizance that has no limit and in which nothing appears or disappears, to the point where one almost understands it to be nibbāna” (Basic Themes). The fourth formless meditation examines the nature of consciousness itself, before the application of differentiation or categories of “space,” “consciousness,” “thingness,” and “nothingness.” Dhammadharo says, “There is awareness, but with no thinking, no focusing of awareness on what it knows” (Basic Themes).
In these spheres, the nature of mind and its relationship to object are successively refined and explored, until, it appears, their emergence and differentiation are themselves observed. Descriptions of their attainment are sparse in the canon, though extensively delineated by Buddhaghosa (Visuddhimagga X). Dhammadharo says they are merely resting places for the mind, because they are states that the mind enters, stays in, and leaves.
A wide range of objects lead to the first four jhānas; indeed, the first may be accessed by twenty-five of the forty objects.21 Each formless sphere, however, defines through a single term its object, in the ground of awareness in which it is derived, the state with which it is associated, and the sphere in which the mind of the practitioner enters and “surmounts” the jhāna that it supersedes. Each sphere can be found only through the very characteristics that allow it to be 130experienced by the meditator: these are the only “objects” in which object, state, and meditational technique are not differentiated.
So in the formless spheres, the mind and its field are examined, with a loosening of fixed views or attachments to any objects—images (nimittas) that arise in the “form” sphere, externally derived meditation objects, or any other objects of the senses in daily experience. The spheres (āyatanas), although subsequently termed jhānas by the Abhidhamma traditions, seem, however, to act as fields outside the parameters of “constructings” or “forms” defining any given meditation, state, meditative procedure, or object. They do not lead to awakening but seem to be “resting places,” and perhaps these are essential features of their identity. Awakening requires some “grit” or interplay of object and subject in the world of flux: the apprehension of differentiation, and a clear distinction between name (nāma) and form (rūpa). These realms, however, which are described in the texts as a kind of specialism, enact a freedom from the very nature of “subject” and “object,” “name” and “form,” as skills taught for their own sake. The last deliverance, from cessation, is reserved for those who have attained this path.
These meditations are not discussed much in modern contexts, though they are taught to advanced practitioners. In the canon and the commentaries, a number of people in the texts practice them, particularly those cultivating masteries in samatha practice; they are treated in the canon perhaps as a kind of spiritual aerobics for the experienced meditator, loosening attachments to forms and appearances. Moggallāna, the Buddha’s great disciple who stands to his left (while his partner, Sāriputta, stands to the right), is considered the great exponent of calm meditation, and practices each one of these formless realms in turn on his route to awakening (Saṃyuttanikāya IV 263 / Connected Discourses of the Buddha II 1302–1308). His experiences act as an encouragement to anyone awed by such rarefied objects: he has a tendency to sleepiness, at each stage, but after some dozy detours, attains arahatship and becomes a master of the psychic powers.22
The importance of these meditations is much debated, and they are not considered “necessary” to the path; that they are there, though, refreshes the sense of what it is that constitutes an object, a meditation state, and the means of attaining it. These factors are themselves perhaps indicative of some function they serve within Southern Buddhist practice.
For the beautiful object, various practices involving mastery over the appearance of the external or internal manifestation, and the counterpart image that arises on the basis of that, are designed to improve skill in entering and leaving meditation. They also prevent attachment, or views that, for instance, any experience associated with that object constitutes a noetic or ontological insight.23 Beautiful objects, though understandably treated with caution for their capacity to entice and arouse desire, are considered particularly suitable, through their simplicity, for arousing all four jhānas and thence the formless spheres. But an 131apparently diametrically opposed object, the visually foul (asubha), as in the various stages of decomposition of a corpse, also characterizes Buddhist meditation. Perhaps for its disturbing and unsettling attributes, or, as the commentators indicate, more particularly for its inherent complicatedness and scattered nature, the “foul” object is described in the commentaries as being unable to provide sufficient simplicity to act as a support for all jhānas.24 It just seems too complicated. The “foul” is recommended for those with excessive attachment. Because of the obvious risk arising from its scary, disgusting nature, careful warnings from Buddhaghosa, Upatissa, and modern teachers stress its practice only under close supervision, alongside other balancing meditations (Visuddhimagga VI). It is taught in Bangkok now by visits to morgues for monks, as a collective exercise, unlike the practice conducted alone in the open charnel grounds of ancient times. For a meditator one feature, such as color, within the corpse, or one element, is required to attain to higher jhānas. From the point of view of this chapter, it seems that the simplicity of the kasiṇa is more suited to allowing calm meditation, through the abstract possibilities of a “beautiful” form, to develop and grow; the “foul,” necessarily involving complication, is less suited, except inasmuch as it arouses disenchantment (nibbidā), or turning away from the senses. But just as decay and ugliness are manifest potentially in the beautiful object, as the boy’s experience with the flower demonstrates, “beauty” too may be found by attention to one detail, such as color, in “foul” meditation.25 The category “foul” usually denotes a corpse in the manuals, but the canon and the commentary often describe it applying to living beings, and as an object producing insight as well as calm.
