Asian Traditions of Meditation

by Halvor Eifring

  The “foul” is regarded as an antidote to attachment, but does not, according to the commentaries, produce calm beyond that of the first meditation. For its associations, and perhaps in addition for its complexity and differentiation, the “foul” also provides a frequent means of eliciting insight into the three signs of impermanence, suffering, and non-self. In the Dhammapada-atthakathā, the decay and decomposition of the body is frequently taught, either through a “real” experience of a corpse, or through the magical conjurings or perhaps visualization of a beautiful woman exhibiting accelerated decay, old age, and death (Buddhist Legends 2 xi 5 and 3 xxv 10). Such “conjurations” perhaps suggest also that internally visualized techniques, from the meditator’s own imagination, were employed in early times. In early texts and modern practice, the beautiful object is described as requiring care; the foul, however, requires a knife-edge of attention, and is only recommended for those receiving extended guidance on meditation retreats or for monastics, who would be paying careful attention to supporting practices.

  The Ten Recollections

  Most of the samatha practices considered so far are conducted in seclusion, sitting down, in the samādhi posture, with eyes open at the outset, then closed to pursue the meditation object, or, if the object is visualized, with eyes closed throughout, though no reference explicitly enjoins this. Apart from the kasiṇa practices, there seems to be no reference to visual awareness in other meditations, apart from the hairs of the head in the first part of the practice on bodily parts.26 Little is said about posture in early Buddhist texts, other than that the back should be straight, the legs crossed, and that the meditator be, or perhaps thereby becomes, “nobly born”—a simple lack of specificity in which one scholar, A. P. Pradhan, has discerned an implicit critique of more arduous and precisely delineated bodily practices associated with Indian yogic systems.27 Some features of sitting meditation seem to have been constant from early times. For instance, the hand position seen in the samādhi posture of early Buddha figures is usually used now.28 There are important meditative, practical, and doctrinal implications in the adoption of a stable, fixed posture for a certain period of time, usually in seclusion. The samādhi posture can be assumed for all of the objects described in this chapter, but requires time and space away from bustle. Other postures should also be noted; Buddhaghosa recommends specific postures for different temperaments. The sculptural depictions of Southern Buddhists show varied postures for Buddha figures, and there is a rich iconography linking gesture, life event, and associated narrative in the Southeast Asian typology of poses of the Buddha.29 It is worth noting that in this volume the adoption of posture as a meditative preparation is also emphasized generally by Eifring, and for specific schools by Mabuchi (neo-Confucianism), Roth (Daoism), Samuel (Tibetan longevity practices), and Myrvold (Sikhism).

  The following group of samatha exercises are the “recollections” (anussati): (1) the Buddha, (2) the teaching, (3) the sangha, the community of those who have attained stages of path, whose representatives are the community of monks and nuns, (4) good conduct or morality (sīla), (5) generosity (cāga), (6) sense-sphere deities (devas), (7) mindfulness of death, (8) mindfulness of body, (9) breathing mindfulness, and (10) mindfulness of peace.

  These exercises are sometimes conducted sitting—as is usually the case for breathing mindfulness—but are distinguished in part by the fact that they can often be practiced in other postures, such as standing or walking, as accompaniments to sitting practice, or even in some cases as exercises to be pursued in daily life. Some, in particular the body and the breath, practiced in particular ways, may be undertaken as secluded sitting exercises leading to the first four jhānas. Others, however, are often undertaken as walking practices and even as daily life practices. Change of posture seems always to have featured as an important part of meditation practice.

  The first three recollections, recollections of the attributes of the Triple Gem, are recommended before meditation. They are also sometimes walking practices, undertaken in groups in collective, chanted meditations at shrines. The first six, including the Triple Gem recollection as well as remembering one’s own good conduct or virtue, generosity, and the presence of devas (the sense-sphere gods who live in happiness and whom one may in time join) are often given by the Buddha to busy people with children around, to businessmen, and to housewives as ways practicing in daily life when there is not time or space for extended sitting practice (Saṃyuttanikāya V 394; Aṅguttaranikāya I 206–11; Aṅguttaranikāya V 332–4). The inclusion of this range of varied supportive meditations, sometimes conducted in different postures, must be stressed, as the recollections are such frequent features in canonical advice. Many are presented within the tradition as essential accompaniments to sitting practice, aimed at addressing one’s orientation to the world and ensuring that the mind and the body are in balance to support meditation. They do not all lead to jhāna, and hence are sometimes overlooked, but by arousing in varied ways qualities such as cheerfulness, confidence, and freedom from fear, as well as allowing meditation involving physical movement, they render other practices sustainable, ensure that the mind is not overstimulated or bored, and allow it to find its own balance under less static or controlled conditions.30 Clearly such difficulties have always been a problem, even in apparently more leisurely times.

