Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
© Mahabodhi Burton
11 minute read
This excerpt is from Chapter 10 and follows on from The Second Dhyana.
Calming down
Pacification
In the transition from the lucid confidence and inspiration of the second dhyana to the ‘calm abiding’ of the third dhyana, the mind is said to go through the stage of pacification (passaddhi).[1] Kamalashila identifies pacification with the process by which the rapture that characterizes the second dhyana is ‘contained’ by the subtler feelings of bliss which characterize the third.
‘Bliss is gentler and subtler. But though less dramatic, it is in its quiet way actually more intense. Rapture is traditionally compared to the delicious feeling of anticipation when you know that you are about to get the very thing you’ve always wanted. Bliss is more like enjoying the satisfaction of actually possessing it. Bliss is thus a deeper stage of integration in which the mind has begun to absorb the wilder and less refined sensations of rapture. With experience, you become less attached to these relatively coarse feelings and move towards a deeper, stronger state of happiness. The occurrence of rapture and bliss show that increased concentration is an intensely satisfying experience.’ [2]
There is a strong idea in the West that the aim of meditation involves a withdrawal from the world into an unhindered and detached world of bliss; it is very common in the New Age narrative, which takes its’ cue from Hinduism, but Buddhism is not like that. In fact, personal happiness can be a trap, a beautiful prison.
Flow
Aristotle identified happiness as predominantly to do with activity. Based on the same idea, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975 identified the concept of flow.
‘A flow state, also known colloquially as being ‘in the zone’, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time.’[3]
When a person has a set of challenges, and their skills out-match those challenges, they feel bored; when their skills are not up to the challenges they face, they feel anxious; But when their skills match their challenges they enter into the happy and absorbed state of flow. This is because spiritual pleasure arises on the basis of actual achievement; of meeting and addressing various real-world challenges.
We can experience something similar to flow–called ‘hyperfocus’–when playing video games, but as this can be a form of hiding from the real world, it thus is a pitfall to true concentration.[4] So, we can identify a ‘hierarchy of flow’, with hyperfocus at the one end and ‘true flow’ at the other, the difference being that with ‘true flow’ the challenges we meet actually solve real world problems.
The problem with being captured by hyperfocus is that once we emerge from it the problems we were ignoring are still there; the ‘new age bliss-bunny’ still needs to face the challenge of dealing with the world outside of the bubble they have engineered for themselves; the thought of engaging with which is painful; and the skills to deal with which are lacking.
It is only through constantly extending the challenges we choose to face that we will ever experience the ultimate in flow, which is True Flow, which, because it engages the whole of existence as its’ challenge, and meets that challenge with the ultimate skilfulness, will never be followed by disappointment. This constant expansion of the capacity of the mind and emotions to deal with reality is the process called Pacification;
‘It is interesting to see how bliss arises from rapture. As absorption takes a firmer hold, the experience of bliss becomes, as it were, larger, and it increasingly contains the feelings of rapture. This process of containing is sometimes known as prasrabdhi, and it is through increased prasrabdhi that the concentration deepens further. The deepening bliss gradually assimilates the bubbly, thrilling energy that is released through rapture. Prasrabdhi makes the mind pliable, flexible and very easily worked. It is a maturing and strengthening quality that is very characteristic of higher states of consciousness and is important in meditation generally.’[5]
The monk’s mind is increasingly not the same as it was before; the intensive practice of ethics and meditation have exercised and stretched their (interconnected) body and mind to the point where they now manifest various qualities; body and mind now have the qualities of;
- Calm / tranquillity / serenity /composure (passadhi)
- Quickness / lightness / buoyancy (Pali: lahuta)
- Malleability / pliancy / softness (Pali: muduta)
- Preparedness / workability / adaptability (Pali: kammannata)
- Soundness /proficiency (Pali: pagunnata)
- Rectitude (Pali: ujjukata)[6]
We can think of the difference between an enthusiastic if talented novice and a calm and skilled master-craftsman; the excitement of the second dhyana is replaced by a quiet confidence and proficiency, robustly supported by mindfulness and clear comprehension—two qualities singled out in the description of the third dhyana.
