Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  Notes

  1. Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy; Whicher, Integrity of the Yoga Darśana; Larson, Classical Sāṁkhya; Bryant, Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.

  2. Maitrī Upaniṣad 2nd century BCE, (VI.18); Viṣṇu Purāṇa, 4th–6th century (VI.7.91).

  3. Mahābhārata, XII.304.7.

  4. Brockington, “Epic Yoga”; Sarbacker, Samadhi.

  5. Brockington, “Epic Yoga.”

  6. Jacobi, “Dates of the Philosophical Sūtras”; Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy; Larson and Battacharya, Yoga.

  7. Nicholson, Unifying Hinduism.

  8. Larson and Battacharya, Yoga.

  9. For histories of Sāṁkhya, see Colebrooke and Wilson, Sāṅkhya-Kārikā; Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy; Johnston, Early Sāṁkhya; Chakravarti, Origin and Development; Larson, Classical Sāṁkhya; Larson, “Classical Yoga as Neo-Sāṁkhya”; Larson and Bhattacharya, Samkhya; Jacobsen, Prakṛti in Sāṁkhya Yoga; Gopal, Retrieving Sāṁkhya History; and Dutta, Sāṁkhya.

  10. In Christian mysticism, the dualism between the Creator and the created divides the world in a way similar to Sāṁkhya and Yoga; cf. Eifring, “Spontaneous Thoughts in Meditative Traditions.”

  11. These are right knowledge, error, imagination, deep sleep, and memory (I.5–11).

  12. Vitarka in II.33, and asmitā in II.6, denote very different things from what they are held to denote in I.17 quoted above: in the former, an unwanted saṁskāra, memory imprint, surfacing in the mind, and in the latter, an extension of ignorance involving misidentification with the body and mind.

  13. The relationship between the four stages of samādhi outlined in this verse and the four jhānas (Skt. dhyānas) outlined in Buddhist meditation has long been noted. (The term dhyāna occurs as the seventh of the eight limbs of Patañjali’s system, III.2, but is used in Buddhism and also in older Hindu texts such as the Gītā and Mahābhārata as a synonym for samādhi, Patañjali’s final stage). The Buddha speaks of attaining the first dhyāna, which consists of vitarka, vicāra, and viveka, and then proceeding to attain the other three stages of dhyāna (Majjhima Nikāya I.246–247). While a full discussion of these Buddhist stages is beyond the scope of this chapter, there are several different lists of the four dhyāna (samādhi) states in the Buddhist abhidhamma schools, and the most important of these include vitarka and vicāra, the first two items mentioned in this sūtra by Patañjali, under the first dhyāna. Moreover, ānanda, the third item mentioned by Patañjali (or its correlate, sukha), is experienced in the first three of the four stages of dhyāna. Only the final item from this sūtra, asmitā, “I-am-ness,” does not have a clear parallel in Buddhism—hardly surprising given the Buddhist rejection of an autonomous puruṣa. It also is worth mentioning in this regard Bhīṣma’s mention of the four dhyānas in the Hindu Mahābhārata epic (Bhīṣma too is clearly using the term dhyāna as a synonym of samādhi). Bhīṣma includes in his first stage of dhyāna three features (vitarka, vicāra, and viveka), thereby paralleling the Buddhist system (XII.188.1–22), but, unlike Buddhism, within an ātma, or self, framework.

  14. The Yoga tradition’s understanding tends to situate the psychological basis of the samādhi states within the cosmological framework of Sāṁkhyan evolution, where the Buddhists do not do so.

  15. Feuerstein, Yoga-Sūtra of Patañjali.

  16. For analyses of these states, see Koelman, Patañjala Yoga; Feuerstein, Philosophy of Classical Yoga; Feuerstein, Yoga Tradition; Whicher, Integrity of the Yoga Darśana; Chapple, Reconciling Yogas; Larson and Bhattacharya, Yoga; and Bryant, Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.

  17. Also known as sabīja samādhi. Sabīja, “with seed,” points to the fact that the mind is still being used to channel awareness onto an object of concentration, albeit exclusively. Any object upon which the mind focuses, leaves a saṁskāra, seed imprint of itself.