  In the first six recollections, qualities are brought to mind discursively. For generosity, for instance, one remembers acts of generosity that one has performed, a practice particularly favored for the dying. For morality, one recollects times one has kept the five precepts. These meditations, often overlooked in modern discussions of the subject, are held to be important for their capacity to bring about confidence and happiness in daily life. One Dhammapada story tells of a suicidal monk, who, just as he is about to use the razor, recollects his own good conduct; filled with joy, he then enters one of the stages of the path (Buddhist Legends 2 viii 11). All six of these recollections, while distinct, are felt to contribute to one another, are often taught together, and while not “simple” enough to lead to jhāna, are thought to bring about an underlying health of mind in daily life and, crucially, in meditation. Their practice, and to some extent their content, is often a little social.

  The other four recollections are termed “mindfulnesses.” The recollection of death is said to produce urgency (saṃvega).31 Then follows mindfulness of body—as Buddhaghosa describes it, this is mindfulness directed toward viewing the parts of the body internally in the mind’s eye. The meditator reviews bodily features, such as bones, blood, phlegm, and so on, with regard to element and color, and learns mastery and equanimity through them. This is presumably always conducted in seclusion. This and the next recollection, breathing mindfulness, are said to take the mind to deeper concentration and jhāna. Indeed, the third recollection in this group, breathing mindfulness, is the most widely used object in the list of forty. As a daily background practice, even during interchanges with others, it can also be used to develop all four jhānas, as well as providing a basis for formless meditation. Indeed, it is noteworthy that the breath also features prominently in systems described by Geoffrey Samuel (Tibetan), Harold D. Roth (Daoist), and Edwin F. Bryant (Yoga Sūtras) in this volume. Breathing mindfulness is perhaps the most popular practice in Southeast Asia and, as Buddhism spreads, in the North Atlantic and in Europe. Dhammadharo writes,

  With one exception, all of the meditation themes mentioned here are simply gocara dhamma—foraging places for the mind. They’re not places for the mind to stay. If we try to go live in the things we see when we’re out foraging, we’ll end up in trouble. Thus, there is one theme that’s termed “vihara dhamma” or “anagocara”: Once you’ve developed it, you can use it as a place to stay. When you practice meditation, you don’t have to go foraging in other themes; you can stay in the single theme that’s the apex of all meditation themes: anapanasati, keeping the breath in mind. This theme, unlike the others, has none
of the features or various deceptions that can upset or disturb the heart.32

  The Ānāpānasati-sutta gives a range of recommendations, which are outside the scope of this study. Breathing mindfulness is, however, taught today as a practice for daily life, with background awareness of breath, or as a practice leading to either samatha or vipassanā, or with elements of both: the breath is moving, unsatisfactory, and impermanent in its manifestation and not “owned,” so it is a natural object for arousing insight into the three “signs.” It also, however, has the capacity to gladden the mind and bring about tranquility, as described in the sixteen stages of breathing mindfulness. In this regard, it is also a natural samatha practice, said to lead to all four jhānas, as well as offer a basis for formless meditation.33 In some schools, the breath is counted, followed, “touched,” and settled, the four stages recommended by Buddhaghosa, and when the visual nimitta has arisen in the mind’s eye, the jhāna factors are developed on the basis of it (Visuddhimagga VIII 145–244).

  The last of these recollections is that of peace. Any moments of tranquility are brought to mind and remembered, an exercise particularly recommended for the practitioner who has attained any stage of the path (Visuddhimagga VIII 245–251).

  The recollections represent an essential, often overlooked element of Buddhist “meditation.” Many are not always sitting practices, though all can be. But the term bhāvanā, meaning “mental development” or “cultivation,” is most commonly used in early texts and modern practice to describe a range of activities, including meditation, discussion, guided thinking about a number of attributes intended to arouse specific qualities (as in the first six recollections), listening to chanting and texts, and participation in investigative dhamma discussion.34 Discussion and investigation are also seen as particularly important bhāvanā, correcting strong views, overpowering hindrances, or even, perhaps most commonly, particularly in monastic settings, overcoming boredom and lassitude. The word bhāvanā means “bringing into being” and is associated with the verb used for the fourth noble truth, the path to awakening, and requires not only “meditation” but other path factors too. Indeed, it would be difficult to find some activity, where the precepts are kept, which is not bhāvanā. So the importance of these recollections cannot be underestimated, and a mix of activities along with “sitting practice” is the usual way of teaching and describing meditation in the texts. Changes of posture, types of activities, and kinds of meditation are often enjoined.35 Very few texts in the canon deal only with “sitting meditation.” The prevalence of such a variety of features involving adaptive change suggests the balance derived from mixing one’s activities, bodily, emotionally, and socially, during the day. This is central and perhaps peculiar to early Buddhist meditative procedure, in a context in which extremes that test body and mind seem to have been more usual.36 In modern practice also, chant, ritual, listening, change of posture, and a good mix of collective and solitary practice are frequent variations and accompaniments to the pursuit of sitting meditation. In many suttas to individual meditators the Buddha gives a number of practices, pursued collectively or singly, and in others suggests a number of postures, including walking.37

