Early Buddhist Meditation

by Keren Arbel

  If this hypothesis is correct, it can be assumed that the new religious movement had an impact on other ascetics and contemplative traditions as well, especially since it presented systematic meditational praxis and a new vision of the spiritual path.

  Further, the growth of Buddhism meant more monastics and lay support. Monks and nuns who lived in monasteries most likely travelled from one place to the other. Wandering in various places, they would have encountered other contemplatives and ascetics, sharing their teachings and practices. It is reasonable to suggest that Buddhist practices and ideas were spread increasingly in various contemplative and philosophical environments, especially since they were not confined to a geographical area, specific language or social class. Spreading all around North India, it very well would have been adopted and adapted or created objection and reaction.

  What I am suggesting is that, to a greater extent than has been previously assumed, Buddhist contemplative practices had a greater impact on other meditation traditions, though not exclusively or unilaterally.122 This seems especially true when referring to elements that have an important and recurrent role in the Nikāyas’ (and the Āgamas’) awakening scheme such as the fourfold jhāna model. It may be deduced that this model was adopted and adapted by other contemplative traditions, as a reaction to the innovative Buddhist vision of the spiritual path. Bronkhorst has correctly observed that certain elements in Buddhist jhāna ‘could only be made to fit clumsily’ in non-Buddhist systems.123 Not only did this term presented a unique Buddhist view on the path to liberation, it also was a revolutionary notion on the nature of awakening. However, after the rise of Buddhism, the wide usage of the term dhyāna indicates that Buddhist meditation theory was an important reference point to early Indian contemplative traditions.

  The principle I am trying to illustrate is that the centrality and importance of the term dhyāna in the teaching of the growing Buddhist tradition brought about its recurrent usage by other contemplative traditions; that is, competing traditions needed to respond to the challenges presented by Buddhism. This was done by using Buddhist language, while moulding it to fit into their various conceptual and contemplative systems (just as the Buddha did). I disagree with Bronkhorst’s assertion that ‘the main stream of ancient meditation largely lived a life of its own, showing developments both theoretical and practical which could be explained without reference to Buddhism’.124 Although Bronkhorst is correct when he noted that the influence of Buddhist meditation was terminological, I believe that it was not ‘merely terminological’.125 The adaptation of a pivotal and central Buddhist term by non-Buddhist traditions meant that these traditions found Buddhist praxis and conceptual framework challenging and perhaps even threatening; this was especially the case since Buddhism was spreading all over the Indian subcontinent.

  Thus, although the relationship between Buddhism and other contemplative traditions was reciprocal, it might have been different than usually envisioned. For example, it might be, as pointed out by Bronkhorst, that the notion of ‘liberating insight’ (paññā) as a specific content was not originally Buddhist but an adaptation of the non-Buddhist idea, specifically the idea that ‘liberation in life is always accompanied by an explicit liberating “insight”’.126 According to Bronkhorst, explicit descriptions of the content of liberating insight (such as the Four Noble Truths and the twelve links of dependent origination) were added by Buddhists later on under the influence of mainstream meditation.127 Thus, the notion of liberation as the realization of specific ‘knowledge’ (paññā) might have been a non-Buddhist idea initially, while the original Buddhist vision of liberation included the attainment of the jhānas. These stood as attainments that have no specific content. Paññā, in this vision of liberation, could have been something quite different than the realization of some specific conceptual insight, especially at the completion of the spiritual path. This issue will be further elaborated in subsequent chapters.

  IV ‘unworthy jhāna’ in the Pāli Nikāyas

  Turning to the Pāli Nikāyas, I wish to examine closely the occurrences of the term jhāna in a context which refers to practices undertaken by the unawakened Bodhisatta and in reference of what is designated as ‘unworthy jhāna’.