The “foul” is regarded as an antidote to attachment, but does not, according to the commentaries, produce calm beyond that of the first meditation. For its associations, and perhaps in addition for its complexity and differentiation, the “foul” also provides a frequent means of eliciting insight into the three signs of impermanence, suffering, and non-self. In the Dhammapada-atthakathā, the decay and decomposition of the body is frequently taught, either through a “real” experience of a corpse, or through the magical conjurings or perhaps visualization of a beautiful woman exhibiting accelerated decay, old age, and death (Buddhist Legends 2 xi 5 and 3 xxv 10). Such “conjurations” perhaps suggest also that internally visualized techniques, from the meditator’s own imagination, were employed in early times. In early texts and modern practice, the beautiful object is described as requiring care; the foul, however, requires a knife-edge of attention, and is only recommended for those receiving extended guidance on meditation retreats or for monastics, who would be paying careful attention to supporting practices.
Most of the samatha practices considered so far are conducted in seclusion, sitting down, in the samādhi posture, with eyes open at the outset, then closed to pursue the meditation object, or, if the object is visualized, with eyes closed throughout, though no reference explicitly enjoins this. Apart from the kasiṇa 132practices, there seems to be no reference to visual awareness in other meditations, apart from the hairs of the head in the first part of the practice on bodily parts.26 Little is said about posture in early Buddhist texts, other than that the back should be straight, the legs crossed, and that the meditator be, or perhaps thereby becomes, “nobly born”—a simple lack of specificity in which one scholar, A. P. Pradhan, has discerned an implicit critique of more arduous and precisely delineated bodily practices associated with Indian yogic systems.27 Some features of sitting meditation seem to have been constant from early times. For instance, the hand position seen in the samādhi posture of early Buddha figures is usually used now.28 There are important meditative, practical, and doctrinal implications in the adoption of a stable, fixed posture for a certain period of time, usually in seclusion. The samādhi posture can be assumed for all of the objects described in this chapter, but requires time and space away from bustle. Other postures should also be noted; Buddhaghosa recommends specific postures for different temperaments. The sculptural depictions of Southern Buddhists show varied postures for Buddha figures, and there is a rich iconography linking gesture, life event, and associated narrative in the Southeast Asian typology of poses of the Buddha.29 It is worth noting that in this volume the adoption of posture as a meditative preparation is also emphasized generally by Eifring, and for specific schools by Mabuchi (neo-Confucianism), Roth (Daoism), Samuel (Tibetan longevity practices), and Myrvold (Sikhism).
The following group of samatha exercises are the “recollections” (anussati): (1) the Buddha, (2) the teaching, (3) the sangha, the community of those who have attained stages of path, whose representatives are the community of monks and nuns, (4) good conduct or morality (sīla), (5) generosity (cāga), (6) sense-sphere deities (devas), (7) mindfulness of death, (8) mindfulness of body, (9) breathing mindfulness, and (10) mindfulness of peace.
These exercises are sometimes conducted sitting—as is usually the case for breathing mindfulness—but are distinguished in part by the fact that they can often be practiced in other postures, such as standing or walking, as accompaniments to sitting practice, or even in some cases as exercises to be pursued in daily life. Some, in particular the body and the breath, practiced in particular ways, may be undertaken as secluded sitting exercises leading to the first four jhānas. Others, however, are often undertaken as walking practices and even as daily life practices. Change of posture seems always to have featured as an important part of meditation practice.