Calmness
We enter the third dhyana when we are completely still in mind and body;
“The third dhyana is a very still state. There is no sense of movement and the feeling of contentment is rock steady.”[7]
The Buddha is talking to a group of Jains, who propose that because of the pleasure his power commands, King Bimbisara—the local ruler—must be happier than the Buddha. The Buddha asks if the King can ‘stay in one place without moving his body or uttering a word, experiencing the peak of pleasure for seven days and nights …or even for one day or night?’ The Jains admit that they don’t think that the King could do that, and therefore that, as the Buddha could easily do this, he must be happier than the King. The level of calm that the Buddha experiences requires a great deal of imagination; these verses from the Dhammapada point to it;
He is calm like the earth that endures
He is steady like a column that is firm
He is pure like a lake that is clear
He is free from samsara–the endless round of suffering.
In the light of his vision
He has found true freedom.
His thoughts are peace,
His words are peace,
And his work is peace[8]
All four foundations—body, feeling, mind and views—now begin to function to augment the maximum calm; there will be no anxious or fearful mental state manifesting in the body as restlessness; as the meditator approaches the third dhyana their mind will be completely aligned with the reality of their body, and will always use it appropriately; the body will therefore be completely empty of tension. In terms of perspective our mind is so expansive that it makes everyday problems appear as ripples on an unruffled sea, or clouds in an infinite clear blue sky, as we see Conditionality and its workings completely clearly.
Buoyancy
Buoyancy is the natural tendency to return to an elevated state when depressed, like a beach ball held under water being released. On a physical level, whenever we exercise regularly—especially if we have for many years—our body will more quickly return to a buoyant state. A Shaolin monk is a good example of a person highly trained in the martial arts who exhibits an incredible lightness and fluidity of movement. It isn’t that we should all become Shaolin monks, but some practice of bodywork or martial arts, such as Yoga, Chi Kung, Tai Chi or Karate will be essential to our meditation practice if we are to take it at all seriously. It is the same with our mind; the more regularly we practice developing buoyant states of mind, the easier it will be to spring back into those whenever we fall away from them.
As we approach the third dhyana our mind develops an agile, light, connected quality; being able to turn unhindered to whatever it chooses; this quick quality is represented by the figure of Tara—the Bodhisattva of Compassion in Action—who is known always to respond quickly to suffering. We may notice this quality on retreat, when have been doing more meditation than usual; sensing that someone at breakfast needs the marmalade, we pass it to them before they ask.
Malleability
The Pali adjective mudu means soft; mild; tender;[9] the mind is pliable rather than brittle, the emotions tender. In the third dhyana the mind has a plastic, impressionable quality; it is receptive and teachable. Through practice our mind, emotions and imagination become pliable, they bend but don’t break. With more suppleness and flexibility, the mind can better adjust when it experiences a change in circumstance. Practices like the mindfulness of breathing no doubt help develop this quality as the mind has to remain pliable if it is to stay with the unpredictable sensations of the breath. Having said this, any meditation practice—to the extent that it stretches the mind beyond its habitual ways of functioning—does so. With this pliable quality to the mind, we are really able to learn from our experience. In the body mudu manifests as softness and lack of tension.
Workability
A Buddhist monks’ meditation practice is sometimes called his kammatthana or ‘place of work.’ The quality of workability is lacking in the hindrances, because the mind is either too soft or too rigid to work with:
‘While the mind is in the flames of passion it is too soft to be workable, as molten gold is. If on the contrary, the mind is too rigid then it is comparable to untempered gold.’[10]
Untempered gold—as an untempered mind—is brittle, with a tendency to fragment. In the process of developing skilful mental states, we may have to work our mind, emotion and imagination quite hard. After a while out in the world as the person is influenced by other factors that workability may wear off. When that is the case, the person needs to return to meditation (seen in the sense of overall attention to the psyche—mind and body) and re-establish it.