  In the Mahāsaccaka Sutta of the MN, the Buddha describes his ascetic practices before his awakening. Several of these practices include ‘meditating a meditation without breathing’ (appāṇakaṃ-yeva jhānaṃ jhāyeyyaṃ). This practice, of actively stopping the in-and-out breath, is something that the Buddha mentions only in reference to his unfruitful practices before his awakening. What is interesting for us in this depiction is the occurrence of the term jhāna. One might claim that this proves that jhānas are non-Buddhist practices that were first declared as unbeneficial, and thus, they were incorporated later on by the Buddha or compilers of these texts who advocated this practice. This would mean they cannot be considered as a necessary practice for attaining liberation. Yet, note that in this context, the term jhāna is associated with a specific practice, namely, the ‘stopping of in-and-out breath’ (assāsa-passāse uparundhiṃ). Here the Buddha names this practice specifically as appāṇakaṃ jhānaṃ.

  Apart from the Mahāsaccaka Sutta, the term jhāna appears in its singular form also in MN III.13–4. There, Ānanda explains to the brahmin Vassakāra that ‘the Blessed One did not praise all [types] of jhānas’ (so bhagavā sabbaṃ jhānaṃ na vaṇṇesi). He explains that jhāna in which the mind has the hindrances (nīvaraṇa) and is without understanding as to the escape from theses hindrances are a type of jhāna that the Blessed One did not praise. In these misdirected states, ‘one meditates, premeditates, out-meditates and mis-meditates’ (jhāyati, pajjhāyati, nijjhāyati, apajjhāyati).

  It is unclear what kind of jhāna the Blessed One did not praise, and there is no specific description of the practice. What is evident, though, is that this type of jhāna is a state that contains the nīvaraṇas – the hindrances that are specifically declared absent in the description of the fourfold jhāna model. It could be that the use of the term jhāna in the singular, in this context, refers to the practice of appāṇakaṃ jhānaṃ which is mentioned above. Thus, it seems that the Buddha used the word jhāna generically only rarely, and in cases where the audience probably was familiar with it as a technical term for some kind of meditative practice.

  However, it should be noted that the fourfold jhāna model, contrary to the occurrences of the term jhāna in singular, does not appear with the verb from the same root (i.e., jhāyeyyaṃ/jhāyati, pajjhāyati, nijjhāyati, apajjhāyati). I would like to suggest that the use of the verb from the same root, in connection to the term jhāna in these occurrences, indicates an active meditative practice of some kind. However, in the description of the fourfold jhāna model, the depiction is almost always the same and quite different than the above: one just ‘enters and abides’ (upasampajja viharati) in the jhānas. In other words, the fourfold jhāna model is a description of an attainment – the fruit of a previous practice – and not a specific practice by itself.

  Given the preceding we can conclude that apart from the aforementioned occurrences, the jhānas are mostly associated with depictions of awakening (especially those of the Buddha’s awakening) and always as a model of four gradual states. They (1) are never referred to as appāṇakaṃ jhānaṃ; (2) always occur with adjectives that indicate their number in the fourfold model, that is, paṭhamaṃ, dutiyaṃ, tatiyaṃ and catutthaṃ; and (3) are never associated with a verb from the same root.

  V Conclusion

  One common feature of the Buddha’s teaching was his use of known terms from the Vedic/Upaniṣadic/Śramaṇic traditions, while changing their meaning to suit his own teaching. There are many examples of this technique, and I will not elaborate here. Suffice it to mention terms such as kamma, 128 brahmacariya129 and Brahmā, 130 which express these practices in the Nikāyas. It seems odd that this obvious feature of the Buddha’s teaching technique was comp
letely overlooked with regard to the use of the term jhāna. Even if this term was used widely in non-Buddhist traditions with whatever meaning (something which seems doubtful in light of the available textual evidence), it is very reasonable to assume that the Buddha did the same thing that he did with other pivotal terms: he gave it a different meaning.131

  It might appear implausible to assert that any new spiritual tradition has not borrowed, revised and improved spiritual ‘techniques’ and religious concepts that already existed and circulated in some form or another in previous and contemporary religious traditions. However, we have seen that (1) the term dhyāna rarely appears in pre-Buddhist texts; (2) when it does appear, it has a very vague meaning while having a marginal role compared to other techniques/terms; (3) while it seems that non-Buddhist texts present a similar jhānic model to that of the Pāli Nikāyas, in a closer analysis, it is only an apparent resemblance. Thus, these points suggest that the jhānas, in the format of a fourfold model, are uniquely Buddhist, even though the term itself was adopted from the Indian ‘pool’ of contemplative terms. In other words, after adopting a term that had little importance in other contemplative traditions, the Buddha redefined and used it in accordance with his own understanding of the spiritual path.

