INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY
SEMINAR TEN
Buddhagosa[1] on concentration of consciousness, meditation, and everything
- Now concentration is described under the rubric of consciousness, for it is to be practised and developed by one who develops consciousness and wisdom, and who is perfected by observance of the ascetic practices. But what is concentration?[2] It is “one-pointedness of thought”[3], it is centering of consciousness and consciousness-concomitants[4] on a single object. The general characteristic of concentration is non-distraction, that is the elimination of all factors which impede concentration. The ten main impeding factors are:
“A dwelling, family, and gain
A class,[5] and building too as fifth,
And travel, kin,[6] affliction,[7] books,[8]
And supernormal powers:[9] ten.”
Concentration is understood in two senses: in the sense of access (P. and skr. upacåra), that is of preliminary or accompanying factors, necessary for meditation and as an actual fixing of the mind or its absorbtion (P. appanå) in the state of meditation.
The meditations or dhyånas differ: (a) as regards their stage in the progress of meditation: the first dhyåna, the second dhyåna, the third dhyåna, the fourth dhyåna; (b) as regards the object of meditation.
From among the objects of meditation the following seven classes are singled out: (I) the ten concrete special objects or kasinas: (1) earth, (2) water, (3) fire, (4) air, (5) the blue, (6) the yellow, (7) the red, (8) the white, (9) light, and (10) limited space.
(II) The ten repulsive things: (1) a bloated corpse, (2) a festering corpse, (3) a livid corpse, (4) a cut up corpse, (5) a bleeding corpse, (6) a gnawed corpse, (7) a hacked corpse, (8), a scattered corpse, (9) a worm-infested corpse, (10) a skeleton.
(III) The ten recollections:[10] (1) of the Buddha, (2) of the Dharma, (3), of the Sangha, (4) of virtue,[11] (5) of generosity,[12] (6) of deities, (7) of recollection,[13] (8) of the body, (9) of breathing,[14] and (10) of peace.
(IV) The four divine abidings:[15] (1) loving kindness, (2) compassion, (3) gladness, (4) equanimity.
(V) The four immaterial or formless states are the four bases for concentration on purely transcendental objects[16] which are: (1) the boundless space, (2) the boundless consciousness, (3) nothingness, (4) the state of neither perception nor non-perception.
(VI) One perception: perception of repulsiveness.
(VII) One defining: defining of the material elements.
- When the Elder Mahåtissa was on his way to Anuradhapura for alms, a certain daughter-in-law of a clan, who had quarreled with her husband, set out early from Anuradhapura to go to her relatives’ home. She was all dressed up and tricked out like a celestial nymph. Then she saw the Elder on the road and laughed a loud laugh. Wondering “what is that?” the Elder looked up and finding in the bones of her teeth the perception of repulsiveness, he reached arhatship. Her husband who was going after her saw the Elder and asked: “Venerable sir, did you by any chance see a woman?” The Elder replied:
“Whether it was a man or woman
That went by I noticed not;
But only that on this high road
There goes a heap of bones.”
But why is that so? Why unlike say, her husband, the Elder, while seeing as it were “the same” visual object, sees not a woman, but a heap of bones?
That is so, because the Elder is a monk established in the virtue of restraint, samvara. In this case it is the restraint of one’s faculty of seeing. What, then “seeing a visible object” means? It is the eye-consciousness that is capable of seeing visible objects, and it has borrowed the word “eye” from its instrument (that is, from eye). But the Ancients said: “The eye does not see a visible object because it has no mind. The mind does not see it because it has no eyes.” But the monk that practices the restraint, while seeing, stops at what is merely seen. The seen shall be merely seen and nothing else, that is not seeing any particulars or signs such as, in our case, “the signs of woman-ness, the signs of beauty, etc. Moreover, the fact that the Elder, while seeing the woman’s white teeth, got the perception of disgust (see above here, 1, VI), as if they were those of a dead body (see above here 1, II), means that at that time he was in the first state of dhyåna, and not in any “normal”, non-meditative state.
Dhyåna in general is characterised by cultivation (P. and skr. bhåvanå). The Lord said: “Monks, do cultivate concentration of thought, samådhi. In such a state one sees things as they really are. At the same time, it is in dhyåna where the monk develops the path leading to the rebirth in the sphere of from and attenuated matter (rüpavacåra). The path is volition or the conscious states associated with volition. In dhyåna of the present moment – as well as in the sphere of attenuated matter in the future – a wholesome thought and the wholesome states, dharmas associated with it do not merge spontaneously, but only through cultivation, bhåvanå.
Now a short description of the four meditations, dhyånas. The meditator’s entering upon a dhyåna lasts a single conscious moment. After that it lapses back into the life-continuum.[17] In a way, each dhyåna is an interruption of the life-continuum.
3.1. The first dhyåna is characterised by the following features: (1) a complete separation of the meditator from all sense-desires; (2) the object of the meditation is the kasina of earth; (3) the meditator is pervaded with happiness and joy; (4) the meditator’s equanimity is intensified, and a perfect neutrality is achieved; (5) his mind is purified of all obstructions and becomes serene; (6) he attains to the state of complete satisfaction.
3.2. The Lord shows the opposition of the first dhyåna to the sensual pleasures which do not exist in the interval when one has attained this dhyåna, because one has already rejected them all. That is why the Lord said that this dhyåna is the escape, the exit from sensual desires. The first dhyåna emerges together with initial and sustained applications of mind. Initial application of mind is “when one starts thinking about”. And as the Elder Någasena said, it is like when a drum is struck and begins to reverberate. Whereas sustained application of mind is the drum’s after-reverberation and continuous emission of sound. The sustained application includes the disursive work (naming, recognizing, etc.) of mind with its object. The first dhyåna is full of bliss and other pleasurable feelings. The object of concentration or kasina, that is the circular lump of earth, represents the entire earth, being at the same time the device by which one’s dhyanic thought is absorbed.