Being capable and proficient
A person in the third dhyana is creative in every way they respond to the world; in the Karaniya Metta Sutta—the root text on loving kindness from the Buddhist tradition—the Buddha expresses the idea that if a person wishes to develop unbounded loving kindness, they will need to possess qualities similar to those listed above:
‘This is to be done by one skilled in aims, who wants to break through to the state of peace: Be capable, upright, straightforward, easy to instruct, gentle, not conceited, content, easy to support, with few duties, living lightly, with peaceful faculties, masterful, modest and no greed for supporters. Do not do the slightest thing that the wise (Pali: vinnu) would later censure.’
Becoming more capable (in skilfulness) seems to be what we achieve when we enter the third dhyana; we no longer talk about things enthusiastically, we actually get on and do them. The above six qualities do not magically manifest because we have entered the third dhyana, it is the other way around; only when our mind, our emotions and our imagination are fully informed by these qualities do we enter third dhyana.
Pagunnata has the general sense of capability, which has the following synonyms; ‘capacity, competence, effectiveness, efficiency, facility, means, potential, power, proficiency, skill, wherewithal, adequacy, aptitude, art, craft, cunning, efficacy, faculty, might, potency, potentiality, qualification and qualifiedness.’
To enter the third dhyana, we need to develop this quality of proficiency in the mind. This indicates that the person in the third dhyana is self-assured, competent and skilled in creating happiness.
Rectitude
Moral rectitude begins to significantly manifest when our skilfulness starts to become really effective. To enter into the third dhyana, we need to develop a quality of ethical uprightness or moral rectitude in the mind, and while this quality is implicit in the dhyanas, at this stage it becomes particularly apparent. We saw earlier that looking after the body so that it is supportive to activities that lead to happiness is a moral action in itself, even though on the surface it might seem self-indulgent. ,
Emerging from the third dhyana, we will respond to the challenges of the world with composure, agility, flexibility, adaptability, competence, and ethical skill, like a well-trained athlete facing a physical challenge. Not only that, but these qualities also form the basis for taking reality in; and thus, for the development of wisdom.
In his book Great Faith Great Wisdom,[11] Ratnaguna points out how; ‘when the Buddha met someone, he would often give what’s called a “graduated discourse”, talking first about generosity and its benefits, then morality and the heavenly realms, the dangers of indulging in desires, and the benefits of renunciation. Only then, if he could see that his listener was ready, would he give them a “wisdom” teaching, that is, something about the way things are.’ The sutras would use a stock phrase to indicate the readiness of the listener’s mind, something like;
‘And then, when the Buddha saw that [his listener’s] mind was ready (Pali: kalla): malleable (mudu), unbiased (Pali: vinivarana), exalted (Pali: udagga), and clear (Pali: pasanna); then he taught them the way things are.’
The qualities that make up the ‘ready-mind’ are that it is mudu, which we came across in the previous list, meaning ‘soft, gentle, tender,’ therefore ‘pliable, malleable, flexible, workable;’ Ratnaguna also suggests ‘receptive, responsive, sensitive.’ It is, as a result, vinivarana, namely, unbiased, unhindered [not a hindrance (nivarana)], unobstructed or unprejudiced’ and therefore ‘open-minded, able, and willing to see things in a new way.’ Being unhindered, it is udagga, meaning ‘exalted, elated, exultant.’ And finally, it is passanna, which means ‘clear, bright, happy, gladdened, pleased,’ specifically ‘pleased in one’s conscience,’ also ‘trust, belief, faith.’ With these qualities in place the monk is able to absorb the way that things are, just as a clean cloth might properly absorb a coloured dye. Ratnaguna links the above qualities to the terms ‘Imagination,’ ‘the Imaginative faculty’ and ‘the Imaginal realm,’ indicating the crucial importance of imagination in human development, and in Buddhist practice in general.
The qualities in both lists point to what the ‘calm abiding’ that is the third dhyana really is: it is those qualities supremely developed.