The first three recollections, recollections of the attributes of the Triple Gem, are recommended before meditation. They are also sometimes walking practices, undertaken in groups in collective, chanted meditations at shrines. The first six, including the Triple Gem recollection as well as remembering one’s own good conduct or virtue, generosity, and the presence of devas (the sense-sphere gods who live in happiness and whom one may in time join) are often given by the Buddha to busy people with children around, to businessmen, and to housewives as ways practicing in daily life when there is not time or space for extended sitting practice (Saṃyuttanikāya V 394; Aṅguttaranikāya I 206–11; 133Aṅguttaranikāya V 332–4). The inclusion of this range of varied supportive meditations, sometimes conducted in different postures, must be stressed, as the recollections are such frequent features in canonical advice. Many are presented within the tradition as essential accompaniments to sitting practice, aimed at addressing one’s orientation to the world and ensuring that the mind and the body are in balance to support meditation. They do not all lead to jhāna, and hence are sometimes overlooked, but by arousing in varied ways qualities such as cheerfulness, confidence, and freedom from fear, as well as allowing meditation involving physical movement, they render other practices sustainable, ensure that the mind is not overstimulated or bored, and allow it to find its own balance under less static or controlled conditions.30 Clearly such difficulties have always been a problem, even in apparently more leisurely times.
In the first six recollections, qualities are brought to mind discursively. For generosity, for instance, one remembers acts of generosity that one has performed, a practice particularly favored for the dying. For morality, one recollects times one has kept the five precepts. These meditations, often overlooked in modern discussions of the subject, are held to be important for their capacity to bring about confidence and happiness in daily life. One Dhammapada story tells of a suicidal monk, who, just as he is about to use the razor, recollects his own good conduct; filled with joy, he then enters one of the stages of the path (Buddhist Legends 2 viii 11). All six of these recollections, while distinct, are felt to contribute to one another, are often taught together, and while not “simple” enough to lead to jhāna, are thought to bring about an underlying health of mind in daily life and, crucially, in meditation. Their practice, and to some extent their content, is often a little social.
The other four recollections are termed “mindfulnesses.” The recollection of death is said to produce urgency (saṃvega).31 Then follows mindfulness of body—as Buddhaghosa describes it, this is mindfulness directed toward viewing the parts of the body internally in the mind’s eye. The meditator reviews bodily features, such as bones, blood, phlegm, and so on, with regard to element and color, and learns mastery and equanimity through them. This is presumably always conducted in seclusion. This and the next recollection, breathing mindfulness, are said to take the mind to deeper concentration and jhāna. Indeed, the third recollection in this group, breathing mindfulness, is the most widely used object in the list of forty. As a daily background practice, even during interchanges with others, it can also be used to develop all four jhānas, as well as providing a basis for formless meditation. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the breath also features prominently in systems described by Geoffrey Samuel (Tibetan), Harold D. Roth (Daoist), and Edwin F. Bryant (Yoga Sūtras) in this volume. Breathing mindfulness is perhaps the most popular practice in Southeast Asia and, as Buddhism spreads, in the North Atlantic and in Europe. Dhammadharo writes,
With one exception, all of the meditation themes mentioned here are simply gocara dhamma—foraging places for the mind. They’re not places for the 134mind to stay. If we try to go live in the things we see when we’re out foraging, we’ll end up in trouble. Thus, there is one theme that’s termed “vihara dhamma” or “anagocara”: Once you’ve developed it, you can use it as a place to stay. When you practice meditation, you don’t have to go foraging in other themes; you can stay in the single theme that’s the apex of all meditation themes: anapanasati, keeping the breath in mind. This theme, unlike the others, has none of the features or various deceptions that can upset or disturb the heart.32
The Ānāpānasati-sutta gives a range of recommendations, which are outside the scope of this study. Breathing mindfulness is, however, taught today as a practice for daily life, with background awareness of breath, or as a practice leading to either samatha or vipassanā, or with elements of both: the breath is moving, unsatisfactory, and impermanent in its manifestation and not “owned,” so it is a natural object for arousing insight into the three “signs.” It also, however, has the capacity to gladden the mind and bring about tranquility, as described in the sixteen stages of breathing mindfulness. In this regard, it is also a natural samatha practice, said to lead to all four jhānas, as well as offer a basis for formless meditation.33 In some schools, the breath is counted, followed, “touched,” and settled, the four stages recommended by Buddhaghosa, and when the visual nimitta has arisen in the mind’s eye, the jhāna factors are developed on the basis of it (Visuddhimagga VIII 145–244).
The last of these recollections is that of peace. Any moments of tranquility are brought to mind and remembered, an exercise particularly recommended for the practitioner who has attained any stage of the path (Visuddhimagga VIII 245–251).
