What is Right Samadhi? Comments on Concentration in the Suttas and in the Commentaries

Introduction 

Over the past year we have discussed the Four Noble Truths and seven branches of the Eightfold Noble Path. We come this morning to the eighth and final limb of the Eightfold Path.

This final branch is called Right Samadhi–frequently translated as Right Concentration–and it is one of the set of three limbs that is often referred to collectively as the “Samadhi Group” of the Path, the other two in the set being Right Effort and Right Mindfulness.

It turns out that Right Samadhi, as defined in the Eightfold Path, consists of the first four jhanas.

~*&*~ This talk was not recorded. ~*&*~

Controversy about the jhanas

There has been a lot of controversy about the jhanas and about their role in meditation practice. Richard Shankman offers the following overview: 

From soon after the Buddha passed into final Nibbana, and continuing to this day, disagreements and disputes have arisen about the nature of jhana and its proper place in the path to liberation…Conflicting views exist regarding how much samadhi is necessary in meditation practice, and whether the meditator should emphasize concentration or insight practices…Among those advocating jhana, there is no consensus on what the jhanas are or how to go about teaching them.

Richard Shankman, The Experience of Samadhi: An In-depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation, Shambala, Boston & London, 2008, pp. xiv – xv

Leigh Brasingtion relates controversies about jhana to differences between the suttas and the Visuddhimagga:

Although the Jhanas appear very frequently in the discourses of the Buddha (suttas), now two and a half millennia later there is no generally agreed upon interpretation of what exactly these states of concentration are…

The first broad categorization would be into ‘Sutta Style Jhanas’ and ‘Visuddhimagga Style Jhanas’…The Jhanas as discussed in the suttas are accessible to many people…[T]he Jhanas as discussed in the Visuddhimagga are of a much deeper level of concentration than those described in the suttas. Basically, the Jhanas as described in the Visuddimagga seem to be much more developed and systematized than those of the suttas.

Leigh Brasington, “Interpretations of the Jhanas,” https://www.leighb.com/jhanantp.htm, Revised 11 Feb 24

My talk this morning

The title of my talk this morning is “What is Right Samadhi? Comments on Concentration in the Suttas and in the Commentaries.”

My own experience of the jhanas is extremely limited. In retrospect, I now think I reached some version of the first one, once, while on personal retreat, but at the time I had absolutely no idea what was going on .

I also have had other rather “unusual” meditation experiences while on retreat, related to levels of concentration deeper than those I usually reach. In the past, I have considered these “unusual” experiences to be just random, idiosyncratic, atypical events that come up sometimes.

In preparing for this talk I have realized, however, that at least several experiences I had regarded as random, idiosyncratic, and atypical were, in fact, things that happen to folks fairly often at deeper levels of concentration, that are known about and recognizable, some of which even have names! 

I will be sharing several of these experiences during this talk. My hope is that these kinds of previously unidentified experiences will resonate for other folks and that this morning we can set the stage for all of us to share next week about our own experiences with deeper levels of concentration

Levels of concentration

Let’s turn now to levels—or types—of concentration.

Four different levels, or types of concentration traditionally have been identified, named and described in the commentaries. These terms do not appear in the suttas, but they are very handy and I would like to begin with them anyway.

How the four levels/types are described varies between different authorities, but there seems to be considerable conceptual overlap among various versions

Here is a brief summary of descriptions of levels, drawing primarily on formulations by Shankman (Shankman, pp. 56-57) and Gunaratana (Henepola Gunaratana,“ The Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist Meditation,” Access to Insight, 1995).

1. Preparatory Concentration: the typical, ordinary level of concentration that characterizes a beginning practitioner’s initial efforts to focus on some object of meditation, e.g., on the breath.
2. Momentary Concentration, which occurs across a wide band of levels of depth of concentration. It is referred to as “momentary” in that it “starts and stops,” in the sense that it fluctuates between deeper and more shallow levels of concentration as attention moves from one object to another, e.g., as in choiceless awareness practice.
3. In Access Concentration the meditator is close to going into jhana; this also occurs across various levels of depth of concentration, with the depth being relative to that of the type of jhana to be entered, e.g., “Sutta Style” or “Visuddhimagga Style” jhanas.
4. Fixed Concentration refers to levels of concentration reached in jhana states, the depth of which again is relative to the type of jhana involved.

All of us certainly have experienced the first level of concentration, of course–Preparatory–and I think it is probably safe to assume that all of us also have experienced Momentary Concentration, especially given that it occurs across a wide band of depths of concentration.

I’m not sure what to say about access concentration in this regard.