In dependence on calming down there arises happiness / bliss (sukha)
Happiness / bliss
Third dhyana
Having completed the process of pacification, the monk enters into the third dhyana, in which rapture (and we might also say inspiration) has died away, being replaced by the predominant experience of happiness or bliss. As the Buddha says in the Samannaphala Sutta:
‘Furthermore, indifferent to rapture, the meditator, mindful, clearly comprehending and equanimous, experiences that happiness in the body about which the noble ones declare, “The mindful and equanimous one abides in happiness”, and they enter and abide in the third dhyana.
They pervade, drench, saturate and suffuse this very body with the happiness that is free from rapture, so that there is no part of their entire body that is not suffused with happiness.’[12]
This immersive happiness is illustrated by an image of lotus flowers completely immersed in water:
‘Suppose, there were in a lotus pond blue, white and red lotuses that have been born in the water, grow in the water, never rise above the water but are nourished immersed in water. From the tips to the roots they are pervaded, drenched, saturated and suffused with water so that there is no part of the lotus that is not suffused with cool water.
‘In this way the practitioner pervades, drenches, saturates and suffuses this very body with the happiness that is free from rapture, so that there is no place in their entire body that is not suffused with happiness.’[13]
Image courtesy of nguyendinhson067 on Pixabay.
Where in the second dhyana the cool water was welling up from below, now it is all around; it is almost as if, rather than the inspiration coming from outside of the monk, as perhaps an inspiring idea, now it is more the person who inspires themselves (in a non-egoistic way); there is a certain satisfaction, with their progress.
The lotus is a symbol of spiritual growth; water often symbolizes the unconscious; and so, we could say that the third dhyana is a thorough pervasion of the psyche by skilful mental states and the karmic fruits thereof, hence the predominant experience of happiness.
Sangharakshita compares the third dhyana to the state of the mystic, although it would need to be a specifically Buddhist one; as a Christian mystic—or a mystic of another faith—might experience divine revelation, but this is not the third dhyana; when a person emerges from the third dhyana they will act like a Buddhist and not a Christian; in practising mindfulness and clear comprehension; two key qualities of the third dhyana; the confidence of the third dhyana comes specifically from having mastered skilfulness.
In dependence on happiness there arises concentration (samadhi)
The chapter goes on to explore the fourth dhyana.
[1] Sanskrit: prashrabdhi. Although not singled out as a dhyana factor in the Buddhist commentaries in the way that rapture and happiness are, passaddhi is frequently interpolated between them in Spiral Path sequences, such as in the Upanisa Sutta.
[2] Kamalashila. (2012) ‘Buddhist Meditation: Tranquillity, Imagination and Insight.’ Windhorse. Chapter 6.
[3] Flow (Psychology). Wikipedia.
[4] ‘The flow state shares many characteristics with hyperfocus. However, hyperfocus is not always described in a positive light. Some examples include spending “too much” time playing video games or becoming pleasurably absorbed by one aspect of an assignment or task to the detriment of the overall assignment. In some cases, hyperfocus can “capture” a person, perhaps causing them to appear unfocused or to start several projects but complete few. Hyperfocus is often mentioned “in the context of autism, schizophrenia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – conditions that have consequences on attentional abilities”.’ Flow (Psychology). Wikipedia.
[5] Buddhist Meditation: Tranquillity, Imagination and Insight. Chapter 6
[6] The Theravada Abhidharma lists each of these qualities in terms of ‘Pacification of body and sense’ (kaya-passadhi) and ‘Pacification of mind’ (citta-passadhi).
[7] Leigh Brasington. (2015) Right Concentration. Shambhala. p56.
[8] Buddha Puja, based upon the Dhammapada.
[9] ‘Mudu.’ Concise Pali English Dictionary.
[10] ‘Kammannata.‘ Wikipedia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kammannata
[11] Ratnaguna. (2016) Great Faith, Great Wisdom. Windhorse. p5-7.
[12] Samannaphala Sutta. Translation by Sarah Shaw.
[13] Ibid.
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