The recollections represent an essential, often overlooked element of Buddhist “meditation.” Many are not always sitting practices, though all can be. But the term bhāvanā, meaning “mental development” or “cultivation,” is most commonly used in early texts and modern practice to describe a range of activities, including meditation, discussion, guided thinking about a number of attributes intended to arouse specific qualities (as in the first six recollections), listening to chanting and texts, and participation in investigative dhamma discussion.34 Discussion and investigation are also seen as particularly important bhāvanā, correcting strong views, overpowering hindrances, or even, perhaps most commonly, particularly in monastic settings, overcoming boredom and lassitude. The word bhāvanā means “bringing into being” and is associated with the verb used for the fourth noble truth, the path to awakening, and requires not only “meditation” but other path factors too. Indeed, it would be difficult to find some activity, where the precepts are kept, which is not bhāvanā. So the importance of these recollections cannot be underestimated, and a mix of activities along with “sitting practice” is the usual way of teaching and describing meditation in the texts. Changes of posture, types of activities, and kinds of meditation are often enjoined.35 Very few texts in the canon deal only with “sitting meditation.” The prevalence of such a variety of features involving adaptive 135change suggests the balance derived from mixing one’s activities, bodily, emotionally, and socially, during the day. This is central and perhaps peculiar to early Buddhist meditative procedure, in a context in which extremes that test body and mind seem to have been more usual.36 In modern practice also, chant, ritual, listening, change of posture, and a good mix of collective and solitary practice are frequent variations and accompaniments to the pursuit of sitting meditation. In many suttas to individual meditators the Buddha gives a number of practices, pursued collectively or singly, and in others suggests a number of postures, including walking.37
The next grouping comprises the meditations on loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the divine abidings (brahmavihāras), also leading to jhāna. These are also considered “beautiful,” but in an emotional sense. In their nonmeditative application, they are considered essential on the Buddhist path; the Dhammasaṅgani list of the factors of a skillful mind (kusala-citta) stresses that one of these is always present in any skillful state, in daily life, as well as those path factors particular to that activity. So these meditations too can and should be cultivated at any time, as part of daily life, without being used as means to obtain jhāna. The Mettā-sutta, a short text wishing happiness to all beings, is constantly employed in Southern Buddhism, for all kinds of purificatory, ceremonial, and restorative purposes, in both public and private contexts (Suttanipāta 143–152). As sitting meditations, both collective and solitary, they are frequently given to lay people, particularly by Sri Lankan teachers, with adaptations so that specific locations are given for the various beings that are mentioned, a practice suggested by the early texts’ instructions to pervade the directions with loving-kindness. So in Halvorsbøle, Norway (at the conference where this essay was first presented), a monk might encourage lay meditators to wish happiness to all beings around Halvorsbøle and the local fjord before allowing the feeling to pervade Norway, and then move out in all directions.38 In the Jātakas and the canonical Mahāsudassana-sutta, these meditations are practiced by lay Universal Monarchs, Gotama in his past lives. They are considered peaceful and restorative, allowing the mind not to be troubled by suffering or excitement.39 The Buddha and his followers frequently practiced these meditations after becoming enlightened.
The formless spheres we have already considered, so all that remains of the forty meditation objects are the two last: considering the loathsomeness of food, and awareness of the presence of the four elements in one human body, that of the practitioner. The loathsomeness of food is only ever recommended in the canon alongside other practices; a variation is suggested in some modern monastic contexts, though it does not seem to be a lay practice. The last, the defining of the elements, is interesting in that it seems to have become linked with a rich variety of practices popular in recent times. In Laos and Northern Thailand some samatha practices on the elements are conducted in the traditions 136described by François Bizot, and use meditative diagrams (yantras), often depicted on amulets, as ways of communicating balance and the interplay of the elements within the body. As perhaps suggested by the canonical Mahārahulavāda-sutta, the elements and the balance between them acquire a metaphoric meaning to denote attributes necessary for the jhāna itself, with “earth” related to the “father” and the first jhāna factor, vitakka (the syllable mo); the syllable na (water) to the “mother” and the jhāna factor of vicāra; the syllable ddha (fire) to the “monarch” and the factor of joy (pīti); the syllable bu (air) to the “family” and the factor of happiness (sukha), and the syllable ya (space), the unifying factor, to ekaggattā.40 Extensive meditation teaching is encoded in these yantra, amulet, and ritual procedures, whose source is unknown, though their affinity with Śaivite practices suggests a common heritage.41 Indeed, while hasty generalizations are rash given the highly differentiated nature of the contexts discussed in this volume, practices of various kinds discussed by Madhu Khanna, Geoffrey Samuel, and Kristina Myrvold in this volume suggest that the interweaving of chanting, invocation, visualization, and using a yantra as a guide to a complex investigation of manifestations of the four elements in the body was common in varying degrees to many traditions in India beginning sometime in the first millennium. There seems to have existed a pool of meditative features involving various interplays between them from which various traditions drew. The presence of such features, even perhaps those dating from recent centuries, indicates the continued interchange between folk knowledge, lay practice, ritual, and meditative procedure that seems to animate the Buddhist meditation. “The body” depicted in the yantra is in part a physical one, as the diagrams in figures 7.1 and 7.2 show; with the association of the five jhāna factors, or “limbs” of jhāna, the integration of the physical with the emotional and the mental is suggested with this meditative body.