I think I may have experienced some version of access concentration, but only a time or two, and only on retreat. I’m thinking of times when relatively deep mindful concentration became steady and self-sustaining, continuing without any apparent intentional effort on my part, while awareness was completely absorbed into my object of focus. I remember, for example, once being completely “at one” with the sound of the air system fan that was running in the meditation hall: that fan and I were totally “on the same wavelength.”

Generally, any depth of jhana level concentration has been beyond my practice, even on retreat, even on one of Leigh Brasington’s several-day jhana retreats. On one occasion, however, when I was a few days into a self-retreat, I had an experience that I thought of at the time as having inadvertently fallen into a pot of pure joy.

It was by far the most intense and extended experience of joy that I have ever known. It was not a feeling of being joyful about anything—just pure, unprovoked, unconditioned, very intense joy.

After a while it faded away, and I spent the rest of my retreat craving another bout of pure joy, but of course it didn’t happen again.

I have never known for sure what to make of this experience, but in the process of preparing for this talk, one of the articles I read was by Leigh Brasington, in which he described the first jhana as follows:

In this altered state of consciousness, you will be overcome with rapture, euphoria, ecstasy, delight. These are all English words that are used to translate the Pali word piti…(T)he piti will be accompanied by an emotional sensation of joy and happiness. The Pali word for this joy/happiness is sukha, the opposite of dukkha (pain, suffering). And if you can remain undistractedly focused on this experience of piti and sukha, that is the first jhana.

Leigh Brasington, “Entering the Jhanas,” Lion’s Roar, 2017

That description sounds to me very much like what I remember experiencing, or at least something very close to it.

The first four (sutta) jhanas

So, let’s turn now to the suttas and the Right Samadhi of the Noble Eightfold Path.

As mentioned earlier, samadhi is often translated as “concentration;” Shankman considers “undistracted” to be more accurate. It is also variously translated in other ways, such as “to bring together,” or “collected,” or “unified” (Richard Shankman, “Samadhi: Exploring the Range of Teachings and Controversies on Concentration and Jhana,” Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, Daylong Class, July 28, 2018).

Right Samadhi is discussed in many places in the suttas. According to Shankman, it is always defined as the four jhanas in the suttas (ibid).

The sutta descriptions tend to follow a standard formula for the four jhanas, with some variation. I would like to share Brasington’s translation of one of those sutta references (“Magga-vibhanga Sutta [An Analysis of the Path],” Samyutta Nikaya, 45.8; Access to Insight).

And what, monks, is right concentration?

1. There is the case where a monk–quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful (mental) qualities–enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & happiness born of seclusion, accompanied by initial & sustained thinking.
2. With the stilling of initial and sustained thinking, he enters & remains in the second jhana: rapture & happiness born of concentration, unification of awareness free from initial and sustained thinking–internal serenity.
3. With the fading of rapture, he remains in equanimity, mindful & clearly aware, and physically sensitive of pleasure. He enters & remains in the third jhana, of which the Noble Ones declare, ‘Equanimous & mindful, he has a pleasurable abiding.
4. With the abandoning of pleasure & pain–as with the earlier disappearance of elation & distress–he enters & remains in the fourth jhana; purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain.

This, monks, is called right concentration.

As this description suggests, the jhanas are complex states, comprised of several dimensions, or qualities. Traditionally, five of these qualities have been singled out and identified as Jhana Factors.

The Pali names of the Jhana Factors are vitakka, vicara, piti, sukha, and ekaggata. In English, these names are translated in various ways, but a typical list of English versions might be as follows: for vitakka, directed thought or applied thought; for vicara, evaluation or discursive thinking; for piti, rapture or bliss; for sukha, pleasure or happiness; and for ekaggata, one- pointedness or unification of mind. 

Although individual practitioners’ experiences of the jhanas vary of course, many meditators reportedly find being in the jhana states very pleasurable, even ecstatically so, ranging from the “rapture & happiness” of the first jhana, to the calm, peaceful stillness of “equanimity & mindfulness” of the fourth jhana.

The pleasant experiences aside, the primary reason for jhana practice is to prepare the mind for insight practice and for deep, experiential insights into the ultimate nature of reality.

As Leigh Brasington expressed it to us on one of his jhana retreats, “The point of doing the jhanas is to supercharge your insight practice!”

The formless spheres and the four commentarial jhanas

So, there are four jhanas in the suttas. We have been taught, however, that there are eight jhanas. So, what about the other four jhanas?

To address this question, we turn our attention to what are referred to in the suttas as the formless spheres.

BTW, personally I had never heard of formless spheres before I started working on this talk. If you already know about them, you’re way ahead of me.

