Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  Wolters, Clifton, transl. The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works. 1961. Reprint, Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1978.

  Wùkāi 悟開 (d. 1830). “Jìngyè zhījīn” 淨業知津. Xùzàngjīng 續藏經62, no. 1183. Accessed December 20, 2012. http://www.cbeta.org/result/normal/X62/1183_001.htm.

  Xu, Jian, Alexandra Vik, Inge R. Groote, Jim Lagopoulos, Are Holen, Øyvind Ellingsen, Asta K. Håberg, and Svend Davanger. “Nondirective Meditation Activates Default Mode Network and Areas Associated with Memory Retrieval and Emotional Processing.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (2014), article 86.

  3 EDWIN F. BRYANT

  Samādhi in the Yoga Sūtras

  The Indic traditions have a rich variegated history of meditational and contemplative practices that go back two and a half millennia. The systematization of these techniques as expressed in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali eventually emerged as the recognized standard and generic model of meditative praxis for orthodox Hinduism that was then accommodated within the theologies and metaphysics of the heterogeneous traditions. This chapter examines the seven ultimate states of consciousness that culminate from progressive stages of meditative focus, with the aim of providing the reader with a historical sense of the metaphysical presuppositions of traditional yoga (i.e., prior to the colonial encounter). Issues pertaining to actual practice (for which there is limited premodern textual material associated with the classical Yoga school) lies beyond the scope of this chapter.

  Historical Background

  The first clear references to Yoga as a meditational practice emerge in the late Vedic period in a genre of texts called the Upaniṣads, and from then on references to Yoga and yogīs pervade the literary landscape of India, both orthodox (upholding allegiance to the old Vedic corpus of texts, such as the Epics, Purāṇas, and emerging theological and philosophical traditions) and heterodox (traditions developing new non-Vedic canons, such as the Buddhists and Jains).1 The Indian traditions have never had a transsectarian centralizing entity in the form of an ecclesiastical person or body defining praxis (or dogma), and, other than nominal allegiance to the (already very variegated) Vedic corpus, de facto yogic authority lay (and continues to lie) in allegiance to the charismatic ascetic practitioner, the yogī virtuoso. Thus, already in the earliest sources we see a wide variety of yogic schema—with eight limbs, six limbs,2 eight qualities,3 seven dhāraṇās (concentration), twelve yogas, and so on—and find common technical philosophical terms, such as vitarka (state of absorption with physical awareness) and vicāra (state of absorption with subtle awareness), used in very different ways.4 A number of interconnected and cross-fertilizing variants of meditational yoga were evolving out of a common Upaniṣadic core, spearheaded by renunciants (Buddhist and Jain as well as Hindu) prior to Patañjali, and all drawing from a common but variously understood pool of terminologies, practices, and concepts (and, indeed, many strains continue to the present day).

  Since there was never one uniform school of ur-Yoga (or of any Indic school of thought, for that matter), but rather this plurality of variants embedded in different conceptualizations of meditative practices, all going under the name yoga, pre-Pātāñjalian yoga is best understood as a cluster of techniques, some more and some less systematized, that pervaded the landscape of ancient India. There is, however, a common denominator of these variegated references to yoga: they all involve some form of effort aimed at dhyāna, stilling the mind, often accompanied by preparatory breathing techniques.5 These techniques overlapped and were incorporated into the various philosophical and devotional traditions of the day, such as the jñāna (knowledge) and bhakti (devotional) traditions, providing these systems with practical, time-worn, and universally accepted methods and generic techniques for attaining an experienced-based transformation of consciousness in accordance with the particular theologies of each specific tradition.