3.3. All mental effort is abandoned, the initial and sustained applications of mind are transcended. Not only not all dharmas of the first dhyåna are present in the second, but even those that are present, such as “contact”, etc., are different. This dhyåna is also marked by the transcending, not perceiving of all gross material elements[18] and by exhaltation of mind. So, when the meditator has emerged from the first dhyåna with happiness, one-pointedness of mind, and peacefulness, he brings to his mind the kasina of earth, the object of his meditation, and repeats “earth, earth”; and with this the thought “now the second dhyåna will arise” emerges in his mind., interrupting the life-continuum. The remaining features of the second dhyåna are as follows: (1) the focusing of mind on the internal (P. ajjhatta, skr. adhyåtma) or the “personal”. In what sense is it internal? – First, in the sense of elementary self-reference. Second and more essential, in the sense of pertaining to the continuum of life (of the meditator) with such of its constituents as organs of sense, mind, etc.; (2) the complete confidence and perfect faith; (3) the second dhyåna is “born of concentration”, that is of concentration achieved in the first dhyåna.
3.4. While in the second dhyåna the two applications of mind, initial and sustained, are transcended, in the third dhyåna they are simply absent. The main feature of this dhyåna is detachment (P. upekkha, skr. upekßa). The third dhyåna arises when the joy and happiness have appeared to the meditator as too gross for him. After that he, still keeping in mind the kasina of earth, passes to the sphere of attenuated matter, rüpa, and so enters upon the third dhyåna. Here, with the fading away of happiness and joy, the meditator dwells in the bliss of perfect equanimity. The kasina of earth still remains the object of meditation. But now the meditator is completely neutral to all objects external and internal, even to his own bliss, mental and bodily.
3.5. In the fourth dhyåna there is neither-pain-nor-pleasure. It is here that the very faculty of pain ceases as soon as it has arisen. This dhyåna is marked by the purity of recollection, sati, the essence of which is that it is a kind of super-memory when one is being present in any object of the past thought. The fourth dhyåna is totally purified of all oppositions and, therefore, has no need to transcend them. For grief, pain, pleasure, and delight have already been put away at the very access-moment of this dhyåna. The neutral feeling absolutely predominates here. But such neutrality of feeling is not a mere absence of pain and pleasure, but an independent factor leading to the emancipation of mind.
3.6. Now comes a very short description of the four higher spheres of transcendental meditation: (1) by having passed beyond all perceptions of material qualities in the realm of attenuated matter (rüpåvacåra) one attains the infinity of space. All objects in this realm have lost their definite space-limits, because there is not any more perception of form and thought does not emerge through the five doors of senses. And of course, there is no contact any more there; (2) the sphere of infinite consciousness is called soo because it is (generated in) dhyåna whose object is consciousness as proceeding in infinite space; (3) when both the dhyåna and its object have been transcended, one attains the sphere of nothingness in which the object of meditation is the disappearance of consciousness in (or “as”) space; (4) and only then one attains the sphere of neither perception nor non-perception. The perception in this sphere is as it were “non-perceptual”, for it is incapable of effective functioning. And not only perception. Feeling also is neither feeling nor non-feeling, consciousness also is neither consciousness nor non-consciousness, contact is neither contact nor non-contact. Now it should be understood that this description has been made with perception (P. sannå, skr. samjnå) as representative of the other associated states, dharmas.
- Now comes the description of the remembrance (P. anussati, skr. anusmrti) of death. Death is the interruption in the life-faculty (P. jîvitindriya) included within a single becoming, bhava. At the same time death is the dissolution of the five aggregates of individual existence. These are two different definitions of death. As it is intended here, death is of two kinds, timely death (P. and skr. kålamarana) and untimely death (P. and skr. akålamarana). Then, from the point of view of good and bad karmic consequences, timely death comes about with the exhaustion of merit or with exhaustion of a life-span, or with both. Untimely death comes about through karma that interrupts other karma. Exhaustion of merit is the term for such a death that comes about only owing to the result of a former rebirth – producing karma’s having finished its ripening, although some favourable conditions for prolonging the continuation of one’s life-span may be still present. Untimely death is a term for a death of those whose life-continuity is interrupted by a sudden effect of karma. So remembrance of death is the remembering of the interruption of the life-faculty.
- In the previous karma-process of becoming there is delusion, which is ignorance; there is accumulation, which is connecting factors; there is attachment, which is craving; there is embracing, which is clinging; there is volition, which is becoming. Thus these five factors in the previous karma-process of becoming are conditions for rebirth-linking (patisandhi) in the present becoming.
Here, in the present becoming there is the rebirth-linking, which is consciousness (vinnåna); there is descent into the womb, the descent of mind-and-matter (nåma-rüpa); there is sensitivity which is sense-base; there is what is touched, which is contact; there is what is felt, which is feeling. Thus these five factors in the present rebirth-process of becoming have their conditions in the karma produced in the past.
Here, in the present becoming, with the maturing of the sense-bases there is delusion which is ignorance; there is accumulation, which is connecting factors; there is attachment, which is craving; there is embracing, which is clinging; there is volition, which is becoming. Thus, these five factors in the present karma-process of becoming are conditions of the rebirth-linking in the future.
In the future there is rebirth-linking, which is consciousness; there is the descent into the womb, the descent of mind-and-matter; there is sensitivity, which is sense-base; there is what is touched, which is contact; there is what is felt, which is feeling. Thus, these five factors in the future rebirth-process of becoming have their conditions in the karma produced in the present becoming.
