Meditation in the Pali Canon

Several kinds of meditation practices are mentioned in the Pali Canon. Some of these are common to other religious traditions. But two of them are of special interest in the present context. One involves a series of progressively more formless mental trances. The other involves the practice of non-reactive awareness.

The formless trances. One of the most frequently repeated set piece in the Pali Canon describes a progressive series of mental states that a meditator might achieve.

Click here for an excerpt from the Pali Canon describing this series of progressions from one state to the next.

The most complete series begins with "four jhanas" (sometimes translated "four trances") then goes on to describe four or five even more advanced states beyond the four jhanas. The first jhana is a state characterized by "applied and sustained thought, and rapture and pleasure born of seclusion." As the series progresses, applied and sustained thought ceases, then rapture and pleasure cease, so that in the fourth jhana the meditator has abandoned pleasure and pain, joy and grief have disappeared, and she experiences only "purity of mind due to equanimity."

In the first stage beyond the jhanas, the person "abides in the base of infinite space." Then she goes beyond infinite space, and "abides in the base of infinite consciousness." Going beyond this, she "abides in the base of nothingness," then "abides in the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception," and finally "abides in the cessation of perception and feeling."

The details of these descriptions are not all very clear. The important thing for present purposes is that reaching more and more exalted states is not pictured as a matter of experiencing and achieving union with some higher reality. It is rather a matter of progressively ceasing to be aware of anything at all. At earlier stages the objects of awareness are already very subtle and abstract. The objects become ever more subtle and abstract until the meditator has become only a subject who is aware, but this subject is not aware of any object at all, not even of an object so subtle and abstract as "nothingness." This is sometimes called "the trance of cessation."

This part of early Buddhist teaching must be understood in the context of other teaching about Tanha. That is, Tanha is such a pervasive and deeply rooted part of a normal person’s relation to the world that it is triggered by any contact with any object whatsoever. This is implied in rather exaggerated fashion in the "Fire sermon," for example, which says that all possible objects of perception are "on fire... with passion, hatred, infatuation..." Even as hyperbole, this is plausible only on the above mentioned assumption, that in the normal case all contact with any objects of perception cause immediate reactions motivated by Tanha. In this context it makes sense that one way of escaping from the influence of Tanha would be to remove one’s mind from all objects of perception whatsoever. One can spell this out more fully as follows:

On the present interpretation, Tanha is driven by insecurity, an inability to feel good about oneself and one’s life without tangible signs confirming one’s sense of self-worth and meaning in life. This can be pictured also as a need to be connected to something in the world, to perceive something in the world that tangibly mirrors back to a person her own being and identity, her own sense of self worth. Tanha is thus driven by a fear of being radically alone, unconnected to anything. Even a meditator with eyes closed, mentally shut off from the external world, can still feel the worthwhileness of her life confirmed by a feeling of internal spiritual bliss. The progressive mental states described above are a way of confronting and overcoming this fear of being unconnected and alone at the most basic level, by severing mental contact with any perceptible objects whatsoever, even the most subtle and abstract mental objects.

Like all Buddhist meditation practices, achieving this state of awareness-without-an-object is not an end in itself, a state one would want to achieve and then remain in forever. It is rather a means of reducing or cutting off Tanha at its roots. With a drastic reduction or elimination of Tanha, contact with objects would no longer present a problem, because the problem in the first place was the fact that contacts with objects triggers reactions governed by Tanha. The ideal would be to be able to return to ordinary involvement in everyday life but now to relate to everything on a different basis. If the interpretation in Chapter One is correct, one’s relation to the world would be governed by expressive and appreciative motivations, rather than by neediness and deep dependencies.

As another passage puts it, for such a person, "the satisfaction of his natural wants will not defile him. Let him eat and drink according to the needs of the body. 'Water surrounds the lotus flower, but does not wet its petals." (See Lucien Stryk p. 49)

 

Mindfulness

The second kind of meditation practice important here is described in a writing called the Sattipatana Sutta, which occurs with some variations in several books of the Pali Canon. One school of modern Buddhist teachers takes this Sutta as the basis for meditation practice which they call "Vipassana," translated in English as "Insight" or "Mindfulness" meditation. The following reading of this Sutta is guided in part by the interpretation given by this school.

One passage in this Sutta speaks of being aware of bodily processes and activities – breathing, standing, walking, lying down, and so on. It then says that, "mindfulness ...is simply established in him to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and mindfulness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world."

