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| The Buddha used the absorptions before, during, and after enlightenment (Hooper Project). |
The Buddha explains
right concentration (
samma samādhi), a Factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, as the first four meditative absorptions (
jhānas).
According to the commentaries, there is a stage of meditation the meditator reaches before entering absorption. This stage is called access or neighborhood concentration (upacāra-samādhi).
Abandoning the
Five Hindrances -- sensual craving, ill will, sloth and torpor (physical and mental sluggishness), restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt -- marks entry into access concentration.
These hindrances are directly opposed by the
Factors of Absorption, which grow in strength and stability until absorption occurs.
- Initial application (of the mind's attention to an object)
- Sustained (single pointed) application on the object
- Joy (a kind of rapture or effervescence)
- Happiness (sukha)
- One-pointedness (when the mind holds and concentration feels effortless)
In practice, the Factors of Absorption:
- Bring the mind to the object (applying, arousing)
- Keep the mind with the object (sustaining, sticking to it)
- Find great interest in the object (meticulous fascination)
- Make the mind/heart contented with the object (bliss)
- Unify the mind with the object (fix, hold, stick).
In the Neighborhood
Access or neighborhood concentration is an unstable state. It is in the vicinity of absorption. The mind is becoming well collected on an object, but it is not yet at a state of absorption. Rather than getting excited with greater success, it must maintain an even keel and ease into this calm, collected concentration.
The difference between access concentration and absorption is that the factors become strengthened to such a degree that they bring about a qualitative shift in consciousness. It moves up a level. The mind no longer functions on the ordinary sensory level. Access concentration is not mentioned separately in the sutras.
However, there are several discourses where a person gains insight into the Dharma hearing a teaching from the Buddha. Often their minds are described as suddenly being freed of hindrances when this occurs. Some have identified this as being a type of access concentration.
[Note] The equivalent of access concentration in Tibetan commentaries is
nyer-bsdogs.
[Note]
As one enters neighborhood concentration, some meditators may experience vivid mental imagery that may be distracting or useful. The useful variety comes in the form of a "sign" (nimitta), which is a mental counterpart image to the external meditation object.
It can be as vivid and real as if seen by the eye. (It is, in fact, a fine-material object created by the mind). The meditator is fully aware and conscious of seeing this mental image. This is discussed in the early texts, and expanded upon in Theravāda commentaries.
[Note]
Different meditators experience different mental images. Some may not experience any mental images at all. The same meditator over multiple meditation sessions may experience different mental images for each session. Mental images may be pleasant, fascinating, neutral, frightening, or shocking.
- It is crucial NOT to switch attention from one's meditation object to the sign being formed by the mind. It should be ignored. As one ignores it and continues to dwell fixed on one's object, the nimitta will move to take the place of the object. The meditator has changed nothing. The process and mind have naturally chosen themselves. The meditator has one game or job and one alone -- to keep the meditation object in mind at all times.
As concentration builds and the mind/heart becomes collected, gross feelings of breathing and of having a physical body disappear, leaving only a sense of pure awareness. Of course, breathing is still present (except in the fourth absorption, where it is not needed and no harm is experienced from its absence however impossible that may be for those who have not experienced it).
At this stage inexperienced meditators may become afraid, thinking they are going to die if they continue the concentration because the feeling of breathing and the feeling of having a physical body seems to have completely disappeared. They should instead be encouraged by this experience and abandon fear, which is a mental poison (
dosa, aversion). Continue, knowing that this is an excellent sign of progress toward full concentration and absorption (
jhāna).
[Note]
Mastering jhāna
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| (Keith Maguire/flickr.com) |
A meditator first masters the four lower or material (
rupa) absorptions before mastering the higher or immaterial ones (
arupa). There are five aspects to this "mastery":
- Adverting: the ability to turn attention toward the Factors of Absorption one by one after emerging from jhāna, wherever and whenever one wants and for as long as one wants.
- Attaining: the ability to quickly enter absorption.
- Resolving: the ability to remain absorbed for exactly the predetermined length of time one sets.
- Emerging: the ability to emerge from absorption quickly without difficulty.
- Reviewing: the ability to look back on the absorption and its factors with retrospective-knowledge immediately after adverting to them.
The early sutras state that "the most exquisite of recluses" are able to attain any of the absorptions and abide in them without difficulty.
There is a kind of saint (arhat) who is "liberated in both ways" -- fluent in attaining absorption as well as having mastered insight (vipassana). The first is a temporary liberation of the heart from the hindrances and defilements, the latter a cutting off which is permanent. Someone liberated only through dry insight does not live on in perpetual bliss. But one liberated in both ways has the blissful absorptions as a refuge, a recourse, and lives on in joy able to attain them at will.
The absorptions are not exclusive to Buddhist meditation. But liberating insights developed based on them (the Fourfold Setting Up of Mindfulness founded on a base of "right concentration," defined by the Buddha as the first four absorptions). The absorptions, as exalted as they may be, are ultimately unsatisfactory. They are only a temporary liberation. They fall away. Nirvana -- which is beyond all worlds, planes, and states -- is the only permanent liberation.
Absorptions are very purifying and can lead to rebirth in extraordinary "heavens" (
deva lokas), which are fine-material and immaterial planes of existence beyond the sensual sphere planes. All of these worlds with extraordinary lifespans are impermanent. Even in this life, one loses the object and cannot get it back, or the Five Hindrances reassert themselves with more power than before. Nirvana is safety. The usefulness of right concentration is using it along with right mindfulness -- bare awareness and contemplation of particular things outlined in the discourse on the
Four Foundation of Mindfulness.
If one is not liberated temporarily and permanently, one would fall into the same problem as the early meditation teachers Siddhartha sought out as guides. Yogi Alara Kalama and Yogi Uddaka Ramaputta guided Siddhartha to two immaterial planes -- the sphere of nothingness and the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception -- calling these final liberation from samsara (rebirth and suffering).
Siddhartha could see that there was something more, something beyond rebirth. He could see that these planes, however exalted, did not represent nirvana (the "complete end of suffering").