  18. I understand a pratyaya as the momentary content of a vṛtti, and a vṛtti as a particular sequence of pratyayas; a saṁskāra is the impression left on the mind of every sense object it encounters or thought it entertains, and partly corresponds to memory.

  19. Vijñānabhikṣu points out that the various types of samāpatti occur as results of saṁprajñāta samādhi. Samādhi in general might best be understood in terms of the goal of yoga as defined in the very beginning of the Yoga Sūtras in I.2, namely, the state when all vṛttis of the mind have been stilled; samāpatti is, a bit more specifically, the complete identification of the mind with the object of meditation. Put simply, the former is the more general or overall state of the stilled mind, the latter the more specific content or object upon which the mind has settled itself in order to become still. Complete mental identification with and absorption in an object, ālaṁbana, by definition, can obviously only occur when all other vṛttis have been stilled, and the mind is without distraction; hence samāpatti occurs only in the context of samādhi.

  20. This simile is encountered numerous times throughout the commentaries, albeit used variously, and has attained wide usage in Hindu philosophical circles.

  21. This trait is pivotal in understanding the metaphysics of the siddhis, the mystic powers of chapter III, which feature such an act of samāpatti. However, in the context of the mystic powers, the act of samāpatti is referred to as saṁyama, which points to a more active intentional and manipulative potential of mental absorption, rather than a nonintentional, passive one.

  22. See, for example, the completely different interpretation given to Vedānta Sūtra I.1.5–9 by Madhva compared to that given by Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja.

  23. For example, our Yoga commentator Vācaspati Miśra in his Nyāyavārttika tātparyatīkā.

  24. See Vācaspati Miśra’s commentary on Sāṁkhya Kārikā XXVII. The language used in the Kārikās and the Yuktidīpikā for the two types of perception differs from the more standard usage in Nyāya and elsewhere.

  25. Technically this process of recognition involves identifying the object’s samānya, universal, and viśeṣa, particularity, metaphysical categories of reality that need not detain us here.

  26. This means the tamas component (the dense quality that produces stillness and inertia) of the three guṇas, which are the metaphysical qualities that comprise prakṛti, is increased vis-à-vis the other guṇas (rajas, the energetic quality, and sattva, the translucent quality of lightness and wisdom).

  27. Almost an entire chapter of the Yoga Sūtras is dedicated to the mystic powers that pervade yogic narratives of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism from its earliest beginnings until modern times (see Bryant, Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, 301ff. for discussion).

  28. The term liṅga (that which is a sign) is used here for buddhi, which is in turn an evolute of prakṛti, referred to in I.45 as aliṅga (that which has no sign). Liṅga, a common term in Nyāya, the School of Logic, literally means “a sign,” and indicates that buddhi’s existence is inferred by its “signs,” that is to say its characteristics. In Hindu logic, an inference is made on the basis of a sign or characteristic, for example, the presence of an unperceived fire is inferred based on the perception of smoke, which is the “sign,” liṅga, of fire). Primordial, precreation prakṛti is aliṅga, since, being a state in which the guṇas are completely latent, it has no “signs” or characteristics (any characteristics in the form of its evolutes come later, once the guṇas have been activated).

  29. Vijñānabhikṣu is uncharacteristically vague about this third stage of ānanda samādhi, although he explicitly disagrees with Vācaspati Miśra that it is supported by the sense organs. He states that in ānanda samādhi, the mind experiences bliss due to an increase of sattva, but he does not specify the location of this bliss. He merely notes that at this point the object of meditation is no longer perceived as consisting of even the subtle elements, as was the case in the previous stage, but is experienced as pure sāttvic bliss (about which all of the commentators agree, understandably, given the name Patañjali assigns this thir
d type of samādhi).

  30. II.8ff. For our purposes in this chapter, we can correlate Patañjali’s puruṣa not only with the ātman of the Upaniṣads but also with the references to brahman in these texts without engaging the millennia-old discussion of the Vedānta tradition as to whether and how there are differences between ātman/puruṣa and brahman.

