by Keren Arbel
It can be argued that some ‘altered states of consciousness’ (or what some would call mystical experiences) are not necessarily dependent upon the development of morality. However, I believe that the jhānas cannot be reckoned as such states in the Nikāyas’ vision of inner cultivation. It seems that for the Nikāyas, the attainment of the jhānas is not separated from the ethical dimension of the path. I have already showed that the Nikāyas do not make any references to attaining the jhānas as a result of merely practicing concentration techniques on some ‘neutral’ object of meditation such as the kaṣinas. If we recall our discussion on one of the most recurrent path structures in the Nikāyas, it is obvious that the attainment of the jhānas occurs only after one has developed ethical behaviour, abandoned unwholesome states and possessed certain wholesome qualities. The jhānas, so it seems, cannot be attained without possessing those qualities that constitute the Buddhist spiritual path: noble virtue (sīla), noble restraint of the faculties, noble mindfulness and full knowing.8 Only then, the hindrances (which obstruct wisdom and might cause one to act unethically in body, speech and mind) are abandoned,9 and one can enter into the first jhāna. Hence, the first jhāna, I have already argued, is attained by releasing and letting go of the foothold of an unwholesome mind. What I wish to emphasize further here is that the jhānas (all four of them) exemplify an ethical mind.
The P āsādika Sutta gives a clear indication of the close relationship and dependency between the attainment of the jhānas and ethical development. The sutta classifies two different kinds of life devoted to pleasure, positioning them in opposition. The first is ‘low, vulgar, worldly, ignoble and not conducive to welfare… not leading to nibbāna’,10 while the second kind is entirely conducive to nibbāna.11 The former is pleasure and delight arising from killing living beings, in taking that which is not given, in telling lies and in the pleasures of the five senses.12 These four types of behaviour are associated with unethical ways of life and are not what the followers of the Buddha are devoted to. However, the four kinds of life devoted to pleasure that the followers of the Buddha are devoted to are the four jhānas ‘which are entirely conducive to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to tranquilly, to realization, to awakening, to nibbāna’.13 Positioning the two kinds of life devoted to pleasure as opposing directions expresses, I believe, something important about the jhānas: they are closely linked with and dependent upon moral prerequisites. If killing, taking that which is not given, telling lies and delighting in the pleasures of the five senses are morally problematic (the latter in the sense of not being conducive to the cessation of dukkha), the four jhānas, on the other hand, are ethical states of mind that are entirely conducive to the elimination of suffering (in oneself and others) and the attainment of awakening.14
This close connection between the attainment of the jhānas and the cultivation of ethical intentions is evident when we read the Samaṇamaṇḍikā Sutta. In this sutta, the Buddha explains ‘where’ and ‘when’ unwholesome and unskilful intentions (akusala-saṅkappā) such as the intention to delight in sensual pleasures, the intention of ill will and the intention of cruelty cease without a trace. He explains that
[S]eparated from the desire for sensual pleasures, separated from [other] unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the first jhāna… It is here that unwholesome intentions cease without a remainder.15
Here we find the notion that the attainment of the first jhāna is closely associated with perfecting ethical intentions. The sutta associates an ethical mind – the progression in the development of thoroughgoing and profound ethical attitudes – with the attainment of the first jhāna. According to the Samaṇamaṇḍikā Sutta, the first jhāna is ‘where’ one abandons unethical intentions and perceptions; this abandonment, therefore, allows wholesome intentions (kusalasaṅkappā) to be fully realized.16 In other words, in the first jhāna one has actually fulfilled ‘right intention’ (sammā saṅkappa) – the second factor in the Eightfold Path.