These practices indicate that the interplay between meditative practice, modern accretions, and traditional canonical and commentarial recommendations is rich and complex in modern Southern Buddhism.
In some ways this attempt to ascertain what features within early Buddhism could be said to characterize a meditation object, a “place of work,” has been inconclusive, but the variety of objects, and the way they are matched together, in life and meditation, seem key. Simplicity and the attribute described as “beauty” are primary in practices intended to calm the mind, apparently performing essential roles in effecting unification and an ecstatic calm that nonetheless retains alertness and wisdom. Purification through joy and happiness are central to this process. At the higher stages of meditation, joy and happiness are transcended, though not rejected, as the mind is said to develop skill; they return however, in the sense-sphere, in lower jhānas, and in the process of attaining awakening. Joy (pīti) is a factor of awakening; happiness (sukha) is 137always described as an important concomitant at each stage of practice, including the path and the attainment of nibbāna. So these factors are also central features in the complexity and complicatedness of other meditations associated with contact with the world and the activities of daily life, and the commentaries constantly cite them as benefits as well. These meditations seem to fulfill a number of functions in calming the mind, but also in allowing appropriate responses to develop to objects that shock the mind—such as death or loathsomeness—by ensuring that peacefulness and cheerfulness become habitual in the underlying tenor of one’s mental state. There is also throughout the texts a sense of a graduated, taught path. Perhaps as is the case with the Jain objects (Johannes Bronkhorst) and yoga techniques (Edwin F. Bryant) discussed in this volume, meditations are graduated and have different levels and stages. In Buddhism, the route can be very different for different meditators, however, and attainments may vary considerably.
There does not seem to be any description of what constitutes a meditation object in early texts. An overall category does not seem to have been thought necessary: “meditation” is perhaps a modern construct, where bhāvanā is more generally used in Buddhism. Buddhaghosa gives ten ways of describing a kammaṭṭhāna, or meditation object, that refer specifically only to the meditations on his list.42 The list, however, does not seem to be definitive or prescriptive; some meditations are mentioned in the canon only once and are not included in the list of forty.43
In many Dhammapada stories, as we have seen, meditation objects, chosen and engaged with intent, overlap with surprise objects, or external events, occurring at crucial and timely moments. This phenomenon is famous in Eastern Buddhism, but is a striking feature of Southern Buddhism as well. Like the Kashmir practices described by Bettina Bäumer,44 they require something more than “technique,” a willing openness to the fortuitous and the fortunate in helping to bring about realization. In early Buddhist understanding, the key term was strong support (upanissaya), the causal condition, such as food or a teacher or a season, that acts as the trigger for meditative change and awakening.45 This will in part be the product of the meditator’s karma, perhaps from past lives.
Many Dhammapada stories describe enlightenment prompted by such external events. Meditators are described as needing a practice, methods to follow it, and a teacher. But there also seems to be a need to be open to the surprising and the unplanned. The prompt, or trigger that finally arouses inner transformation and liberation, is often some aspect of the deficiency of an object—say, its witheredness or its potential for decay. Sometimes, however, it is puzzling and koanlike. In one story, a young man is struggling with his meditation—a frequent narrative motif, as we have seen, presumably designed to encourage those lacking in confidence. He is given a cloth to rub, with the words “purity, purity” as an internal accompaniment. The cloth, however, gets dirtier and dirtier, and through this contradiction the meditator comes to awakening, seeing that it is internal, not external, purity that constitutes his own route to freedom. He formulates this insight himself, at the attainment of the path (Buddhist Legends I ii 3). In this regard Chán/Zen/Sǒn koans—as described by Morten Schlütter in this volume—are oddly anticipated, an understanding that grappling with a fortuitous paradox may offer the final means of release.
This chapter has considered a large range of objects, including the visual, the discursive, the emotional, and the inner, as well as those involving perceptions of the breath and the body. There is an emphasis on the visual, perhaps more than other Indic practices. The use of an auditory element to sustain 139alertness is, however, central to many. Some modern practices link the breath to the internal repetition of words such as “Buddho,” whose sound is supposed to be linked to meaning as well.46 Southeast Asian meditative practice is inventive and various in ways that can only be suggested here. Some modern meditation teaching aligns itself with commentarial procedures, but some is innovative too.