  From this rich and fertile post-Vedic context, then, emerged an individual called Patañjali, dated by scholars to the first and second centuries CE,6 whose schematization of the heterogeneous practices of yoga came to be authoritative for all subsequent practitioners, and whose system eventually became reified as the classical orthodox source of authority in this regard. Patañjali systematized the preexisting traditions, pinpointing their commonality or methodological core of concentrative praxis, and formulated what came to be the seminal text for yoga discipline, that is, his particular systematization of these techniques was in time to emerge as the most dominant and authoritative source on generic yogic practice, and was eventually to gain the status of being one of the six schools of Indian philosophy.7 Patañjali’s system was to provide the generic “blueprint,” so to speak, for most subsequent traditions, many of which then tinkered with it by adding their sectarian sect-specific qualities (tantric physiologies, bhakti visualizations, jñāna metaphysics, and so on.8 This chapter will present an overview of the highest stages of this generic meditation, the samādhis, as presented in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras.

  Metaphysics of Yoga Psychology

  Yoga is not to be considered as a school distinct from the oldest metaphysical system in ancient India, Sāṁkhya, until well after Patañjali’s time. Sāṁkhya provided the metaphysical or theoretical basis for the realization of puruṣa (self, soul), and Yoga the technique or practice itself. Since the Yoga stages of samādhi are embedded in this metaphysics, some understanding of the categories of Sāṁkhya is required.9 In the generic Sāṁkhya (lit. “numeration”) system, the universe of animate and inanimate entities is perceived as ultimately the product of two ontologically distinct categories; hence this system is quintessentially dualistic (dvaita) in presupposition. These two categories are prakṛti, or the primordial material matrix of the physical universe, and puruṣa, the innumerable conscious selves embedded within it. The two are inherently, eternally, and fundamentally distinct types of things, the former being unconscious and active, and the latter conscious and passive.

  As a result of the interaction between these two entities, the material universe evolves in a series of stages. The actual catalysts in this evolutionary process are the three guṇas (lit. “strands” or “qualities”) that are inherent in prakṛti. These are sattva (lucidity), rajas (action), and tamas (inertia). These guṇas are sometimes compared to the threads that make up a rope: just as a rope is a combination of threads, so all manifest reality consists of a combination of the guṇas. Another comparison can be made to the wick, fire, and oil of a lamp, which, while opposed to each other in their nature, come together to produce light.

  Given the meditative focus of Yoga, the guṇas are especially significant in terms of their psychological manifestation; in Yoga, the mind and therefore all psychological dispositions are prakṛti, and therefore also composed of the guṇas—the only difference between mind and elemental matter being that the former has a larger preponderance of sattva, and the latter of tamas. Therefore, according to the specific intermixture and proportionality of the guṇas, living beings exhibit different types of mindsets and psychological dispositions. Thus, when sattva is predominant in an individual, the qualities of lucidity, tranquility, wisdom, discrimination, detachment, happiness, and peacefulness manifest; when rajas is predominant, hankering, attachment, energetic endeavor, passion, power, restlessness, and creative activity are present; and when tamas, the guṇa least favorable for yoga, is predominant, there is ignorance, delusion, disinterest, lethargy, sleep, and disinclination toward constructive activity. It is sattva that we will focus on in the high meditative states discussed in this chapter.

  The guṇas are continually interacting and competing with one another, with one guṇa becoming prominent for a while and overpowering the others, only to be eventually dominated in turn by the increase of one of the other guṇas. Just as there is an unlimited variety of colors stemming from the intermixture of the three primary colors, the different hues being simply expressions of the specific proportionality of red, yellow and blue that
are always open to adjustment, so the unlimited psychological dispositions of living creatures and of physical forms stem from the intermixture of the guṇas, specific states being the reflections of the particular proportionality of the intermixture of the three guṇas.

  The guṇas not only underpin the metaphysics of mind in Yoga but the activation and interaction of these guṇa qualities result in the production of the entirety of gross physical forms that also evolve from the primordial material matrix, prakṛti, by the same principle. Thus the physical composition of objects such as air, water, stone, fire, and so on, differs because of the constitutional makeup of specific guṇas: air contains more of the buoyancy of sattva, stone more of the sluggishness of tamas, and fire more of rajas. The guṇas allow for the infinite plasticity of prakṛti and the objects of the world.