  31. The commentators take the prakṛtilāyas, those “merged in prakṛti, matter” to refer to entities who consider themselves to be either unmanifest, primordial prakṛti, or buddhi, the first evolute from prakṛti, or the second evolute, ahaṁkāra, or even the tanmātras, five subtle elements. In other words, more or less anyone who does not identify the self as being the gross material body made of the five gross elements, but still identifies the self as being some other, more subtle aspect of prakṛti, could be considered prakṛtilāya “merged in matter.” In this the commentators follow the Sāṁkhya Kārikā XLVI, in which the state of prakṛtilāyaḥ in question is held to come from vairāgya, “nonattachment” (I.15). In his commentary to this verse in the Sāṁkhyā Kārikā, the commentator Gauḍapāda states, “One might have vairāgya but without knowing the twenty-four evolutes of prakṛti. This state, which is founded on ignorance, is … prakṛtilāyanaḥ. At death, such a person is not liberated, but is merged into the eight evolutes of prakṛti—pradhāna, intelligence, ego, and the five subtle elements. From there, he returns again to saṁsāra.” However, “one merged in this state thinks ‘I am liberated.’ This is a type of ignorance.”

  32. We can note that in the last two stages of samādhi, by the antireflexivity principle, one can not technically speaking know the grahaṇa or grahitṛ, because “acts of knowing” can take place only via these “instruments of knowledge” and by the “knowers” themselves. Rather, awareness becomes “aware” of them. This consideration can help us better appreciate this relentless progression toward the source of awareness: from gross objects of knowledge to their subtle substrates to the instruments of knowledge themselves and, beyond again, to the ultimate prakṛtic “knower,” until finally one arrives at puruṣa itself, the very source of awareness.

  33. “That which one cannot grasp with one’s mind [i.e., ātman/brahman], by which, they say, the mind is grasped” (Kena I.5); “By what means can one know the knower?” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka II.4.13); “You can’t see the seer who does the seeing; you can’t hear the hearer who does the hearing; you can’t think the thinker who does the thinking; you can’t perceive the perceiver who does the perceiving” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka III.4.2); “Sight does not go there, nor does thinking or speech. We don’t know it, we can’t perceive it, so how one would express it?” (Kena I.3); “Not by speech, not by the mind, not by sight can he be grasped. How else can that be experienced, other than by saying ‘He is’” (Kaṭha VI.12); “The self cannot be grasped by multiple teachings or by the intellect” (Muṇḍaka III.2.3).

  34. However, as Śaṅkara notes, this “I-am-ness,” asmitā, is not the same as the asmitā listed as an obstacle to yoga in II.3. Asmitā in the context of the kleśas (obstacles, afflictions) in II.2 and II.7 involves a misidentification of puruṣa with what it is not, and thus corresponds to ahaṁkāra. Asmitā as kleśa involves an object of “I am,”—that is, “I am this body and mind,” and so on. The asmitā in the context of samādhi is when the mind experiences an “I-am-ness” in the sense of the true subject of awareness, viz., “the source of my awareness is puruṣa.”

  35. The same phenomenon is also preserved in the English theist/atheist, sexual/asexual, and so on.

  36. Or nine types, if one subscribes to Vācaspati Miśra’s sānandā/nirānandā, sāsmitā/nirasmitā schema, which need not detain us here (but see Koelman, Patañjala Yoga, for an approving analysis of these).

  37. The other three states of consciousness are waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

  38. I use the term “self-aware” loosely and heuristically, since “self” implies “other,” and the ultimate stage of asaṁprajñāta samādhi, kaivalya (lit. “aloneness”; IV.34), by definition, involves the absence of any “other.”

  39. God, Īśvara, is introduced by Patañjali only in relation to his stated purpose in the sūtras, in terms of his relevance to attaining citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ; he provides little information as to the relationship of this entity to the liberated puruṣa. For a sense of the Vaiṣṇava theistic position that direct self-perception of the puruṣa is a secondary and even undesirable goal compared to the perception and relationship with the supreme and distinct puruṣa, Īśvara, see Bryant, Krishna, xxxv.