Another part of this same Sutta speaks of meditation focusing on "four foundations of mindfulness": (1) the body, (2) feelings, (3) mind, and (4) mind objects. It says one should contemplate "arising phenomena" and "vanishing phenomena" in the body... feelings... mind... mental objects."

Still another part describes the purpose of this meditation, starting with the body as: "knowing the body as it truly is... a full understanding of the body... being unfettered by the body..." and later "the desire for the body is abandoned in him... through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized". It repeats these same statements in the case of each of the four objects of meditation, ending with "knowing mind-objects as they truly are... a full understanding of mind-objects... being unfettered by mind objects...", and then says "the desire for mind-objects is abandoned in him... through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized."

The statement about "abandoning desire for body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects" seems to reflect the same ideas expressed in the passage on the anatta doctrine discussed above. That is, the word "desire" in the phrases "desire for feelings," and "desire for mind" refers to Tanha, thirst for contact with something tangible one can identify with. From the Buddhist point of view, such thirst results in deep dependencies on particular objects of perception, dependencies that constrict and constrain a person. This is how the bodily, emotional, and mental phenomena can feel like chains or "fetters," so that this passage can say that abandoning desire for these things results in being "unfettered" by them. "Knowing them as they truly are," means knowing them as Buddhist teaching says they are, namely "not self," not capable of fulfilling one’s desire for something permanently reliable to identify with.

The method by which one achieves this "abandonment of desire" consists in "bare awareness and mindfulness" of one’s own being.

That is, first, it consists in turning one’s attention away from the external world toward one’s own being. More normally, whatever a person is perceiving in the external world is in the foreground of her awareness. Her own being and activity, and her perception of her own reaction to the world, is in the background. This meditation practice consists basically in turning what is usually background into foreground. One can learn to do this by sitting down and closing one’s eyes, attending to one’s breathing or to other bodily, emotional, and mental processes. But this habit of increased attention to one’s own being should flow over into one’s daily activities.

Secondly, the technique by which one "abandons desire" for all these things consists in a certain kind of "mindfulness" in which one is aware of objects "only to the extent necessary for bare knowledge," and one "abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world." I interpret this to mean neutral awareness, non-reactive awareness, just being aware, rather than having the normal kind of awareness coupled with a reaction. What is the purpose of gaining this ability for non-reactive awareness? I believe it can be explained in the following way:

The purpose of Buddhist meditation is to gradually become freer and freer from Tanha, Tanha being a source of compulsive, un-free reactions to happenings in the world. But one cannot become free by pure will power – by developing a mental picture of such freedom and then willing oneself to conform to this picture. For example, a personal slight might cause an involuntary reaction of anger. One might try to become free of this involuntary reaction by trying to stop the anger itself. But this meditation practice advises a different way: do not repress the anger, but observe the anger non-reactively. Focus your attention on the anger itself, without reacting to it. Doing this is an indirect way of becoming free of the anger. Observing one’s own anger non-reactively means that for the moment one is not identified with or caught up in the anger. Neither is one identified with or caught up in resistance to the anger (a reaction the is typically itself a manifestation of Tanha). Observing one’s own anger non-reactively renders one for the moment a "free I," free of the influence of Tanha.

Identifying with Tanha-driven reactions keeps these reactions going. Once a person steps back and observes these reactions, one deprives them of fuel, so to speak, and they will eventually die down. It is like putting a speeding car in neutral – it will keep going for awhile, but will gradually slow down and stop because there is nothing continuing to impel it forward. As the Sutta says, a skilled meditator will be able to watch all emotional and mental phenomena in their arising and in their vanishing. A person watching their arising and vanishing is not caught up in their arising or vanishing.

In other words, this meditation exercise tries to combat the compulsive character of Tanha, but does this in an indirect way. One becomes free of compulsive reaction by gaining the skill of not reacting, the skill of non-reactive awareness. The ultimate purpose of this is of course not to go through life not reacting to anything, but to be able to act freely and flexibly, rather than in a compulsive and inflexible way.

The Sutta says, "the desire for mind-objects is abandoned in him... through the abandonment of desire the Deathless is realized." Becoming an observing "free I" amounts to entering what Buddhists term the "Deathless" realm. The Deathless realm is Nirvana, the subject of the next section.