It might seem that this exploration of objects is focused on method. The intention, however, is to demonstrate that method is governed by the practitioner, steered by the teacher who assigns the object, and supporting conditions, met with openness. In exploration of the operating principles, some unifying strands have emerged: a wide diversity of objects, a graduated path, an emphasis on applicability, the importance of the relationship with the teacher or the good friend, and, in stories, the initiative of the meditator in finding and articulating the practice that brings final awakening. This awakening is often on the basis of an unexpected, fortuitous event in the world that completes that individual’s path. Many stories describe meditators spontaneously alighting upon the object that brings awakening. This often forms the basis of the delighted utterances on attainment, a frequent feature of early Buddhist texts. Any object, it seems, could do this.
1. Buddhist Legends, 3 xx 9. For accessibility and ease of reference, the translation of the Dhammapada-aṭthakathā, the commentary to the Dhammapada, by E. W. Burlingame (Buddhist Legends), is cited throughout this article. All Pali Texts cited in this article may be found in the original, with Roman transliteration, in publications by the Pali Text Society.
2. I am grateful to Dr. Valerie Roebuck and the late L. S. Cousins for pointing this out to me. Dr. Mahinda Degalle told me (March 25, 2010) that since at least the nineteenth century the usual store of stories for “Sunday school” teaching within Sri Lanka was the Dhammapada-Attakathā, along with associated Sinhala versions and tales, and Jātakas. For shortened summaries of stories and the verses, see Roebuck, Dhammapada.
3. The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), by the fifth-century commentator Buddhaghosa, has been the most influential manual in South and Southeast Asia, closely followed by The Path of Freedom (Vimuttimagga) of Upatissa, probably written earlier. The classification of objects for this chapter have been taken from these. Again, for ease of reference, citations of The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) in this article are given with the chapter number (uppercase Roman numerals) and paragraph number of the Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli translation. At the time of writing, the only translation of Upatissa’s work from the Chinese is the Sri Lankan, undertaken by N. R. M. Ehara, Soma Thera, and Kheminda Thera, and citations are from that. The manuals present the methods probably associated with their own monasteries: Buddhaghosa’s, written at the Mahāvihāra, in Sri Lanka, the home of the Sthāvira/Theravāda, reflects the monastic methods of the time. Upatissa is a mysterious figure, but seems to have been associated with the Abhayagiri Monastery, Sri Lanka, whose methods were probably influenced by Indian Buddhism. See introduction to Path to Freedom (Vimuttimagga), xxxiv–xxxv; and Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 4–6.
4. “Wrong views” (micchādiṭṭhi) are said to produce rigidity of mind and body (Aṭṭhasālini, 134). 140
5. The word “object” is used here to describe a kammaṭṭḥāna. Some teachers use the word “theme” or a “grazing place,” gocara. See Dhammadharo, “Basic Themes.”
6. Many short lists are delineated, and “permed” variously, but, significantly, the Buddha himself never gave a definitive compendium. A possible exception would be the Aṅguttaranikāya’s group of ones (I 34–40), which includes many other features of the path.
7. See Aṭṭhasalini 189; and, for the suttas, Dīghanikāya (Sutta 17) II 169–199 / Long Discourses of the Buddha, 279–290; Suttanipāta 1133–1149; Dīghanikāya II 253–262 (Sutta 20) / Long Discourses of the Buddha, 315–320. See also Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 113–118.
8. For Buddhaghosa’s caution, see, for instance, Visuddhimagga V 26. On this subject, see Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 92–96.
9. Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation of this passage is excellent (Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, 966).
10. See Dictionary of Pali I 661; for “pervasiveness” as a meaning, see Path to Freedom, 72.
11. Unlike the mantric meditations of ancient and modern India and some modern Southeast Asian contexts, at this time no significance is attached to the syllables themselves other than as denoters. Meditations involving words whose meaning is felt to be communicated within the syllable soon enter many forms of Buddhism as dhāraṇis, spells, mantras, and yantras.
12. See Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 28, 49, and 90; Udāna 34–37 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 26–28; Aṅguttaranikāya I 3; and Paṭisambhidāmagga II 39.
13. Establishing calm before insight does seem the most common method described in the canon, as in, for instance, in the Meghiya-Sutta, Udāna 34–37 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 26–28. Other routes are also described in Cousins, “Samatha-Yāna and Vipassanā-Yāna.”