  Notes

  1 The term śramaṇa from the root śram, ‘to exert’, occurs once in the Upaniṣads. It occurs in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad IV.3.22, where it is coupled with the term tāpasa from the root tap, ‘to warm’; this term can be translated as ‘an ascetic’ or as ‘[a religious practitioner who] practices austerities’. For a detailed examination of the term śramana in early Indian materials, see Olivelle 1993, 11–15.

  2 E.g., MN I.242–3; MN I.77–82.

  3 E.g., MN I.163–6.

  4 DN I.65–95 gives a description of six views of other śramaṇa traditions at the time of the Buddha.

  5 E.g., MN I.92.

  6 A good example is the Brahmajāla Sutta of the DN and MN I.39; MN I.242ff; MN I.514–21; DN I.282; DN I.238; SN I.29; SN IV.118; SN V.230; AN II.200–1.

  7 Pratap Chandra has mapped the views of scholars about ancient Indian philosophies to those who considered the Buddha’s teaching to have been influenced by the Upaniṣads, and those who ‘appear keen to establish the “supremacy” of the Upaniṣads’ (Pratap 1971, 319).

  8 See, for example, MA III.188 and DA II.511 where it is said that one can be liberated without attaining the jhānas, as a paññā-vimutti arahant. There are five types of paññā-vimutti Arahants according to this commentary – four types are those who reach Arahantship on the basis of any one of the four jhānas, and the fifth one is the ‘dry insight’ (sukkha-vipassaka), who attains Arahantship without attaining the jhānas at all. See also Paṭisambhidāmagga (Paṭis II, 92–103).

  9 Gimello 1978, 181, 184; Griffiths 1981, 614; King 1992, viii; Crangle 1994, 272; Premasiri 2003, 164.

  10 See La Vallée Poussin 1936/7, 230. He however, sees the four arūpa states as demonstrating Buddhist originality in meditative techniques, since they do not appear in non-Buddhist sources (La Vallée Poussin 1936/7, 225).

  11 Gunaratana 1999, 78. However, in more recent article Gunaratana’s view seems to have changed. In this essay he advocates practicing vipassanā in the jhānas. His presentation on the jhānas in this essay does not rely on the Visuddhimagga as in his other publications on this subject (Gunaratana 2012).

  12 Rahula 1978, 68.

  13 Gimello 1978, 184.

  14 Sarbacker 2005, 90.

  15 Griffiths 1999, 156 n55.

  16 Griffiths 1999, 19.

  17 La Vallée Poussin 1916, 160.

  18 La Vallée Poussin 1916, 163.

  19 La Vallée Poussin 1916, 162.

  20 La Vallée Poussin 1916, 161.

  21 Solé-Leris 1999, 73.

  22 Paṭhamaṃ, dutiyaṃ, tatiyaṃ and catutthaṃ jhānaṃ.

  23 Vetter 1988.

  24 Bronkhorst 1993.

  25 Wynne 2007.

  26 See Dundas 1985, 164; Jaini 1990, 52–3; Basham 1996, 289; Bhattacharyya 1999, 37–8. As for the Yoga Sūtra of Patañjali, most scholars believe that there were several ‘Patañjalis’ in the history of Indian thought; most agree that the one who wrote the Yoga Sūtra (YS) lived around the second or third century CE (Whicher 1998, 1). However, there are scholars who date the YS earlier. Radhakrishnan and Moore, for example, have dated Patañjali at the second century BCE, and Flood has dated Patañjali between 100 BCE and 500 CE (Radhakrishnan and Moore 1957, 453; Flood 1998, 96). For a detailed discussion, see Puri 1990, 3–11. See also Cousins, who has maintained that there were many influences from Buddhist sources on the Yoga Sūtra (Cousins1992, 137). The Maitrī Upaniṣad, which exhibits similar elements, is dated by Macdonell, Winternitz and Deussen to be around the first century CE (Deussen 1966, 271; Macdonell 1971, 197; Winternitz 1981, 218–20).

