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The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation
By Sarah Shaw Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2014 Sarah Shaw
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-21045-3
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
There is a story that one Buddhist school, the Chan, traces its lineage to the time of the Buddha. Trying to teach its first patriarch, then an aspirant meditator, the Buddha simply handed him a flower in silence. The Ven Kasyapa, apparently, at that moment, smiled as he understood the nature of reality, and achieved awakening, freedom from rebirth. Clearly he needed to be of a certain disposition and level of experience to be taught, in just the right way, at just the right moment. The story raises, however, some interesting problems about writing on something like meditation in a book. How can the spirit of a tradition be communicated that has from its inception depended so much on oral/aural transmission, personal teaching and the learning of meditation? A newcomer to class can watch how someone holds their hands in as they sit, straightens the back in a certain way, and can perhaps sometimes sense a tone of levity in a particular instruction or piece of advice, or a tone of urgency. How is this, and the quality of its occasional stillness, transmitted on paper? Fortunately for us, the texts were designed to be passed on, to travel and to be assimilated by the new groups of people, in different localities: from the outset, Buddhism seems to have been geared to do these things. As stressed in this book, however, a good tradition, teacher and friends, along with texts, are the best way of finding out about meditation for oneself.
The underlying theme of this book will be to explore the way meditation was described and taught in the early period, from around the third century BCE to the seventh century CE, in canon and commentaries. All the texts chosen are still regularly used and consulted as part of the living tradition. It includes some from the very earliest layers of the tradition. These texts form the 'canon' and give some of the earliest known Buddhist teachings on the subject. There will also be some texts and stories about early meditators from the later commentaries, which from the start of the tradition transmitted and explained the texts to practitioners. There are other readings, such as extracts from the questions of King Milinda, a series of questions asked by the Bactrian king about Buddhist meditation and doctrine, and a few Sanskrit texts, to indicate early variation.
Most of the texts are translated from Pali, an ancient Indo-Aryan language very close to the language the Buddha originally spoke. Because of this emphasis, the magnificent heritage of text and manuals in Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Burmese, Tibetan and various languages employed where Buddhism has taken root cannot be represented. Buddhism is characterized by an immense variety of texts and practices, in many languages and regions, demonstrating an adaptability considered by many as one of its greatest strengths. The advantage of this selection is that it is possible to show, through our only complete collection of early Buddhist genres of texts, the great variety of types of teachings, including verses, early prose, commentaries and narrative traditions, all used to help the practice of meditation from early times, in one genus of Buddhism. Some could be called sacred, and even their written, chanted, sung or painted forms are revered as examples of the dhamma, the Buddha's teaching. Such texts are those categorized under three headings or 'baskets': Suttas, teachings for specific occasions, Vinaya, the monastic rules, and Abhidhamma, the 'higher' teaching. Others, including some later poems, guides and manuals, are honoured but used primarily for the advice and teachings they provide. Many refer to one another, as we shall see. So, when they are read together, we can obtain a flavour of how some ways quite different kinds of texts and teachings were and are seen to support one another, with differing methods, used for varied and specific purposes, people and times. To my knowledge, this is the first book to try to present this kind of overview. There will be some explanatory introduction, giving background and possible application for those interested in meditation now. Brief reference will also be made to modern meditative teaching methods, uses of terms and techniques.
This is not a scholarly edition, and because of considerations of length, there are only minimal notes. However, as there are now a number of practitioners who like to know the original terms used in translations and work out the best for themselves, technical words have been given in the original where possible.
Some historical background
The life of the Buddha is considered in Southern Buddhism as the best means of expressing the principles that lie behind his system of meditation.
The young prince Gotama, who became the historical Buddha, was raised in a palace, in the fifth century BCE, in Northern India. According to the stories, he was protected amidst all the luxury that such a life could offer at the time. After seeing four 'messengers' – an old man, a sick man, a corpse and an ascetic – he became dissatisfied with a life of protected pleasure and decided to leave the palace to find understanding and freedom from suffering. According to his own later accounts, he tried many practices: before then, as he says, there were many teachers, wandering ascetics, and sages of various kinds. Ancient India seems to have been filled with all kinds of practitioners of various forms of meditation, arduous physical exercises and gruelling practices. First he trained in formless meditations, which he felt were only partial in their effectiveness, but which he later integrated into his own meditative system. He then endured severe mortifications and self-denial, living in the wilderness and eating sometimes only one grain of rice a day. But he found that just as sensory indulgence did not bring peace or wisdom, so these practices also did not lead to knowledge or happiness.