  The process by which the universe evolves from prakṛti is usefully compared to the churning of milk: when milk receives a citric catalyst, yogurt, curds, or butter emerge. These immediate products, in turn, can be further manipulated to produce a further series of products—milk desserts, cheese, and so on. Similarly, according to classical Sāṁkhya, the first evolute emerging from prakṛti when it is churned by the guṇas (sattva specifically) is buddhi, intelligence (see figure 3.1). Intelligence is characterized by the functions of judgment, discrimination, knowledge, ascertainment, will, virtue, and detachment, and sattva is predominant in it. This means that in its purest state, when the potential of rajas and tamas are minimized, buddhi is primarily lucid, peaceful, happy, tranquil, and discriminatory, all qualities of sattva. Intelligence is the interface between puruṣa and all other prakṛtic evolutes. From this vantage point, it can direct awareness out into the objects and embroilments of the world, or, in its highest potential, can become aware of the presence of puruṣa and consequently redirect itself toward complete realization of the true source of consciousness that transcends and pervades it.

  From buddhi, ahaṁkāra, or ego is produced (aham “I” + kāra “doing”; referred to as asmitā in the Yoga Sūtras). Ahaṁkāra is characterized by the function of self-awareness and self-identity. It is the cognitive aspect that processes and appropriates external reality from the perspective of an individualized sense of self or ego—the notion of “I” and “mine” in human awareness. Ahaṁkāra also limits the range of awareness to fit within and identify with the contours of the particular psychophysical organism within which it finds itself in any one embodiment, as opposed to another.

  Figure 3.1. Puruṣa and prakṛti. Image courtesy of Edwin F. Bryant.

  When ahaṁkāra, or ego, is in turn “churned” by the guṇa of sattva inherent in it, manas, the mind, is produced. The mind is the seat of the emotions, of like and dislike, and is characterized by control of the senses—filtering and processing the potentially enormous amount of incoming sensual data. It primarily receives, sorts, categorizes, and then transmits. It serves as the liaison between the activities of the senses channeling input from the external world, and buddhi, intelligence. It therefore partakes both of internal and external cognition: internally, it is characterized by reflective synthesis, while simultaneously being a sense because it is involved in sensual processes. From ego emerge the five tanmātras, the subtle essences of sound, touch, sight, taste, and smell, which are the qualities perceived through sense perception. Finally, from these qualities emerge the five mahābhūta substances underpinning them, the corresponding gross atoms of ether, air, fire, water, and earth. These evolutes of buddhi, ahaṁkāra, tanmātra, and mahābhūta are essential to an understanding of the various states of samādhi.

  The Yoga school, while using the terminology of buddhi in particular, but also of ahaṁkāra and manas, differs somewhat from that of Sāṁkhya in conceiving these three as interacting functions of the one citta, mind, rather than as three distinct metaphysical layers. Citta, then, as the term used by Patañjali and the commentators to refer to all three of these cognitive functions combined, is one of the most important terms in the Yoga Sūtras. Most importantly for the understanding of Yoga, the puruṣa, pure consciousness, is cloaked in the psychic layers of this citta (as are the gross elements of the material body). The puruṣa is not only completely ontologically and metaphysically distinct from the citta but potentially separable and autonomous. Indeed, such separation is the very goal of Yoga, a goal that is known by such terms as mokṣa, mukti, hana, and kaivalya—all synonyms for “freedom.”

  It is imperative to absorb this essential metaphysical presupposition in order to grasp the basics of Yoga. While the notion of a distinction between the material body and a conscious soul has a well-known history in Western Graeco-Abrahamic religion and thought, Yoga differs from most comparable Western schools of dualism by regarding not just the physical body but also the mind, ego, will, judgment, and all cognitive, conative, and affective functions and intentional thought as belonging to the realm of inert matter. The dualism fundamental to Platonic or Aristotelian thought, or to Paul or Augustine, is not at all the dualism of Yoga. In the Yoga tradition, the dualism is not between the material body and physical reality on one hand, and spiritual and mental reality characterized by thought on the other, but between pure awareness and all objects of awareness—whether these objects are physical and extended, or internal and nonextended. In other words, in Sāṁkhya and Yoga, perception, thought, feeling, emotion, memory (saṁskāra), and so on are as material, physical, and objective as the visible ingredients of the empirical world. Pure consciousness, called puruṣa in this system, animates and pervades the incessant states and fluctuations of the citta, but the two are completely distinct entities.10