So, karma is fourfold: to be experienced here and now; to be experienced on rebirth; to be experienced in some subsequent becoming, and lapsed karma, that is the karma of which there has not been, is not, and will not be, any karma-result. To these four kinds of karma sometimes the fifth is added, so called “death-threshold” karma. This karma is remembered with great vividness at the time just before death.
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SEMINAR X The great transition from the time to the space of Buddhist yoga; meditation or dhyåna as “where” of yoga; Buddhism as a philosophical meditation and a meditating philosophy; who is the meditator and who is the philosopher?
Passing from recollection, sati, and the time of Buddhist yoga to meditation, dhyåna, as its place, we are bound to understand the manner of Buddhist philosophical re-defining of these two categories. Time, in Buddhist philosophy, is not a phenomenon, dharma, but a mere epiphenomenon of thought (or consciousness), an intellectual construct produced by consciousness to determine the sequence of moments and series of moments of thought and discern intervals of non-thinking between them. Space (P. åkåsa, skr. åkåßa), in Buddhist philosophy, has two aspects. In its first aspect, relative, space is occupied, filled up by objects of thought, though not being itself an object and corresponding, as a concept, to any thinkable object. Strictly abhidharmically speaking, while time could be conceived of as consisting of moments and series of moments of thought, space could not be understood as consisting of anything, as being in any sense “composite”. Space is no more than a sheer potentiality of “being filled up” with objects, an empty medium for things and facts to be placed, distributed, and distinguished by mind in its external perception. Taken in this aspect, space can be defined as place, region, or sphere of one’s future becoming (rebirth) or of one’s present or past states of consciousness, particularly of those formed in transcendental meditation. In this aspect, space can be considered a phenomenon, dharma, but a dharma of peculiar and even enigmatic kind. For although space seems to be connected with and conditioned by other dharmas (such as “matter”, “extension”, etc.), it has nothing in common with them, does not share of any of their attributes and qualities. It is space in its first, relative aspect that we shall be referring to in this seminar.
In its second aspect, absolute, space is empty, not contingent upon thought and objects of thought, and thereby it is regarded as un-conditioned (P. asamkhata, skr. asamskrta), as Nirvana. And if we ask now, speaking specifically of Buddhist yoga, could “when” and “where” be mutually converted into or substituted by, one another? – The answer is, yes, but only when we speak of space in its first, relative aspect. For space in its absolute aspect cannot be related, no matter positivelty or negatively, to anything else, to time in the first place.
Buddhist meditation, dhyåna, is not a kind of yoga in general, nor even a particular variety of Buddhist yoga, but a totally different, utterly abstruse phenomenon of yogically transformed consciousness. This phenomenon cannot be reduced to any of its constituent elements or to be imagined as their sum total. Dhyåna seems incomprehensible, first of all because it defies all attempts to comprehend it in terms of such habitual oppositions as “objective / subjective”, “mind / matter”, “external / internal”. Pondering over dhyåna we cannot even say that it is a variety of or the resulting stage in, concentration of consciousness, samådhi, for the consciousness is, as it were, “always concentrated”, fixed one-pointedly, wherever there is dhyåna, on the object which is specific for the given concrete meditation. Dhyåna, then, could be imagined as the place for the meditator, where some mental states, dharmas arise which can arise only in dhyåna and nowhere else. [Wouldn’t saying this be the same as saying that some physical phenomena can take place only in certain physical experiments and cannot occur in natural conditions.] However, a dharma which arises in dhyåna is, at the same time, a dhyanic mental state of the meditator. That which the meditator meditates upon in this mental state; the object of meditation and this mental state itself are inseperable in time and space. Or, to put it differently, dhyåna is not a process of yogic transformation of meditator’s consciousness, but a state in which those with already radically transformed consciousness abide. This, however, is not a state in a merely formal, psychological sense in which the word “state” is habitually used when, for instance, we say “I am in such a state, ” or “he was in his normal state,” – but a state which is characterised and determined by its content, that is by what the meditator meditates upon when he abides in dhyåna. At the same time, the content of dhyåna includes some notions, concepts, ideas, and images which are thinkable, perceivable, imaginable only in dhyåna and are inaccessible for “normal” thought, perception, and imagination. These may be conventionally designated “specifically dhyanic objects, for they have no sense whatsoever outside dhyåna, and will remain mere words. Such, for instance, is karma (about which one of the great Buddhist masters of old used to say that it is the fodder for idiots), or reincarnation, or stream of consciousness, or even death – for only in dhyåna they acquire their real, that is philosophical (philosophical in the sense of the Buddhist notion of “wisdom”, prajnå) meaning. Furthermore, it may be asserted, in this connection, that all the main conceptions and concepts of Buddhist philosophy are dhyanic by definition, because only through concentration of consciousness in them, or through recollecting them in the access to dhyåna they become understood by the meditator as they are, not as they seem to be in the normal life. Moreover, those specifically dhyanic objects necessarily include dhyåna itself as an object of meditation. Only through and from such dhyanic meditation on dhyåna we could learn about both mental (and psychological) and non-mental (that is, not related to the mind of the meditator at the given moment) aspects of dhyåna. Because, starting from the moment when the meditator has made the resolve to enter upon a dhyåna and ending with his exit from it, the two series of facts and events, “subjective” and “objective”, are simultaneously ar work. This brings us to the next question in our deliberations upon Buddhist meditation: who is the meditator?