  Bibliography

  Brockington, John. “Epic Yoga.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 123–138.

  Bryant, Edwin. Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God. London: Penguin, 2003.

  ———. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary. New York: North Point Press, 2009.

  Chakravarti, Pulinbihari. Origin and Development of the Sāṁkhya System of Thought. Calcutta: Metropolitan, 1951.

  Chapple, Christopher. Reconciling Yogas. Albany: State University of New York, 2003.

  Colebrooke, H. T., and H. H. Wilson. Sāṅkhya-Kārikā: Translated from the Sanscrit by H. T. Colebrooke, also The Bhashya, or Commentary of Gaudapada; Translated and Illustrated by an Original Comment, by H. H. Wilson. Bombay: Tookaram Tatya, 1887.

  Dasgupta, S. A History of Indian Philosophy. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1922.

  Dutta, Deepti. Sāṁkhya: A Prologue to Yoga. New Delhi: Khama, 2001.

  Eifring, Halvor. “Spontaneous Thoughts in Meditative Traditions.” In Meditation and Culture: The Interplay of Practice and Context, edited by Halvor Eifring, 200–215.

  Feuerstein, Georg. The Philosophy of Classical Yoga. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1996.

  ———. The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali: A New Translation and Commentary. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1989.

  ———. The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy, and Practice. Prescott, AZ: Hohm Press, 2001.

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  4 MADHU KHANNA

  Yantra and Cakra in Tantric Meditation

  Śāktism is best defined as a “doctrine of power or energy” personified in female form, centered on the worship of the goddess as a supreme, ultimate principal, who is considered as a source of creation that animates and governs existence. Śāktism is traceable to the oldest layers of India’s cultural history. With the rise of Tantric Śākta traditions around the sixth century AD came an affirmation of the concept of Śākti as pure consciousness, her transcendence and all pervasive immanence as supreme godhead. Tantric Śāktism introduced a special method of worshipping the goddess by me
ans of yantra, mantra, mudrā, and a host of internal meditations involving the arousal of the latent cosmic energy in the subtle body.

  This chapter attempts to give a broad view of some of the meditational practices of the Śrīvidyā school of Hindu Śākta Tantra. The presiding deity of the Śrīvidyā school is the goddess Tripurasundarī, who is worshipped in an all-inclusive linear abstract (aniconic) symbol, the Śrīyantra (also referred to as the Śrīcakra). The Śrīyantra is a primary defining characteristic of the Śrīvidyā school and is conceived as being identical with the goddess and her creation. At the same time, the Śrīyantra is a dominant medium of worship. Given the multifaceted nature of Śākta rituals, I will briefly summarize the diversity inherent in meditation practices, emphasizing shifts of meaning and interpretation. These include simple meditational visualizations of the deity that border on external ritual acts, complex yantra meditations discussed in the exegetical writings of the erudite sage-scholar

  Bhāskararāya Makhin (ca. 1690–1785 AD). Bhāskararāya Makhin, a polymath of rare brilliance and traditional Sanskrit scholarship, is considered an authority on the Śrīvidyā school of Tāntric Śāktism. His commentaries give a brilliant analysis of philosophical and yogic aspects of the Śrīvidyā tradition. His distinction lies in his ability to decode coded passages in a lucid style. In his commentaries, he draws on a large number of authoritative sources from the Vedas down to the Kashmirian Agamas and weaves them together with extraordinary skill so as to reconcile their differences. His exegetical writings attempt to synthesize the orthodox Vedic and Kashmirian Agama tradition, thereby creating an inclusive interpretation of the goddess. While Bhāskararāya provides a specialist’s insight of inner meditation supported by a sophisticated theological tradition, there are even more elusive homologies between the external yantra and the cakras of the subtle body that connect and gather together all the elements and planes of the universe in a single meditative experience. It is essential to comment on the diversity of such meditative technologies of the spirit, as these traditions are entirely lineage-based, and are, therefore, open to any number of variations. Moreover, they arise from a religious culture that is not anchored in inflexible dogma.