14. The size and the quality of the object are also adjusted to temperament: the desiring temperament is recommended to use a color kasiṇa, starting with “blue,” that is not quite “pure”; the hating temperament is also recommended to do this, though with a pure color, while the deluded temperament should have a small object, so that the mind does not wander (Visuddhimagga III 97–102).
15. For the way objects may be made small or large, see Dhammasaṅgani 160–247. And for discussion of the kasiṇa, see Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 86–100.
16. The Mahāsakulayādi-sutta says for all ten kasiṇas, “One is aware of the earth kasiṇa above, below, across, undivided, immeasurable” (Majjhimanikāya II 15), a formula repeated for all ten.
17. For closer examination of the Abhidhammic explanation for the affinity between the human bhavaṅga consciousness and the experience of beautiful objects as vipāka, see Aṭṭhasalini 270 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 89–92 and 212n25. These are more likely to arouse skillful consciousness in the active stage of the thought process.
18. See Saṃyuttanikāya V 119–121; Visuddhimagga IX 121–122; and Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 166.
19. For full canonical account of the “deliverances” see Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, 1284–1285n2, quoted in Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 212n38.
20. See Dhammadharo, “Basic Themes.”
21. These are ten kasiṇa, ten asubha, four divine abidings, and the breath.
22. For some of the varied advice given to Moggallāna by the Buddha, see Aṅguttaranikāya IV 85–88 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation 56–58.
23. For an explicit association between the kasiṇa practice and worldview, see Majjhimanikāya II 229–223 / Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, 840; and Paṭisambhidāmagga I 143–144. See also Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 91,212n30. See also Dessein, “Contemplation of the Repulsive.”141
24. For discussion of the limits of this meditation, which cannot go to higher jhānas as it is said to require the “rudder” of the repeated application of the mind to the object (vitakka), a feature present only in the first of the jhānas, see Visuddhimagga VI 86.
25. See Deleanu, “Śrāvakayāna,” 3–11, for a description of this practice in early Yogācāra meditation.
26. The Visuddhimagga and the Vimuttimagga do not seem to give any specific instructions regarding the eyes for other meditations. The body mindfulness practice described by Buddhaghosa is not the practice for daily activities also recommended in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (Majjhimanikāya I 47), but takes the thirty-two parts of the body in turn as properties defined through the kasiṇa method; e.g., teeth, skin, and hair of the head are taken as earth; bodily fluids as water; and so on (Majjhimanikāya I 158). The color of the respective part can also be used for this method. Where the object is external, such as hair of the head, the commentary describes it as a visual kasiṇa object, blue-black or white, depending on color. The eyes are presumably shut for other, internal parts of the body (Visuddhimagga VIII 81–141). Breathing mindfulness practice is conducted with closed eyes, as the breath nimitta is seen in the mind’s eye (Visuddhimagga VIII 214–221).
27. See Pradhan, Buddha’s System of Meditation, 3:1381–1385.
28. Early depictions of the Buddha in India at Ajanta, Amaravati, Nagarjunakonda, and so on, suggest that the arrangement of the right hand resting gently cupped on the left was usual, as it is now. In modern practice, a number of posture variations are pursued, including folding the legs to the side. Thai custom permits the meditator to make a graceful and finely planned sweep of the legs within a sitting meditation when very uncomfortable, though some honor is associated with sticking it out.
29. Buddhaghosa, for instance, mentions standing and walking postures as suitable for “greed” types, and lying or sitting postures for “hate” types (Visuddhimagga III 97–103). For the iconography of gestures and posture, see Matics, Gestures of the Buddha.
30. As an example of the benefits of this sort of recollection, see Visuddhimagga VII 114, where, it is said, the meditator starts to become intent on generosity (cāga), acts in conformity to loving-kindness (mettā), is fearless, experiences happiness and gladness, and is headed for a heavenly or happy rebirth. For these six recollections, see Visuddhimagga VII; and Path to Freedom, 140–155.
31. Death is also a frequent object of meditation in Western practices; cf. Rönnegård, “Melétē in Early Christian Ascetic Texts.”
32. See note 5.
33. See Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, Mindfulness with Breathing. See also Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, which describes the practice with a stronger emphasis on vipassanā. See also Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 146–158.
34. This contrasts with the much narrower meaning of the word in Tantric traditions. See Bäumer, “Creative Contemplation”; and Madhu Khanna’s contribution to this volume.