  27 Wynne has offered a very convincing argument for the historicity of Uddaka Rāmaputta and Āḷāra Kālāma. Wynne 2003, 23–8.

  28 In MN II.225, the Buddha permits the practice of asceticism for a certain purpose. But when this purpose is achieved, one should not continue to exert himself in what is painful.

  29 E.g., MN I.30–1; III.41–2.

  30 Note, for example, that terms such as mukti and bodhi are not prevalent in the older Upaniṣads (E.g., BṛhU IV.2.1, IV.3.36, IV 4.7–8; KaṭhaU I.11, III.15; ChaṇḍU VI.14.2). Andrew Fort has also pointed out that derivatives of the verb muc are surprisingly rare in the early Upaniṣads (Fort 1994, 37–90).

  31 La Vallée Poussin 1916, 163.

  32 McKenzie and Haynes 1999, 36.

  33 The concordance to the Principle Upaniṣads and Bhagavadgītā, gives only five entries: in Yogatattva, Muktikā, Kshurikā and Āruṇeya (Jacob 1999, 501). Staal also points out that the term nirvāṇa does not occur in the early Upaniṣad (Staal 2008, 310).

  34 Note that the terms derived from yuj (e.g., yoga) occur only seven times in total in the earliest Upaniṣads. Furthermore, while in later Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts, the term ‘Yoga’ referred to a spiritual practice, in the Pāli Nikāyas, the term yoga refers to ‘bonds’ that prevent us from becoming liberated. The four yogas in the Nikāyas are the bond (1) of sensuality, (2) of existence, (3) of view and (4) of ignorance (SN V.59, AN II.10; DN III.230). What is more, a recurrent idiom concerning nibbāna in the Nikāyas is yoga-kkhema (peace from bondage), namely, Arahantship (e.g., DN III.123)

  35 We should be extra cautious when we consider the Nikāyas’ descriptions of practices exercised by other samaṇas as a reliable historical record, mainly because they might be biased; nevertheless, I do believe these descriptions provide valuable information. This is especially true when what they describe does not contradict information we have from other sources.

  36 Crangle 1994, 13.

  37 Crangle 1994, 79.

  38 Werner 1975, 181–3 cited by Crangle 1994, 35.

  39 Crangle 1994, 269.

  40 See also the Keśin hymn, Ṛg Veda 10.136.

  41 Werner 1975, 182.

  42 Crangle has observed that even in the Upaniṣads, terms such as, mokṣa and mukti occur minimally. Crangle 1994, 70.

  43 Crangle 1994, 35; Lindtner 1999, 6. Conversely, there are those who support the theory of a synthesis of non-Aryan practices (maybe from the Indus civilization) with Aryan methods. See Crangle 1994, 1. This debate regarding the origin and development of early Indian contemplative practices has no clear resolution; rather, it points to the fact that these practices were not developed in a simple linear fashion or as a result of a single synthesis.

  44 See also Bronkhorst 1998, 60–1.

  45 The only non-Vedic source for such a claim is the Harappan seal that shows a figure in a yogic posture. This seal is the earliest indication of the possible existence of Yoga practice in pre-Vedic India. This one seal is not enough for a final and solid conclusion of yogic practice in pre-Vedic culture. Werner 1975, 180.

  46 B
ronkhorst has also maintained that the Brāhmaṇas and especially the Atharva Veda show no link to ideas about rebirth, liberation and the true nature of self (Bronkhorst 1998, 57).

  47 Kaelber 1989, 96–7; Crangle 1994, 268.

  48 Crangle 1994, 68. Crangle has also pointed out that both Winternitz and Deussen accepted Macdonell’s division (Deussen 1966, 271; Macdonell 1971, 197; Werner 1975, 186).

  49 Macdonell 1971, 191; Crangle 1994, 65.

  50 Interestingly, Frits Staal mentioned in his book Exploring Mysticism, Gonda’s observation in the book The Vision of the Vedic Poet that the noun dhī in the Vedas denotes a ‘vision’ or ‘to have an inspiration’ (Staal 1975, 79).