  The Seven Stages of Samādhi

  In the opening verses of the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali defines yoga in general as citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ, the stilling of all states of the mind. After a brief discussion of the five states of mind, or vṛttis,11 and of the basic process involved in stilling them, in I.17, we find the following verse, with the Sanskrit text followed by its English translation:

  vitarka vicārānandāsmitā rūpānugamāt saṁprajñātaḥ

  Saṁprajñāta [samādhi] consists of [the consecutive] mental stages of: absorption with “physical awareness,” absorption with “subtle awareness,” absorption with “bliss,” and absorption with “the sense of I-ness.”

  Here we encounter the schematized nature of the Yoga Sūtras as Patañjali turns his attention to the various stages of samādhi, the consecutive levels of mental states ensuing when all thought has, in fact, been stilled, nirodhaḥ, the final goal of yoga. The technical way that the Sanskrit terms for these stages—vitarka, vicāra, ānanda, and asmitā—are being used in this verse here cannot be captured by a suitable English equivalent—in fact, even the Sanskrit terms are something of an artificiality, as the fifteenth-century commentator Vijñānabhikṣu points out, and not to be correlated with their conventional Sanskrit dictionary meanings. They are used variously even within the sūtras themselves.12 And even when terms such as vitarka and vicāra are used elsewhere to denote meditational states (e.g., in the Mahābhārata and Buddhist texts), the definitions given differ considerably from how Patañjali’s commentators understand them in this verse.13 Thus, although the understandings of these terms differ among these traditions,14 there is clearly a common substratum of practice and terminology. It is important to be aware of the shared context of meditational practices in ancient India: Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain expressions in their formative periods may not have been as distinctly demarcated as they later became in scholastic literature.

  In any event, these terms are appropriated by Patañjali as labels to point to supernormal states of consciousness (just as, say, we appropriate existing Latin terms to denote new and previously unknown species of flora that we might discover). Georg Feuerstein likes to think of these terms as “maps,” as the symbols of a map denote far greater entities than the simple signs themselves (the circles, squares, triangles, and so on), and inf
orm and alert the traveler in symbolic form as to what to expect on the road ahead, so the technical terms in this sūtra represent altered states of consciousness far beyond those of everyday conceptual awareness, and thus beyond the ability of conventional concepts and terminologies to describe.15 They are guides for the yogī, alerting him or her to some of the meditative experiences that will be encountered on the path.16

  The first and most seminal commentator, Vyāsa (usually dated ca. 3rd–4th century CE), whose commentary was to become to all intents and purposes as canonical as Patañjali’s work, is curiously not very effusive in his explanation of this rather complex sūtra in his commentary to I.17, but these stages of samādhi are discussed in more depth in I.40–45, so we will consider all of these verses as a unit. Vyāsa notes that vitarka, vicāra, ānanda, and asmitā are four stages of saṁprajñāta samādhi,17 all of which have an ālaṁbana, a support (and the intervening verses between I.17 and I.40 primarily deal with a variety of these ālaṁbanas). The ālaṁbana is an object of concentrative focus upon which the consciousness of the puruṣa, which is still flowing through the citta mind, is supported (albeit in progressively more subtle ways), resisting change into any other state. This ālaṁbana, whatever it might be, produces an unwavering image on the concentrated mind called a pratyaya.18 So, if, as comes highly recommended in the Yoga Sūtras, one concentrates the mind on Īśvara, God, manifest in the sound om, then om is the ālaṁbana and, in these elevated states, produces an undeviating pratyaya, or impression, on the mind of this sound, unbroken by any other thought or sense impression.