However, what is even more interesting is the Buddha’s statement that these wholesome intentions cease when one progresses further and enters into the second jhāna.17 This is an odd and engrossing statement: why must these wholesome intentions cease after they have arisen? Is it not the aim of the Buddhist path to cultivate exactly this wholesome mind-set?18 An answer to this question is actually given a few passages before in the same sutta when the Buddha explains why wholesome habits (sīlā) also cease without a remainder when one progresses in the spiritual path. He explains that the cessation of wholesome sīla means that ‘a bhikkhu is virtuous, but he does not identify with his virtue’.19 This is an enlightening explanation. It lends insight into the nature of an awakened mind that has fulfilled wholesomeness. As I understand this statement, it does not imply that one lacks moral habits and wholesome intentions when one has finally developed these qualities by practicing the path; rather, it wishes to emphasize that, in more advanced stages of the spiritual path, one transcends the dualistic structure of grasping intentionality in which one identifies with wholesome habits and qualities of mind. What this answer is pointing at is that the perfection of sīla means that one actually embodies these qualities without considering them as ‘I’ or ‘mine’. One’s mode of being is completely wholesome, free from any grasping relations even to wholesome habits and intentions: one is a sīlavā; that is, one is not one who consists of sīla (no ca sīlamayo). I would suggest that this non-dual ethical mode of being is experienced in the attainment of the second, third and fourth jhānas, while finding completion and immovability in the attainment of awakening.
II The nature of the fourth jhāna and its liberative importance
Let me take a sidetrack for a moment to offer some further reflections and remarks that might illuminate to a greater degree the nature of the fourth jhāna and its liberative importance. This will serve as a foundation for discussing the nature of wisdom (paññā) and its relation to this attainment.
In her interesting PhD dissertation on ‘Vipassanā Meditation and the Microsociology of Experience’, Michal Pagis observes that although all self-cultivating practices are based on theories, general knowledge and rules, their main aim is to enter a mode of experience that is non-verbal and non-discursive. Pagis makes this further observation: she acknowledges that this process of cultivation starts in cultural and social setting and in rigorous process of training anchored in abstract rule and guidance of a specific discourse (as, for example, the teaching on the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination).20 She then observes that real change – the remodelling of the way we experience life – occurs not in processes that are anchored in abstract thought21 but in embodied feeling.22 Pagis has further suggested that self-cultivation is ‘a process based on new forms of interaction with the world, forms that de-stabilize the consistency given to the self and allow for self-transformation’.23 She uses the idea of ‘firstness’ – of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce – to explain this notion and to emphasize the important role of this phenomenological category for inner transformation.
For Peirce, ‘firstness’ ‘is the felt quality in toto: present, immediate, uncategorized, pre-reflective, the manifold of sensuous impressions before thought’.24 Following this portrayal, Pagis has observed that
[T]aken to the extreme, self-cultivation requires a temporal return to ‘firstness’, to a mode of freshness, life, freedom. The free is that which has not another behind it, determining its actions.25
It seems to me that this depiction highlights a meaningful aspect of the fourth-jhāna phenomenology and liberative value. I would suggest that the fourth jhāna can be reckoned as a temporal return to firstness: a post-conceptual state,26 free from conceptual overlays and mental and physical unwholesome habitual propensities. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the fourth jhāna can be characterized as complete openness to the influx of experience, free from grasping and any type of reactivity (mental or physical, late
nt or obvious). I have showed that in the fourth jhāna, the manifold of sensuous impressions is perceived by non-reactive (upekkhā) lucid and vivid awareness (sati), free from any hindrances and mental faculties that obstruct a clear perception of phenomena. This, it would seem to me, can be identified with Peirce’s idea of temporal return to firstness: a return to a different mode of being in the world, not contingent upon erroneous perception and grasping intentionality, but as the Poṭṭhapāda Sutta states, on ‘true and subtle’ perception (sukhumasaccasaññī).27
More explicitly, the type of perception (saññā) that is present in the fourth jhāna recognizes the manifold sense experience but in a very different way than ordinary conceptual thought does. In Buddhist psychology conceptual thought is linked with ‘conceiving’ (maññati) – a mental process that interprets experience from erroneous perspectives, particularly from the perspective of an enduring self. I would suggest that the fourth jhāna marks the realization and actualization of a mind that knows directly aniccā and anattā with regard to all phenomena (forms, sounds, odours, flavours etc.).28 In the fourth jhāna one enters a mode of experience that is free from the standpoint of an ‘I’; it is free from ‘conceiving’ (maññati).