A legend popular in Southeast Asia describes Gotama's conversion from a path leading to self-destruction. Sakka, the king of the gods of a realm called the Heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods, sees the sufferings of Gotama and realizes that he is near death. So he comes down to the realm of humans as Gotama lies severely ill, and plays a lute with three strings. One of these is too taut, and makes a harsh, scratching sound. Another is too lax, and sounds off-key. The last string, however, is evenly tuned, and produces a beautiful note. On hearing this, Gotama senses the possibility of a way of practice that involves neither excessive self-gratification nor punishing austerities. He remembers a simple and joyful meditation he had found for himself as a child, the first jhana, and asks himself if this instead might be the way to peace and liberation. Taking food, he practises this meditation, and others, and becomes awakened. On the night of the enlightenment, seated under a Bodhi tree, he eradicates the roots of the attachments that bring suffering, and free from the burden of wanting and rejecting, is released from all the defilements which had clouded his mind. After that, he develops his teaching of the eightfold path, of right view, right intention, right livelihood, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. This path, which covers all areas of life, is based on the principle of the middle way, an ongoing balance and equipoise, which, perhaps above all of the single formulations of the Buddha's teachings, communicates the spirit of the way Gotama practised. A revolutionary and innovative thinker and practitioner, for forty-five years the Buddha passed on his own system of meditation, which included some earlier practices, but also incorporated some he developed himself, yet suitable for a wide variety of kinds of temperaments and people.
We can see in his life story a principle that is the single most obvious characteristic of the way the Buddha taught. In apparent contrast to the systems around at the time, the Buddha introduced a system of meditation and practice that was realistic, workable and applicable to all kinds of temperaments and types of people: it seems to find the 'note' from which practitioners, with guidance, can start to find their own way to liberation. His advice to meditators at different stages varies according to their needs and experience: it is, he said, a 'graduated' path. Indeed, through the accounts of the early texts we are presented with a meditation guide who was alert to individual problems, took account of different levels of experience and, using similes and analogies that would be familiar to those he was teaching, was prepared to tailor meditations according to people's needs. At the time of the Buddha, Indian religious traditions had placed great emphasis on external forms, rituals and sacrifices; the Buddha, however, put meditation, and its associated practices, at the heart of a comprehensive spiritual path, accessible to everyone. In a move that was radical at the time, he emphasized that it was volition (cetana), not external forms, that provided the key to finding liberation and peaceful contentment in daily life and in meditation. Also unusually for the time, he taught everyone, of any class, both men and women. Ignoring the rigid caste and gender restrictions of most traditions, which maintained that only males of high caste could attain liberation, he taught meditation to all who asked, and, after deliberation, welcomed all within his own monastic orders.
The Buddha's system – or perhaps we should say systems – of meditation not only was adapted to individual temperament and level of experience and attainment, but seems to have survived for so long because it was also geared to being taught by his followers to others. From what we can tell from these early texts, people who wanted to learn meditation in ancient India would move from one teacher to another, staying where they felt they could get teachings helpful to them, debating with others about points of meditation and doctrine. The Buddha worked within this milieu, but encouraged his followers not only to follow a wide range of practices, but also to debate amongst themselves and to teach, sometimes in his presence, when he often approved what they had said. Early texts are filled with examples of his own disciples, both male and female, learning from him and then going on to teach others, who in turn teach the next generation. 'Reading' the tone of ancient texts is not easy: but a sense of communal practice, friendship, humour and mutual encouragement can be felt in these interchanges. Throughout, meditators are encouraged to look for guidance, to find 'good friends' in the teaching, and to ensure that contacts with other practitioners maintain the health and balance of a meditative teaching whose spirit is communicated by the very notion of a balanced and 'middle' way. These characteristics are still encouraged today.