According to Dharmacari Satyadhana, the formless spheres are meditation practices that the Buddha himself engaged in frequently and that he taught to his followers.

According to Satyadhana’s explanation, formless spheres practice consists of meditative exploration of four aspects, or bases, of the way our minds perceive and structure experience of the world, including “…(i) the faculty of perception, (ii) the notion of an individual ‘thing’ being perceived, (iii) sensory consciousness that detects…attributes of that thing, and (iv) three- dimensional space in which that…thing is believed to be found.” (Dharmacari Satyadhana, “The Shorter Discourse on Emptiness [Culasunnata-sutta, Majjhima-nikaya 121]: translation and commentary,” Western Buddhist Review, 2014 (6): 78-104).

Upon meditative investigation, however, Satydhana continues, these bases turn out to be illusory, to be only “…arbitrary…creations(s) of the mind,” not properties of external reality of which we can become aware (ibid).

There are four formless spheres. According to Henepola Gunaratana’s translation, they are named as follows:

These attainments…are the base of boundless space, the base of boundless consciousness, the base of nothingness, and the base of neither- perception-nor-non-perception.

Gunaratana

Somewhere along the line after the time of the Buddha, the four formless spheres and the four sutta jhanas somehow got lumped together in the commentaries under the label of the eight jhanas. Unfortunately, I do not know why that happened and cannot explain it further. Gunaratana’s article about the jhanas that I read mentions the historical development, but only as an aside, without explaining the theoretical reasons for it, and I have not yet had a chance to look into it further.

So, in very brief—and incomplete—summary, that’s where the “other four” jhanas came from. Some authorities—e.g., Bodhipaksa—insist that the “immaterial jhanas”—i.e., the jhanas that came from the formless spheres—are not jhanas at all and always should be referred to only as “formless spheres,” never as “jhanas” (Bodhipaksa, “The Buddha’s radical path of jhana,” September 2, 2014, 36).

I think I may have encountered some version of the base of boundless space and the base of boundless consciousness while on retreat, or at least something similar to them. 

A number of times on retreat I have had experiences during meditation in which it feels like my mind just opens directly into interstellar space, while experience of my physical body is much reduced, or virtually absent. As I recall, these experiences feel neither especially pleasant nor unpleasant and tend to be stable over what seem to be extended periods of time.

On other occasions, while meditating on retreat, I have had experiences of myself as sort of a “node of consciousness,” if you will, somehow in the midst of an enormous, infinite “field of consciousness,” which I can be part of, or leave, or come and go from and to, as I choose.

I don’t know for sure if meditation experiences like this are related to the formless spheres, but from the descriptions it seems that they might be.

The suttas, the commentaries, and what difference the difference makes

Finally, let’s turn our attention briefly to differences between the suttas and the commentaries—especially the Visuddhimagga—regarding samadhi.

Shankman agrees with Brasington that in the Visuddhimagga meditation practice is divided into two separate, different paths: a path of concentration (samatha) and a path of insight (vipassana). More specifically, in his analysis, differences between these two paths have to do with both: 1) the type of concentration used, and 2) the depths of concentration reached:

In samatha meditation…[f]ixed concentration is cultivated, concentration on a fixed object so intense that awareness of no other experience can arise, resulting in a one-pointed focus and states of profound tranquility and peace where all experience of changing physical and mental activity ceases…

Insight…meditation employs momentary concentration…where samadhi is strengthened to a degree corresponding to that achieved in access concentration…but not so much that it becomes fixed on an unchanging object. One is able to practice insight with momentary concentration…It is through insight…that wisdom arises and clinging is abandoned. According to the system of the Visuddhimagga, insight cannot occur in jhana because the mind is absorbed in fixed concentration. For one who has attained jhana, insight is developed upon emerging from the fixed concentration of jhana back to momentary concentration…

Shankman, pp. 55-56

Referring to the controversies over differences between the two jhana systems, Shankman essentially acknowledges that the basic differences are irreconcilable, but maintains that each system is valid in its own right:

… (T)here are two distinct jhanas in the Pali literature, each one true and correct within its own system: ‘sutta jhana’ and ‘Visuddhimagga jhana.’ These two jhana systems…comprise different meditative states, sharing some features in common, but with their own unique characteristics, potentials, and methods for realizing them. Each can be properly understood only within the overall context of the texts within which it appears.

Shankman, p. 104

And this brings me to the end of the remarks I have this morning.

As you know, next week is Discussion Sunday. I am looking forward to having a chance to hear about other folks’ experiences with concentration during mediation, on retreat or otherwise.

Thank you all very much for your kind attention. Let’s stop here and open the floor for quick questions and comments.