III The fourth-jhāna as a non-dual experience
I have so far tried to show that the fourth jhāna is a mode of awareness where there is no mental gap in which the experiential act (i.e., seeing, hearing etc.) is ascribed to a subjective ‘I’ by conceptual and affective overlays. What I wish to argue here is that the fourth-jhāna -mode-of-awareness is a specific instance of non-dual experience. Yet, it is important to recognize that this type of non-duality as observed by Olendzki has nothing to do with the relationship between consciousness (as a subject) and the object cognized by it, but it is ‘only about the object and the illusory sense of being a person who stands in relation to it’. Although Olendzki does not discuss the jhānic experience, I believe that his analysis will give us an interesting perspective with which we can understand the phenomenology of the fourth jhāna. According to Olendzki the ‘subject’ in this duality is
[T]he point where desire is generated towards the object of experience. By liking or not liking the object, a subject who likes or does not like the object is created. It is craving, manifesting as clinging, that leads to the becoming of a self (attā-bhāva), and it is only when one has becomes a self, a subject, there can then also be suffering.29
I would suggest that the type of non-dual experience portrayed by Olendzki is actually experienced in the fourth jhāna (and permanently, I might hypothesize, by an awakened person). This seems a plausible interpretation following the analysis I have offered of the jhānic process and the phenomenology of fourth jhāna. We have seen that in the fourth jhāna there is no construction of a self; there is no movement of likes and dislikes which concoct a sense of self. The analysis of the fourth jhāna showed, that in this attainment, one is free from grasping intentionality, as it is the apogee of a spiritual process in which the mind has been clarified and purified from desire, aversion and ignorance and from conceptual and affective overlays that distorted our perception. Furthermore, I have demonstrated that attaining this state means that one does not recondition the unwholesome latent tendencies (anusaya). Although technically it is a conditioned state, it is not subject to conditioning in the normal way. This implies that consciousness (viññāṇa) of the fourth jhāna is not shaped by conditioned psychological setting or conceptual structures. It can be described as liberated (vimuttaṃ) even if this event is conditioned and not permanent.30 We might also speculate, following the later suggestion that the fourth jhāna anticipates, for an unawakened practitioner, the awakened cognition described in AN II.25:
Thus, monks, the Tathāgata is a seer, but when he sees, he does not conceive regarding the seen. He does not conceive about the ‘unseen’. He does not conceive about what ‘to-be-seen’. He does not conceive about a seer. When hearing, he does not conceive regarding the heard. He does not conceive about the ‘unheard’. He does not conceive about what ‘to-be-heard’. He does not conceive about a hearer. When sensing, he does not conceive regarding the sensed. He does not conceive about the ‘unsensed’. He does not conceive about what ‘to-be-sensed’. He does not conceive about one who senses. When cognizing, he does not conceive regarding what is cognized. He does not conceive about the ‘un-cognized’. He does not conceive about what ‘to-becognized’. He does not conceive of one who cognizes. Thus, monks, the Tathāgata, being such like with regard to all phenomena that can be seen, heard, sensed and cognized is ‘Such’. And I tell you: There’s no other ‘Such’ greater or more sublime.31
IV ‘Liberating insight’ (paññā) and the fourth jhāna
Following the preceding, I wish to offer two related arguments about the nature of wisdom or ‘liberating insight’ (paññā) in the Nikāyas’ vision of liberation, and its interrelation with and mutual dependency on the attainment of the fourth jhāna. First, I wish to argue that for the Nikāyas the mind becomes purified and free not through specific cognitive content but through a gradual replacement of unwholesome (akusala) mind-moments by wholesome (kusala) ones. This purification of awareness arrives at an important moment in the attainment of the fourth jhāna. Second and related, I wish to further accentuate that the fourth jhāna – as a purified and ideal mind – should be recognized as ‘wisdom-awareness’: a specialized form of awareness that resembles and anticipates an awakened awareness.32