From the earliest days of the tradition, Buddhism travelled and adapted. In contrast to contemporary mores, at a time when Indian society viewed much travel and all sea and boat travel as hazardous and polluting, travel is encouraged and indeed embedded into the very formulation of early Buddhist doctrine. So those who follow the teaching take a 'path', the same word used for any thoroughfare, and follow a system of training that is compared to a boat or a raft, that will take the person who uses it across the dangerous and perilous waters of samsara, the endless wandering that is the lot of all beings. Even within the Buddha's lifetime the tradition rapidly moved from the regions around northern India where he initially taught. So, from its inception inherently mobile, it had to acquire from the outset flexibility to new circumstances, in various adjustments of theory, practice and understanding suitable for different terrains, kinds of people and the demands of the local situation. We can take a very concrete example of this, in some changes that took place in the centuries after the tradition had become established in many different settings. In the very early texts the Buddha himself did not promulgate vegetarianism, though it was suggested to him as a policy, on the grounds that he wanted his order of monks to eat whatever the laity chose to give them. But when the tradition travelled, by the first centuries CE, to China, then Korea and finally Japan, the idea of saving other beings moved into the codified practice, in some schools, of refraining from eating meat. When, much later, Buddhism travelled to Tibet, from both China and India, such policies could not be maintained: no meditator would survive in those regions without eating meat. In other creative and exploratory ways the tradition, particularly with regard to meditation practices, adapted and evolved in accordance with local customs, rituals, and doctrines. Buddhist meditative practices and doctrines have tended to promote adaptation to the culture to which they move, a feature which helps to explain the great success of Buddhism in China, for instance, where it evolved and was reformulated to complement the pre-existent schools of Confucianism and Daoism. The diffusion of Buddhism was and is wide: after the death of the Buddha, teachings were taken around India, to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian countries, and up through the north to regions such as Parthia, around modern Iran, and along the Silk Road, as well as eastwards through sea routes coming from India, and by land to China, where it underwent significant transformations. From here, the traditions that had evolved in China based on Buddhist meditative practice moved to Korea and then to Japan. The first movement to the Himalayan regions around Tibet appears to have occurred in the sixth century, from India and China, and then in later waves, primarily from India.
During these movements, Buddhism necessarily evolved, as it did indeed in places where it became established, in a long process of acculturation and absorption. This anthology will also attempt to communicate this spirit of creative adaptability in the types of texts that are chosen. In the course of the movement of Buddhism, with various forms of the teaching travelling at different times to different regions, the practice of meditation, too, inevitably developed and changed in a number of ways.
For instance, in the centuries after the Buddha's death around 400 BCE, there was a general movement towards the devotional and the visual in all the religious traditions extant at the time. In Buddhism itself, many new practices were developed, often involving the visualized figure of the Buddha, and the various settings and idealized realms in which he was felt to have taught, and in some traditions, was thought still to be teaching. The idea of the Bodhisatta/Bodhisattva, the being dedicated to saving all beings from suffering, became increasingly popular, and many texts describe such beings, their realms, and their teachings, often through visualized images of various Bodhisattvas and their followers. These texts and practices were taken to other regions as Buddhism travelled, adapting sometimes to local images, gods and imaginary realms. In Tibet, for instance, where it seems that the Bon already had a heritage of gods, visual images and rituals, the Buddhist tradition, which arrived in waves from about the seventh century, started to place more emphasis on such elements, or adapt them from Indian counterparts, and new meditative traditions evolved. In Tibet, such practices assumed even greater importance than they had before, and were imbued with great significance and meaning, as local gods, rituals and images seem to have been integrated with the exercises, mantras and devotional exercises popular in India at the time. This emphasis on visualized images of deities, bodhisattvas and Buddhas has remained a prominent characteristic of Tibetan meditative practice, with grades and initiations for each stage and further development of the meditation. We can trace the origins of these practices in texts, some of which are included in this volume, that were composed in India in the centuries after the Buddha's death. The Buddhist traditions in which they arose have now been lost, as India ceased to have a large Buddhist practitioner base from around the time of the end of the first millennium, but the early texts describe practices that evolved and changed in what are known as the Northern Buddhist areas.
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Excerpted from The Spirit of Buddhist Meditation by Sarah Shaw. Copyright © 2014 Sarah Shaw. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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