Developments in Buddhist Meditation Traditions: The Interplay

The present book serves as a complement to my Early Buddhist Meditation Studies, which in four chapters explored the topics of mindfulness, the path (to awakening), absorption, and brahmavihāra. The present book takes up the same or closely related topics, but from the diachronic perspective of their historical development. In other words, whereas in the previous book my main c...

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The present book serves as a complement to my Early Buddhist Meditation Studies, which in four chapters explored the topics of mindfulness, the path (to awakening), absorption, and brahmavihāra. The present book takes up the same or closely related topics, but from the diachronic perspective of their historical development. In other words, whereas in the previous book my main concern was to delineate the early Buddhist position, in the present study I proceed from exploring that to discerning changes and reinterpretations that appear to have taken place in the course of Buddhism’s long history.

Apart from this different focus, my procedure is closely similar, in that I have put together revised shorter or longer extracts from previously published articles that are relevant to my main topics and combined these with some new material.1 The main topics are: the trajectory that led from the detailed instructions on mindfulness of breathing in sixteen distinct steps to the practice of exclusively focusing just on the breath; the notion of the mind’s intrinsic luminosity as a key element in conceptions that no longer give a prominent place to the idea of a meditative progress along a path; a reevaluation of the significance of absorption attainment as indispensable for progress to the first stage of awakening and at times even inherently liberating in itself; and the arising of the notion that the immeasurable or boundless state of compassion should be meditatively directed toward oneself.

With all of these trajectories, my intention is not to posit what is early as right and what comes later as wrong. In fact, some of the developments surveyed here have yielded intriguing new perspectives that have won widespread appeal. In full acknowledgment of that, my aim is only to provide a text-historical perspective, in particular with a view to highlighting a dynamic interplay between theory and practice. I attempt to show how changes during textual transmission led to new per- spectives on meditation practices, whose outcome in turn influenced textual accounts. Discerning such developments reveals a fascinating cross-fertilization between the texts and meditation practices, similar in kind to a cross-fertilization that can be observed between the texts and ancient Indian art.

From a practice-related viewpoint, my presentation is meant to enable meditators to position the teachings and practices they follow within a historical perspective. Such a perspective can help to accommodate different traditions within its purview as equally justified articulations of meditative cultivation of the mind, being the result of a dynamic interplay between actual practice and its theoretical, social, and cultural embedding. In other words, my exploration intends to invite applying the principles of conditionality and not self (in the sense of non-identification) to meditation teachings and lineages themselves, viewing them as the product of conditions, without appropriating them with clinging.

In the end, any meditation technique or practice is best viewed as a raft, which has only an instrumental purpose in leading onward on the path to freedom.

Introduction ................................................................................ 11
Mindfulness of Breathing..........................................................13
Introduction .................................................................................. 13
The Preliminaries to the Sixteen Steps ........................................ 13
The First Tetrad ........................................................................... 17
The Second Tetrad ....................................................................... 20
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Introduction ................................................................................ 11
Mindfulness of Breathing..........................................................13
Introduction .................................................................................. 13
The Preliminaries to the Sixteen Steps ........................................ 13
The First Tetrad ........................................................................... 17
The Second Tetrad ....................................................................... 20
The Third Tetrad..........................................................................22
The Fourth Tetrad ........................................................................ 24
Concentration on Mindfulness of Breathing ................................ 26
Mindfulness of Breathing and Body Contemplation....................32
Only Three Steps from the Scheme of Sixteen ............................ 40
Similes Illustrating Contemplation of the Body........................... 46
Just the Breath..............................................................................52
The Luminous Mind .................................................................. 59
Introduction .................................................................................. 59
Fire and Light Imagery ................................................................ 59
Luminous Consciousness (1): Baka Brahmā ............................... 62
Luminous Consciousness (2): Kevaḍḍha ..................................... 72
Luminous Meditation Practices ................................................... 77
Luminous Equanimity..................................................................79
The Luminous Mind in the Aṅguttara-nikāya.............................. 86
Luminosity and Defilements ........................................................ 89
The Nature of the Mind and Defilements..................................... 92
Purification of the Mind ............................................................... 94
Knowing the Nature of the Mind ................................................. 98
Luminosity in Later Traditions .................................................. 104
The Path of Meditative Recognition .......................................... 107
Conclusion ................................................................................. 113
Absorption ................................................................................ 117
Introduction ................................................................................ 117
The Four Absorptions as Right Concentration .......................... 118
Right Concentration and the Other Path Factors........................123
The Four Absorptions and Examination.................................... 128
Insight Meditation and Right Concentration ............................. 133
Bare Listings of the Path Factors............................................... 137
Contextualizing Right Concentration ........................................ 140
Analytical Approaches to Right Concentration ......................... 141
Implications for the Progress to Awakening ............................. 144
Absorption as a Quality Pertinent to Awakening ...................... 149
The Importance of Absorption .................................................. 157
Summary of Textual Developments .......................................... 169
The Insight Knowledges............................................................ 172
The Need of Absorption for Insight Meditation ........................ 178
Insight Knowledges as Forms of Absorption ............................ 180
Reinterpretations of Absorption ................................................ 184
Absorption as a Form of Insight on Its Own ............................. 189
Absorption and satipaṭṭhāna...................................................... 198
Unintended Consequences of Absorption Rhetoric................... 207
Immeasurable/Boundless States..............................................211
Introduction ............................................................................... 211
The Meditative Radiation .......................................................... 211
Individual Objects in Theravāda Works .................................... 214
A Sarvāstivāda Perspective ....................................................... 221
Oneself as the Object................................................................. 224
Contemporary Practice .............................................................. 231
Conclusion ................................................................................235
Mindfulness of Breathing .......................................................... 235
The Luminous Mind .................................................................. 237
Absorption ................................................................................. 238
Immeasurable/Boundless States ................................................ 240
Abbreviations ...........................................................................243
References ................................................................................245
Index .........................................................................................271
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