At the moment when the meditator, having been prepared (or having got the access) for dhyåna and having made resolve to meditate, enters upon the first (or second, third, etc.) dhyåna, he is exempt from his continuum of life (or consciousness), bhavanga, and thereby he is not a man at that moment. His humanness has become as it were “suspended” – together with his being male or female, a worldling or an ascetic – till the first moment upon which his consciousness “returns” to his continuum of life. One circumstance is of utmost significance here: even one momentary experience of dhyanic meditation produces in the meditator’s consciousness changes so irreversible that he will remain, till the end of his present continuum of life, a meditator more than a man. After his return from dhyåna the meditator is able to perceive, explain and describe his “normal” conscious, psychical, and material life in the dhyanic perspective. His humanness from now on becomes qualified and transformed to something, shall we say, intermediate between “human” and “non-human”.
I think that it is these Buddhist meditators who discovered, while abiding in dhyåna a totally new plane of existence hitherto unknown to Indian yoga. The plane of existence, what the hell is this? But why existence? Existence, as a temporary substitute for being, is the bain of today’s philosophy which, though persistently fluctuating and wavering between a quasi-philosophical analysis of language and pseudo-philosophy of mind, remains the hostage of a totally outdated post-enlightenment rationalism. Now I am using “existence” as a mere linguistic convention, for the lack of a better term, and as a temporary substitute for “becoming”. Or, to put it in other words, existence here denotes that which only emerges at a given dharmic moment and disappears at the next moment. Then “dharmic” here would mean “having duration of one thought”. Then, speaking of dhyåna in terms of dharmic approach to thought, mind, and consciousness would, in its turn, suggest that one dhyåna, be it the first, second, or third, is one thought. And as a special plane of existence, dhyåna will mean that in what a special thought emerges; “special” both in the sense of having special characteristic, such as in text X,1, concentration or one-pointedness, and in the sense of having its special objects, such, for instance, as the red colour, the infinite space, or the skeleton.
But again, when one is in dhyåna one sees dhyanic objects wherefrom it may follow that dhyåna is what one sees in it, on the one hand, but on the other dhyåna is that very one’s seeing. Or we may say that dhyåna is the combination of “what sees” or “seeing” with “what is seen”, or objects. Both definitions are trivial, the first “trivial subjective”, the second “trivial objective”. Then the concept of plane here means that where the seeing and the seen emerge together at the same moment.
The last definition netralizes difference between “what” and “who” – both merge in the “where” of dhyåna. That is why it would be incorrect to ask what is what without ascertaining the plane on which the question is asked. So in the episode described in the text X,3, both the husband of the young lady and the Elder Mahåtissa were in one place on the road from Anuradhapura, though at the very time the husband was on the plane of sensuality (kåmavacåra) while the Elder was abiding on the plane of dhyåna. Even more incorrect, however, would be to ask whether the woman seen by her husband and the woman seen by the Elder was the same woman though seen differently. Because here we are not dealing with the same object. Then the definite answer to the last question will be: there is no object named “woman” in dhyåna, but there is an object named “skeleton”. Moreover, it may be surmised that it is dhyåna that makes emerge its objects. And then, instead of saying that the Elder while abiding in dhyåna saw the young woman as as skeleton, we may say that at the very moment of the Elder’s abiding in dhyåna, the last as it were “produced” its two objects – the perception of repulsiveness and the skeleton.
But what about the woman walking on the road from Anuradhapura, what about her husband, what at last about the Elder himself as well as the road and other non-dhyanic objects? In answering this question we are finding ourselves in a rather complicated philosophical situation, somewhere between sheer nominalism and qualified Humean empiricism. Still, from the text X and other dhyanic texts may follow that dhyåna generates non-dhyanic objects insofar as the latter coincide with dhyanic thought at the moment of its emergence.
Far more than that, it may be conjectured that the thought of other planes of existence, as it were “lower” than dhyanic, could arise only in dhyåna. So, for instance, the sphere of sensuality (P. and skr. kåmadhåtu), that is our own “normal” mental life, can find its description and explanation only on the plane of dhyåna, that is, from the point of view of one-pointedly focused thought, tamed mind, and “concentrated” consciousness. The picture of a “reverse evolution” is in order here: it is not the normal mind which in the process of its development attains to the undestanding of itself as “normal” and as “mind”, but the super-normal, dhyanically transformed mind which understands mind in general as untransformed and understands itself as actually or potentially surmounting the plane of dhyåna and reaching the higher planes. Thus, dhyåna itself can be understood in its two aspects, microcosmic and macrocosmic; when it is said that the Elder Mahåtissa, having abode in dhyåna, saw the skeleton, here “the Elder Mahåtissa saw” reflects the microcosmos, that is, his dhyanically concentrated thought, whereas “in dhyåna” suggests what we called “the dhyanic plane”, that is, macrocosmos of objects already generated by dhyanic thought. So, in the final analysis, all Buddhist philosophical notions (together with all terms denoting them) are of dhyanic provenance.