35. See, for example, Aṅguttaranikāya IV 84–88 / Buddhist Meditation, 56–58.
36. See Bronkhorst, Two Traditions, 1–30.
37. For the most part, walking practices seem to balance sitting meditation. There are many varieties in the present day, emphasizing either calm (associating the rhythm of the walk with a feeling of well-being and of following the movement of the feet and body as the weight changes) or insight, through analysis of the stages of the process of lifting and moving the feet (see Dhammasami, Mindfulness Meditation). Although walking practices are not described in detail in any canonical or commentarial material, stories describe meditators walking, often within the set limits of a caṅkamana, specifically designed walking grounds, as a regular practice, are frequent (Majjhimanikāya I 56–57; Aṅguttaranikāya V 333–334; Aṅguttaranikāya III 29). 142
38. There does not seem to be any textual recommendation for this, though monks frequently “localize” the directional aspect of the loving-kindness practice, as described in say, the Cūḷa-Assapura-Sutta (Majjhimanikāya I 283–284), with wishes for the happiness of beings locally, and then over a larger geographical extent, and then in all directions. So, in Letchworth, in the United Kingdom, Venerable Rāhula wishes happiness to all beings in the surrounding environs; Venerable Piyatissa, now abbot of the vihāra in New York, when he was visiting Manchester led a practice wishing all beings in the area well before encouraging sending good wishes to areas further afield.
39. “As for the four sublime abodes, if you don’t have jhāna as a dwelling for the mind, feelings of good will, compassion, and appreciation can all cause you to suffer. Only if you have jhāna can these qualities truly become sublime abodes, that is, restful places for the heart to stay.” Dhammadharo, “Basic Themes.”
40. Buddhaghosa does not describe space as the fifth element in this practice, but the Mahārahulovāda-Sutta (Majjhimanikāya 1 420–426 / Shaw 2006, 190–193) does. For some sense of the diversity of modern Southeast Asian practice, see D. K. Swearer, “Thailand.” Bizot has drawn attention to the rich variety of amulet, chant and yantra practice in the region in Le Bouddhisme des Thais. See also Crosby, “Tantric Theravāda.”
41. At the Cultural History of Meditation conference held in Oslo in May 2010, the fivefold interplay of Na Mo Śi Va Ya was discussed by M. D. Muthukumaraswamy. This has obvious affinities with the Na Mo Bu Ddha Ya formula of recent Southeast Asian practice. Cf. Muthukumaraswamy, “Vedic Chanting.”
42. See Visuddhimagga III 103–121. These ten descriptions are (1) enumeration, as in the seven groups described in this paper; (2) as to whether they bring access meditation (upacāra-samādhi), a joyful state not yet stable enough to arouse jhāna, produced by some of the recollections, or jhāna; (3) as to the jhāna they produce; (4) as to surmounting; kasiṇas, and form meditations, “surmount” by means of mental factors, such as joy, but the formless surmount by means of an object; (5) as to extension and nonextension; kasiṇas can be extended, and will arouse psychic powers, but the breath and the foul do not; (6) as to object; some involve a “counterpart sign,” and some do not; (7) as to “plane”; some, such as the foul and breathing mindfulness, can be practiced only by those in the sense-sphere, not by those in a Brahma heaven, where the body is too refined; (8) as to apprehending; nine kasiṇas (omitting air) and the foul are practiced initially by sight alone, body mindfulness (as taught by Buddhaghosa) by sight and hearsay (suta), breathing mindfulness by touch, air kasiṇa by sight and touch, and the remaining eighteen by “hearsay,” in that they have attributes whose qualities have been “heard” described; (9) as to conditions, as to the states for which they can be conditions; for instance, according to Buddhaghosa, nine kasiṇas (excluding space) are conditions for formless meditation; (10) as to suitability for particular temperaments.
43. Many meditations taught by the Buddha fit no list; the recommendation to remember good friends to Nandiya (Aṅguttaranikāya V 336 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 132), for instance, or the teaching on space as an internal object in the Rāhulovāda-Sutta (Majjhimanikāya I 423 / Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 192). It is not a closed, exclusive, or definitive list noting all possible meditations, but rather only those that are most suitable (see Shaw, Buddhist Meditation, 6–8; and Vajirañāṇa, Buddhist Meditation, 75).
44. Bäumer, “Creative Contemplation.”
45. This is the ninth of the twenty-four causal relationships, and its arising is considered dependent on the person’s past karma (Visuddhimagga XVII 18–24).
46. See Dhammadharo, Keeping the Breath in Mind, 26–63. 143
All original Pali texts cited are published by the Pali Text Society.
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