Having said that, let me start from the first issue. The mind is a stream of moments of consciousness that exists in dependency on the momentary existence of an object of consciousness. However, what I wish to argue is that the purification of mind, meaning the grounding of a clarified perception of experience, does not rely on certain objects or content of mind. Purification of mind in the Nikāyas’ model of a spiritual cultivation concerns the gradual replacement of unwholesome (akusala) mind-moments by wholesome (kusala) ones. This is how an ordinary mind is transformed into an awakened awareness:33 one will become awakened when one will cultivate and develop dependently arising wholesome (kusala) qualities that replace the unwholesome ones. An example of such a wholesome dependently arising process leading to liberation is expressed in the Upanisā Sutta:
Thus, bhikkhus, with trust as proximate cause, gladness; with gladness as proximate cause, happiness; with happiness as proximate cause, tranquility; with tranquility as proximate cause, pleasure; with pleasure as proximate cause, samādhi, with samādhi as proximate cause, seeing and knowing [things] as they are; with seeing and knowing [things] as they are as proximate cause, disenchantment; with disenchantment as proximate cause, dispassion; with dispassion as proximate cause, liberation; with liberation as proximate cause, the knowledge of destruction.34
Though slightly different from the process delineated in the fourfold jhāna model, this passage seems to reflect the same process of resetting the mind to wholesomeness. I suggest that the term samādhi in the preceding description from the Upanisā Sutta refers to sammā-samādhi – namely, the attainment of the fourth and final jhāna. In other words, when the fourth jhāna is established and one fulfils sammā-samādhi as a path-factor, one arouses a ‘proximate cause’ (upanisā) for ‘seeing and knowing [experience] as it is’ (yathābhūtañāṇadassanaṃ).
Furthermore, consider sati and upekkhā, which are the first and last awakening factors and are the two qualities that are present in full capacity in the fourth jhāna. The purification of these two factors seems to be the key qualities for awakening the mind. The centrality of these two mental factors is evidenced also in Sutta Nipāta 855, which describes the ‘greatest man’ (uttamaṃ naraṃ) as one who is always mindful and equanimous (upekkhako sadā sato). More importantly, according to this sutta, the fulfilment of these qualities means that one ‘does not conceive (maññate) [of himself] as equal, superior or inferior and therefore there is no pride [in him]’.35 That is to say, when one fulfils (or purifies) s
ati and upekkhā, one is free from self-reference and comparison attitudes; one is free from māna. In other words, one realizes anattā by actualizing a mode of being that is free from self-centredness.
What I am trying to illustrate is the following: if one cannot relate differently to experience, then it is not relevant to the path of liberation whether or not one understands impermanence (aniccā) and not-self (anattā) as the truth of how things are. If this understanding is not actualized and grounded as a mode of being, real transformation cannot occur. Not-clinging and not-identifying with impermanent and empty phenomena (the five aggregates)36 is the final aim of the Buddhist path. And here, I believe, is the liberative role and value of the jhānas: the experience of the fourth jhāna is a way of being in the world of phenomena without clinging, rejecting or identifying with any experience, physical or mental. The fourth-jhāna experience is the actualization of anattā; therefore, it is the understanding of aniccā and dukkha.
V Paññā in the Theravāda tradition
At this point, I would like to turn the attention to the interpretation of paññā in the Theravāda tradition and to say a few words about the problems it evokes. According to the traditional Theravāda understanding, the term paññā refers to what the Buddha realized on the night of his awakening. This ‘liberating insight’ is seen as the understanding of the Four Noble Truths in one moment of mind.37 However, some Buddhologists tend to agreed that the Four Truths were not among the earliest components of the Buddha’s awakening. Although the first discourse the Buddha gave, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, presents them, it seems probable that they were not part of the earliest form of this sutta.38