Now let us concentrate our attention on two Buddhist concepts, very shortly described in the text X, death and karma. Speaking strictly terminologically, death P. and skr. marana) is not meditated upon in dhyåna directly and immediately, but only through remembrance (P. anussati, skr. anusmrti) of death. Why is that so? Death is not by itself an object of meditation, for it is not a simple and separate phenomenon, dharma, but an epiphenomenon resulting from the whole complex of phenomena. Then remembrance of death is the way ?? by remembering thought from that epiphenomenon back to its basic constituent dharmas. Thus the object of meditation here is not death proper, because there is no such a thing as “death proper”, but there emerges an one-pointed thought absorbed in its concentration on that which finally results in the epiphenomenon of death as seen in dhyåna through remembrance. Death, in the dhyanic remembrance, is (a) stopping of life faculty, and (b) interruption of life-continuum. Life-faculty may be regarded as a psychological notion, reflecting one’s capacity and will of functioning as one, that is, as one complex of aggregates and constituent elements of individual existence, becoming (bhava). Life-continuum (P. and skr. bhavanga) or continuum of consciousness seems to be a merely transcendental concept having no psychological or subjective side. So, one may say, “this is what I think now”, but not “this thought has emerged in my continuum”, for neither “one” can think of oneself as a continuum, nor a continuum can think of itself as of a continuum. The latter circumstance, however, leaves a possibility of emergence, within a continuum, of a thought about this continuum and about itself as emerging in it. But such a thought could emerge only non-naturally, non-spontaneously, that is, only in dhyåna, and, moreover, only at the moment when it leaves the continuum, lapses from it causing thereby its interruption. The last, then, could be seen as a kind of one’s “dhyanic death” or “dhyanic moment of dying”.
One philosophical reservation is in order: when we, speaking of continuum, bhavanga, used the words “spontaneous” or “natural”, these words simply mean non-dhyanic; so, for instance, every thought may emerge as a normal thought with its object, concomitants, etc., and as a non-normal thought one-pointedly directed, though even habing the same object and concomitants. In the same way that very “one” who thinks, speaks, and acts, may be either a “normal one” or a meditator. From this, therefore, follows that whatever or whoever there becomes or emerges, becomes and emerges on two planes, dhyanic and non-dhyanic: we are living in a double world and are double ourselves, as livers and meditators. But this duality itself can be established only within meditation, dhyåna, and only from the dhyanic point of view. That is why all distinctions and differences thought of as existing in a continuum of life are by definition dhyåna – relating, but not the other way round. In this connection, the definition of death as interruption of life-or-consciousness-continuum ought to be re-explained in the following way: (1) first of all, speaking strictly dhanically, continuum, in this definition, is not one’s continuum – in the sense in which we say “one’s life” as opposed to “another’s life” – but one continuum, as opposed to another continuum, third continuum, etc.; (2) secondly, each continuum is presented in the meditation of a meditator in two ways, to wit: as the relative unity of an innumerable number synchronically emerging momentary phenomena, dharmas; and as the relative unity of diachronically emerging phenomena, dharmas. Continuum itself as a whole, however, does not emerge, has never emerged, and is beginningless, there was no time when there was no continuum there. That is, probably, why in some later Buddhist philosophical schools was developed a conception of time as relative to continuum of life, bhavanga; (3) thirdly, in its diachronical aspect a continuum can be imagined as a series or sequence of separate individual existences or becomings, bhavas. Or it would be more exact to say that a continuum is a stream of consciousness passing through innumerable number of becomings, separated from each other by interruptions. Then death is such an interruption which marks the end of one becoming and the beginning of the next within the same continuum of consciousness.
Particularly philosophically relevant is the causal aspect of death in the text X. According to Buddhagosa it is the workings of karma that cause an interruption of a continuum of consciousness, bhavanga. Thus, karma is considered here the immediate cause of death. But which karma is at work here? In the text X it is a special variety of karma, the karma that effectuates becoming. So, when the particular karma which has caused and maintained a particular becoming is exhausted, the stream of lide more and more slows down till it stops altogether. Then we say “one is dead” and “the next becoming is looming”. And sometimes, to finish with the subject, we add: “all this is because of karma”, as if karma were some threatening entity or force responsible for “all this”. For such is a normal, that is, vulgar interpretation of death in the sense of karma. Normal and vulgar, because it is not based on one’s immediate dhyanic experience of a given particular instance of death as caused by a given particular case of karma. But to say that all life, or else, every continuum of consciousness, is caused by karma as is caused by karma all death, or else every interruption of a continuum of consciousness, by which the end of one becoming and the beginning of another is marked, within the same continuum of consciousness would be a sheer philosophical banality. Only the consciousness of a meditator (P. jhåni, skr. dhyåni) at the moment of its entering upon dhyåna and its exemption from its continuum remembers death with its karmic causes and remembers karma. However, that very remembrance is possible only because consciousness itself at that very moment is not karmic in two sense: firstly, it has lost its capacity to produce future karmic effects; secondly, its, although temporarily, pertaining to the dhyanic plane has suspended all its past karmic contingencies. In other words the meditator’s consciousness is consciouse of death and karma while being, itself, outside death and karma. It is from this “outside” of dhyanic plane that both death and karma “came back” as two concepts of Buddhist philosophy. Though both derived from the same dhyanic experience, these concepts became essentially different not only phenomenologically, but also epistemologically.
Let us begin with phenomenology. Even proceeding from the purely dhyanic stance that death is the recollection of death and that, therefore, it is recollection regarding which death can be considered or meditated upon as, an epiphenomenon, we have to admit that in our meditation on death we deal with a fact or event which is the object of our meditation. And it is a fact or event which, speaking of one continuum of consciousness and of one particular becoming within this continuum, will absolutely, definitely happen. But, returning to the definition of death given above, it can be asserted that: where there is consciousness within a (or “as a”) continuum of consciousness there is (or “there shall be”) death there. To which it can be added: death is a mental state, dharma of which consciousness may be conscious either normally, as of an empyrical fact or event, or dhyanically, as of an epiphenomenon of karma. Karma, on the contrary, is not that which exists or emerges, for it neither exists, nor emerges “where there is” one phenomenon or another, one fact or event, or another, etc. For karma is neither a phenomenon, nor an epiphenomenon, and is, in the Buddhist philosophy at the very least, a purely relational category. Or to put it epistemologically: karma is a way of interpreting facts, events, and cicrumstances, which itself cannot be reduced to any of these circumstances. The clearest example of such a merely interpretative role of karma we is in Buddhagosa’s definition of death in X,4.