  The Brahmavihāras

  The next grouping comprises the meditations on loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the divine abidings (brahmavihāras), also leading to jhāna. These are also considered “beautiful,” but in an emotional sense. In their nonmeditative application, they are considered essential on the Buddhist path; the Dhammasaṅgani list of the factors of a skillful mind (kusala-citta) stresses that one of these is always present in any skillful state, in daily life, as well as those path factors particular to that activity. So these meditations too can and should be cultivated at any time, as part of daily life, without being used as means to obtain jhāna. The Mettā-sutta, a short text wishing happiness to all beings, is constantly employed in Southern Buddhism, for all kinds of purificatory, ceremonial, and restorative purposes, in both public and private contexts (Suttanipāta 143–152). As sitting meditations, both collective and solitary, they are frequently given to lay people, particularly by Sri Lankan teachers, with adaptations so that specific locations are given for the various beings that are mentioned, a practice suggested by the early texts’ instructions to pervade the directions with loving-kindness. So in Halvorsbøle, Norway (at the conference where this essay was first presented), a monk might encourage lay meditators to wish happiness to all beings around Halvorsbøle and the local fjord before allowing the feeling to pervade Norway, and then move out in all directions.38 In the Jātakas and the canonical Mahāsudassana-sutta, these meditations are practiced by lay Universal Monarchs, Gotama in his past lives. They are considered peaceful and restorative, allowing the mind not to be troubled by suffering or excitement.39 The Buddha and his followers frequently practiced these meditations after becoming enlightened.

  The formless spheres we have already considered, so all that remains of the forty meditation objects are the two last: considering the loathsomeness of food, and awareness of the presence of the four elements in one human body, that of the practitioner. The loathsomeness of food is only ever recommended in the canon alongside other practices; a variation is suggested in some modern monastic contexts, though it does not seem to be a lay practice. The last, the defining of the elements, is interesting in that it seems to have become linked with a rich variety of practices popular in recent times. In Laos and Northern Thailand some samatha practices on the elements are conducted in the traditions described by François Bizot, and use meditative diagrams (yantras), often depicted on amulets, as ways of communicating balance and the interplay of the elements within the body. As perhaps suggested by the canonical Mahārahulavāda-sutta, the elements and the balance between them acquire a metaphoric meaning to denote attributes necessary for the jhāna itself, with “earth” related to the “father” and the first jhāna factor, vitakka (the syllable mo); the syllable na (water) to the “mother” and the jhāna factor of vicāra; the syllable ddha (fire) to the “monarch” and the factor of joy (pīti); the syllable bu (air) to the “family” and the factor of happiness (sukha), and the syllable ya (space), the unifying factor, to ekaggattā.40 Extensive meditation teaching is encoded in these yantra, amulet, and ritual procedures, whose source is unknown, though their affinity with Śaivite practices suggests a common heritage.41 Indeed, while hasty generalizations are rash given the highly differentiated nature of the contexts discussed in this volume, practices of various kinds discussed by Madhu Khanna, Geoffrey Samuel, and Kristina Myrvold in this volume suggest that the interweaving of chanting, invocation, visualization, and using a yantra as a guide to a complex investigation of manifestations of the four elements in the body was common in varying degrees to many traditions in India beginning sometime in the first millennium. There seems to have existed a pool of meditative features involving various interplays between them from which various traditions drew. The presence of such features, even perhaps those dating from recent centuries, indicates the continued interchange between folk knowledge, lay practice, ritual, and meditative procedure that seems to animate the Buddhist meditation. “The body” depicted in the yantra is in part a physical one, as the diagrams in figures 7.1 and 7.2 show; with the association of the five jhāna factors, or “limbs” of jhāna, the integration of the physical with the emotional and the mental is suggested with this meditative body.

  These practices indicate that the interplay between meditative practice, modern accretions, and traditional canonical and commentarial recommendations is rich and complex in modern Southern Buddhism.