The Dhyanas

Posted By Mahabodhi on Apr 14, 2024 | 0 comments

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…

© Mahabodhi Burton

6 minute read

This excerpt is from Chapter 10 and follows on from The Spiral Path.

Samatha meditation

The traditional understanding of meditation is that it is the way we work directly on our mind and emotions in order to bring happiness into the world and overcome suffering, for ourselves and others. What we are going to do is first look at samatha or calming meditation and then at vipassana  or insight meditation. The literal translation of samatha is ‘calm abiding’;^[1] but by calm we don’t just mean unruffled; the implication is much broader than that.

The dhyanas

Successful samatha meditation is represented by the dhyanas. It could be argued that all Buddhist meditation is meditation on ethics and nothing else, leading as it does to increasingly skilful mental states; symbolized by dhyana.

The first and most basic of the dhyanas is described by the Buddha as ‘secluded from unskilful mental states’; the others building upon it, in the sense of being states of increasing skilfulness. In the highest—the fourth dhyana—the meditator is completely focused on Awakening for themselves and others; acting on that vision with power and robustness fortified by equanimity.

The hindrances to meditation are five states that in one way or another are un-conducive to bringing happiness into the world. Two concern the mind or body being unready to be skilful because of their energies being too high or too low; with ‘restlessness and anxiety’ the energy in the mind or body is too high to be able to focus clearly; with ‘sloth and torpor’ it is too weak to be useful. The other hindrances to meditation are ‘(irrational) doubt’, ‘sense desire’ and ‘ill-will’; unskilful mental states which I will explore later on.

Once the hindrances are completely eradicated one enters into the full mental absorption of the dhyanas, which are, in all likelihood, a —systematisation imposed upon the Buddha’s meditation experience by monks compiling the Buddhist texts at a later date.^[2] And while those texts mention eight dhyanas— it is clear that only the first four refer to the Buddha’s experience.^[3] The dhyanas are basically a ‘schematic’, representing the four stages a person has to go through in order to be as skilful as they can be and also to clearly see things as they really are, and are exclusively Buddhist.^[4]

The main thrust of the dhyanas is they manifest increasing mindfulness and skilfulness of mind and body, with two outcomes:

1. The monk maximizes the skilfulness–and thus happiness, brought into the world for himself and others.
2. He makes himself as prepared as he can be for the challenges that life will bring

Buddhist practice encompasses an inward and outward aspect, not unlike breathing. We retreat from the world into meditation practice to create the simplest and most conducive conditions for building up skilful mental states, and the dhyanas mark four stages of intensification of this process, which we could characterize respectively as being;

First dhyana–(skilfully) focused

Second dhyana–(skilfully) inspired

Third dhyana–(skilfully) capable

Fourth dhyana–(skilfully) unshakeable

For instance, we go from thinking loving kindness or mindfulness is a good idea, to being inspired about them, to being really capable at them and finally to unshakeability in relation to them. ‘Neuroplasticity can be viewed as a general umbrella term that refers to the brain’s ability to modify, change, and adapt both structure and function throughout life and in response to experience,’[5] and according to neuroscience it increases with meditation practice. The process of pacification, which takes place prior to the third dhyana, takes place as the psyche successfully adapts itself to the meditation subject. So, samatha is not only about being calm, but also about our adapting to the world as it is, rather than how we want it to be. In the process of the pacification of the mind (citta-passadhi), it also becomes buoyant, soft, sound and morally upright. And a similar process happens within the body and the senses (kaya-passadhi), all of which points to the presence in the third dhyana of a skilfully capable person.

The fact that the third dhyana is described as a ‘calm abiding’ point to it being the fruition and culmination of samatha meditation, and the furthest that meditation can go before vipassana begins to come into play, in the fourth dhyana.

The (skilful) mental states cultivated will be determined by the meditation practice we are undertaking; for instance, on entering the third dhyana while practising the metta bhavana our emotions will be powerfully connected to living beings everywhere, genuinely caring about them and wanting them to thrive. The outward aspect is where we take those mental states out into the world and express them, thus benefitting others.

The Nirvana Sutra^[6] is the Chinese counterpart of the Pali Upanisa Sutta, and as it contains a more detailed structure of the Spiral Path, I will use it to illustrate how the dhyanas and the lower portion of the Spiral Path work together.

Unsatisfactoriness

The Spiral Path begins at the point where the monk starts to see life on the Wheel as unsatisfactory (dukkha); he is fed up with repeating the same old patterns and getting the same old results and starts to look for another way of being. He sees how an attempt to extract as much pleasant (worldly) feeling from life as possible—and likewise to avoid as much painful (worldly) feeling as possible—doesn’t really work, because it put his life at the mercy of circumstance. Instead, he begins to follow the instructions of the Satipatthana Sutta which describe the monk as “having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief,” in other words he abandons looking for his source of happiness outside of himself, through the hindrance of sense desire, or pushing away that in the world which he finds unpleasant, through the hindrance of aversion or ill-will. Instead, he looks within, taking responsibility for his own happiness by putting into practice the four foundations of mindfulness. He might take up the instructions in this book, clearly comprehending Conditionality and how it relates to them. Then, to the extent that this strategy works, in that it delivers happiness to himself and others on a regular basis, the hindrance of (irrational) doubt abates, and in its place confidence (in the Three Jewels) arises; the monk places his heart more and more on the Buddhist path.