All this, however, did not preclude the Buddhist masters of old and Buddhagosa in the first place, from referring to karma as to one of the central concepts of a natural philosophy. For indeed, karma is treated here in the manner vividly reminiscent of that in which such a universal physical notions as “space”, “mass”, and “energy” are dealt with in the premodern and modern European philosophies. In the sense of natural philosophy, karma is the factor that brings about the relation of cause / effect between two phenomena or dharmas, so that (emergence of) the second is the result of (emergence of) the first. To this it ought to be added that the result must be separated from the cause by the space of at least one becoming within the same continuum of consciousness. Thus the words “karma”, “karmic”, in their application to a given concrete phenomenon, have two senses: a phenomenon is karmic in the sense of “being caused by the other phenomenon”, and in the sense o “being the cause of the other phenomenon”. It would be worthy of note, in this connection, that “phenomenon” here denotes every thinkable phenomenon, dharma of any kind whatsoever. And that is why such dharmas as “becoming”, or “life” or such dharmas as “an interruption of the continuum of life” or “death” are said in the text X to be brought about by karma.
Now a general philosophical question arises: is it the phenomenon itself that on the strength of its own inherent quality, wholesome, unwholesome, or neutral, results in the other phenomenon, as it were “forcing” karmic factor to do the job – or it is karmic factor which as it were “creates” the field in which phenomena are charged with a special, again “karmic” energy to generate resulting phenomena? There remains a strong difference of opinions on that account among the Buddhist philosophers. The text X, it seems, is strongly in favor of the latter answer. The first two lines in the Dhammapada (see text VIII,1) concisely stating that the one’s muddled thought results in one’s suffering (both muddled thought and suffering are karmic!), supports the former answer. However, – and this of utmost importance for our understanding of karma – in the text X karma is always there, in me, in him, in you, that is, wherever one does and speaks with such and such thought, karma only waits for the emergence of that thought to convert it into one’s suffering or happiness in one’s other rebirth, bhava. (note here, that “one” in this context is tantamount to “the same continuum of consciousness”!) But a conversion of karmic cause into karmic result, or, using the technical terminology, of the causal karma into resulting karma, may take a considerable time, which is the time of karmic maturation or ripening (P. and skr. vîpåka). Let us ask ourselves now, what kind of time this time may be and in what units it can be counted and measured? If I meditated upon time in dhyåna the object of which is remembrance of karma, then from the point of view of the present moment of meditation, the answer will be: this is the karmic time measured and counted in rebirths, bhavas, but also, however generally, differentiated from the point of view of the present, into present, past and future. Then, all becomings are karmically classified into present, future, and past of karmic time. From this, as can be seen in text X,5, is only one step to the conclusioon that all time is karmic time, that is, there is no time other than time separating karmic causes from karmic effects.
As we see in the text X,5, one moment is particularly important, if not decisive, for the understanding of karma in its relatiuon to consciousness (within one continuum of consciousness): while determining the fact and character of each rebirth as well as the phenomenon of rebirth in general, karma, according to Buddhagosa, specifically determines the point-moment of consciousness, which links this rebirth with the next one. In fact, it is only due to this “linking consciousness” (P. patisandhi) that a continuum of consciousness maintains its unity and is not fragmented into millions of continua. But at the same time, it is only due to interruptions of continuum, also karmically determined, that all rebirths are different phenomena, separated from each other in karmic time of their sequence.
The most interesting moment concerning karma as a general way of interpretation of phenomena which are meditated upon in dhyåna is, that such interpretation is possible only when a present phenomenon is seen as resulting from the past one, and not when the past one is seen as causing the present phenomenon. This is so because here we are practising a special dhyanic remembrance (P. anussati, skr. anusmrti) the present moment of which coincides with the present moment of the remembered phenomenon. In other words: “being remembering” of the meditator coincides with “being remembered” of the remembered phenomenon. The last, then, is “past” only in the sense of “remembered”, and its “present” is, in fact, “the present of the past”: thus, through the act or fact of remembrance is the meditator going from his present back, to the past phenomenon, not the other way around, for such is the direction of dhyanic remembrance, only from the present moment backwards.
There remains one quirk in our deliberations on dhyåna, though this tricky subject has already been mentioned in a cursory manner: what if karma itself is an object generated by remembrance and having no existence outside the dhyanic plane? Later we shall attempt to tackle the quirk, but now it would be enough to note that even in the earliest texts of the Pali Canon we see a very strong tendency to what can be called “meditationl relativisim”, that is, when every phenomenon is investigated as seen from a certain position in meditation, dhyåna which itself may be seen as determining the object of investigation. “Determining” and “generating” may be seen as almost synonymous here, but the latter a fortiori presupposes that there must be some energy to generate objects of thoughts, thoughts, and, probably, even thinkers. Thus, it could be said that dhyanic plane is a plane of generation, that is, the plane on which objects and subjects of meditation have been as it were “artificially” or, more exactly, “arbitrarily” constructed by meditation (which, however, is not to say “by the meditator”).
If we extrapolate the concept of dhyanic generation onto the sphere of “normal” psychological experience, it would be very tempting, then, to come up with the following epistemological assumption: each object (also fact, event, circumstance) of “normal”, non-dhyanic knowledge is in principle indefinite as to whether it has emerged spontaneously or has been dhyanically generated; only the meditator may know this. We may also remark, in this connection, that the dhyanic idea of basic indeterminacy as regards the ontological status of things and facts external to dhyåna, holds true in its application to dhyåna and to the meditator himself. To understand this idea we have to annul in our thinking the deeply ingrained, habitual epistemological prejudice concerning a “thing as such” that exists independently from any mental or cognitive acts or processes. But mere getting rid of a “thing as such” will not do the trick and in the best case we will end up with one other version of classical nominalism. What we, as non-meditators, really need in our hopeless enterprise to understand the dhyanic indeterminacy of objects, is to change the phenomenological arrow of our understanding.
Now let us take again the well trodden and already commented upon episode with the Elder Mahåtissa in the text X,2. When the Elder was asked about the woman by her husband, the Elder answered from the immediate past of his meditating on the skeleton. The Elder has not seen the woman as a skeleton, because he had “already” generated the skeleton in his meditation as the object of meditation. Therefore, for us to say that what is seen by the husband as a woman has been meditated upon by the Elder as a skeleton, would be phenomenologically trivial. “That what is seen by the husband” and “that what has been meditated upon by the Elder” are two different objects and not the same object thought from two different points of view or by two different persons. And different they are because, while the first emerges in the normal thinking of the husband, the second has been generated in dhyåna. In no way can they be reduced to one object called “woman”, for the simplest reason that there is no such object. Thus: an object of thought here means the way in which this thought has been originated or as in this case , either the way of the “normal” emergence of thought, or the dhyanic way of generation of thought (with its objects, etc.). This definition of object of thought clearly shows the change in what I call “phenomenological arrow”. The direction of reduction does not follow the “normal” way from the past of the object to its present. Now the direction is from the present of our own thinking (or, as in the text X,3, the thinking of the narrator, who was, by implication, a meditator) to the immediate past of the thinking the object of which we are investigating.
Now two exactifications are in order: the first, when we formulated above the idea of indeterminacy of objects external to dhyåna, there was an implication, that “external to dhyåna” means “meditated upon in dhyåna as non-dhyanic”, because only from the point of view of dhyåna it would be possible to say what is and what is not dhyanic, whereas from the point of view of the normal consciousness alone, the only thing that it would be possible to state about the object is that “it is or is not normal”, where “it is not normal” does not mean that “it is dhyanic”. The second exactification concerns our use of the word “intermediate” when we spoke of the dhyanic plane. It is only with respect to dhyåna that this word assumed its phenomenology and began to be used in various epistemological, psychological, and cosmological contexts. Let us deliberate now on several essential moments of phenomenology of intermediacy of dhyåna.
First of all, calling the dhyanic plane “intermediate” stresses that this plane is not alternative to any other plane of consciousness – for the very idea of “alternative” is typical of normal, not of dhyanic, thinking – but rather synthesizes all other planes of consciousness as particular cases of itself. In this connection, even generation of thought cannot be considered as alternative to emergence of thought, for speaking as it were “dhyanically”, the latter is a particular case of the former.
Secondly, the dhyanic plane is intermediate in the sense that dhyåna meditates on itself as situated in the space of meditation between the plane of sensual world, kamåvacåra and the plane of supramundane (P. and skr. lokuttara) consciousness. The latter is marked by the absence of thinking and thereby, since there can be neither generation nor emergence of thought, by the absence of time, for time is understood only as the time of thinking. So this supramundane plane is the plane of pure space.
And, thirdly, dhyåna is intermediate anthropologically. The homo meditator is not an alternative to the normal man in the sense in which the homo asceticus seems to be. This is so, because the homo asceticus and the normal homo sapiens still share the same plane of sensual phenomenal consciousness and the normal man is able to recognize the ascetic as the ascetic, however extraordinary the comportment of the latter might be. Whereas the homo meditator cannot be recognized by any non-meditator. The latter even cannot say that “there is no meditator here”, because he is not aware of “here” as of his plane of consciousness. Therefore, it may be concluded that for the other the meditator is neither a man, nor a meditator. But more interestingly, there is no “the other” for the meditator himself because, as it has already been noted above, in his meditation the meditator may merge with the object of meditation of any kind, human or divine, animate or unanimate. So, speaking phenomenologically, the homo meditator is not a man because for the other his humanness remains un-recognizable, while for himself it is suspended at least during the time of meditation. Moreover, if we take into consideration the so called “higher” or “immaterial” spheres of dhyanic plane (about which we shall speak in the next seminar), then it would become possible to speak of special future rebirths of the meditator, special because these rebirths will be definitely non-human.
Thus summing it all up we can say that together with the discovery of the dhyanic plane of consciousness the ancient Buddhist yogis discovered that which consciously excludes itself from “its” continuum of consciousness and life and thereby stopped its present humanness and determined its future non-humanness. In other words, they discovered the homo meditator who is a temporary man, an epiphenomenon or a variable of dhyåna (though, of course, the same could be said of all objects of dhyåna). It is as a variable of dhyåna that the meditator is neither a theorist nor a practitioner of that which he cognized in higher wisdom. Then the meditator would seem to be a person who… well, who, shall we say, not simply thinks, but meditates upon various objects of meditation. From the point of view of dhyanically changed consciousness, it is dhyåna itself which generates not only objects of meditation but the meditator himself, too. Therefore, on the dhyanic plane there can be no meditator separate from meditating, nor meditation separate from what is meditated upon. And, consequently, the notions like a “person”, “man”, even “one who…” do not apply in the world of dhyåna. Because the meditator is that which is absorbed by the object of meditation and merges with it in one dhyanic moment. Then the dhyåna may have been meditated upon as an intermediary objective-subjective plane “inhabited” by emerging “double phenomena” which are sheer projections of dhyanically transformed consciousness into dhyanically generated space.