In dependence on unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) there arises confidence (shraddha)

Confidence

We saw that there are three grounds for confidence in Buddhism—reason, intuition and experience. To possess confidence rightly we need to examine firstly does Buddhism makes sense. If it doesn’t then we cannot honestly claim rational confidence in it. Does it feel right? If not, there may be some intuitive alarm bell that we need to heed. And does it work in our experience?

The opposite of confidence is doubt, and this too arises in the domains of reason, intuition and experience. We have doubt in something because.

1. we haven’t thought out that thing clearly enough
2. we haven’t allowed our emotions to connect with it
3. we haven’t investigated it thoroughly enough in our experience

If we have thought something through and still doubt it then such doubts are rational, and valid. Doubt as the hindrance to meditation is more like the irrational doubt that manifests in an unwillingness to make up one’s mind, or to commit oneself to a particular direction. Such doubt is overcome only once the monk commits their reason, intuition and experience to the Buddhist path. And having gained confidence in that path, that confidence will protect his mind from giving unwise attention to views that might distract him from his purpose.

In dependence on confidence there arises wise attention (Sanskrit: yonisho manasikara; Pali: yoniso manasikara)

Wise Attention

When a person’s faith is invested in the material world, it is natural that they will pay keen attention to whatever material goods they think will bring them happiness. Once a person’s faith is established in Buddhism, on the other hand, it is natural that they will pay keen attention to the four foundations of mindfulness; such attention, because it actually delivers that happiness, is deemed wise, and leads to the cultivation of mindfulness and clear comprehension in relation to those foundations.

In dependence on wise attention there arises right mindfulness (Sanskrit: samyak smrti; Pali: samma sati) and clear comprehension (Sanskrit: samprajanya; Pali: sampajanna)

Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension

When the monk practices mindfulness and clear comprehension in relation to the four foundations of mindfulness, his mind is as if tethered to a stake, and is thus restricted from wandering away from those foundations onto an object of his sense faculties that might prove to be an unwholesome distraction to him.

In dependence on right mindfulness and clear comprehension there arises guarding the sense faculties (Pali and Sanskrit: indriyasamvara)

Guarding the gates of the senses

Guarding the gates of the senses, the monk ceases to look towards sensory experience as a refuge, turns from his former unexamined life, and taking up the practice of mindfulness, he brings awareness to the conditions that actually do bring happiness, practising ethics.

The chapter goes on to explore Hindrances to Meditation.

In dependence on guarding the sense faculties there arises morality (Sanskrit: shila; Pali: sila))

^[1] The Sanskrit shama translates as ‘pacification,’ ‘slowing or cooling down,’ ‘rest’ and tha ‘to abide or remain.’

[2] In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (‘The Noble Quest’): acknowledged by scholars as the earliest and therefore most reliable account of the path to Nirvana, there is no mention of the dhyanas; the sutta describes Gautama as leaving home; meeting and practising with his two meditation teachers; practising asceticism; and then, on seeing a good place to meditate; he sits down and attains Nirvana. See Ariyapariyesana Sutta. Access to Insight.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.026.than.html

^[3] The eight dhyanas consist of the four dhyanas of form and the four formless dhyanas. Alexander Wynne proposes that the formless dhyanas are an interpolation of Brahminical meditation into the Buddhist meditational system, to contextualize it within that framework. He suggests that they are cosmological in nature – rather than relating to direct experience, as is the case with the dhyanas of form. The Buddha mentions the four formless dhyanas in the final section of the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, but this section may be a late interpolation into the ancient text. See Chapter 3: Formless Meditation and Early Brahminism, in Alexander Wynne. (2007) The Origin of Buddhist Meditation. Routledge.

^[4] Some Buddhists treat the dhyanas rather vaguely as higher states of consciousness that are attained in meditation, no matter which spiritual system a person is practising, but we need to remember that the dhyanas are part of the path that led Gautama to attain Enlightenment: they are therefore necessarily a specifically Buddhist mental state.

[5] Voss Patrice, Thomas Maryse E., Cisneros-Franco J. Miguel, de Villers-Sidani Etienne. Dynamic Brains and the Changing Rules of Neuroplasticity: Implications for Learning and Recovery. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol. 8 (2017)

https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01657

^[6] Nirvana Sutra. Madhyagama 55. See

http://jayarava.blogspot.com/2015/06/nirvana-sutra-madhyagama-55.html

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