My conjecture is that the practice of concentration of consciousness or of one-pointedness of thought was the starting point in the discovery of the dhyanic plane by some ancient Buddist meditators. In the course of that practice they realised that concentration of consciousness produced some radical changes in both consciousness and its objects. The changes so radical, that it would not be possible to regard the consciousness post factum concentrationis as the same consciousness, nor to regard its objects as the same objects. The second step in the discovery of the dhyanic plane was the visual, audial, and purely mental (or eidetic) memorisation of those already transformed consciousnesses with their objects and the oral repetitions of the terms denoting them. And, finally, we may suppose that those basic dhyanic terms and formulas (P. mattika), already fixed in oral texts, were re-arranged and systematized to be used in early Buddhist philosophizing. Now, it would not be making too large an assumption, saying that what we call “Buddhist philosophy” consists of concepts and notions that either were coined in dhyåna or were used as objects of dhyanic meditation, or both. The direct consequence of this can be seen in the absence in Buddhist philosophy of the opposition “practice / theory”, for practice was considered as dhyanic practice in the first place, while the concept of right theory (or rigth point of view, P. samma ditthi) merged with that of wisdom (P. pannå, skr. prajnå), dhyanic by definition. By the same token, the meditator can be viewed as a kind of theorist, whose theorising was not however opposed to the direct perception (skr. pratyaksa), for the latter was also dhyanically transformed together with the meditator’s six organs of sense.
Speaking of the changed consciousness of the meditator, we ought to single out one feature of his mind which him psychologically different from “normal”, non-meditating persons: the meditator lives in a special temporal regime. A “normal” man lives in the present time of his thinking which s always directed to its immediate future. The thinking of the meditator, when he has “returned” from an actual meditation (let us not forget that actual meditation is always in the momentary present time of dhyåna), is always directed to the immediate past of his meditation and does not know any future thoughts. So, in other words, living side by side with us, say, in the same place and at the same time, the meditator does not live in our present and does not share our thoughts of the future.
Philosophically the most important feature of dhyåna – the feature also of great historico-philosophical consequence, for very soon it became on of the basic concepts of the philosophy of Buddhist tantrism – is that in dhyåna there is a definite prevalence of generation over emergence. Again, as it is universally postulated, every thought or every dharma is that which momentarily emerges on the strength of the Law of Interdependent Co-emergence. Dhyåna is by no means exempt from that postulate, but possesses its own inherent capacity (or is charged with the specific energy) to qualify or temporarily limit it.
[1] The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga) by Buddhagosa, transl. from the Pali by Bhikkhu Nånamoli, 4th ed., Buddhist Publication Society, Kandi, Srilanka, 1979. Buddhagosa is the greatest Buddhist scholar and commentator. He lived and worked in Ceylon probably in the 5th century A.D.
[2] “Concentration” (P. and Skr. samådhi) here is used as general term denoting any consciously undertaken and directed meditational activity. In this sense it is almost synonymous with meditation.
[3] P. and Skr. cittekagatå; “thought” and “consciousness” (P. vinnåna, Skr. vinjnåna) are synonymous here.
[4] “Consciousness-concomitants” (P. and Skr. cetasîka) is a general term denoting feeling, perception, connecting factors, and all other aspects of mentality that arise together with consciousness (or with a separate thought).
[5] “Class” here means a concrete group of pupils studying the texts with the same teacher.
[6] “Kin” here is a collective term denoting one’s family, friends, and classmates.
[7] “Affliction” means any kind of illness.
[8] “Books” here mean one’s preoccupation with Buddhist scriptures.
[9] See text VI, n. 10.
[10] “Recollection” (P. anussati, Skr. anusmrti) is a special kind of meditation, the object of which may vary and which may lead to dhyåna or become one of its parts.
[11] P. sîla, Skr. ßîla. In this text virtue is defined as “bodily purity, verbal purity, and mental purity” to which sometimes conscience and shame are added (p. 9 where?).
[12] Generosity is considered as one of the most important human and divine virtues. It is natural or consciously produced practice of giving and sharing.
[13] Recollection of recollection is a typical procedure in Buddhist meditation: a thought – for a given recollection is also a separate thought – thinks on itself as an object; or when memory memorizes a given act of remembering as a separate object.
[14] This is a quiet, effortless observation of one’s breathing having nothing to do with the Hindu yogic practices of breathing in hatha-yoga. For the purpose here is purely meditational.
[15] Otherwise called Brahma-abidings (P. and Skr. brahmavihåra). It is very important to note here that they are not, in any sense, things, but merely abstract (“Platonic”, so to speak) notions, and it is meditating on them that makes them “states”, for they have no existence of their own outside dhyåna.
[16] Transcendental in the sense that they are not perceivable either by organs of sense or by not yet yogically transformed mind.
[17] Lit. “continuum of becoming” (P. and Skr. bhåvanga) – is a continuum of spontaneously arising and disappearing thoughts, states of consciousness, and mental factors, having as their base one’s “element of mind-consciousness” (P. manovinnåna-dhåtu, Skr. manovijnånadhåtu). This continuum is spontaneous in the sense that it is determined by karmic as well as by some other factors and conditions which are beyond one’s awareness and control. That is why it is interrupted at the moments when the meditator finds himself in one of the four dhyånas or in one of the four stated of transcendental samådhi.
[18] That is, things perceived by organs of sense in the sphere of normal sensual life (P. and Skr. kåmadhåtu).
(This should be note 19; but where?) Or more exactly, the “sphere of pure form” (P. and Skr. rüpa-dhåtu), where things are meditated upon as made of a kind of super-subtle matter.