A book and essay review only for fellow nerds who like to dive into the weeds of Buddhism meditation history ...
I have just completed reading two fascinating works by Buddhism historian and philosopher Grzegorz Polak, a professor in Poland who writes on early Buddhism and its meditation traditions (LINK TO PROFILE). One is an essay entitled "Reexamining Jhana: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology" (LINK), and the other is his recent book, "Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan: A Different Meditative Paradigm" (Introduction available: LINK). He makes some claims that may surprise many practitioners. As noted below, some of his assertions are now recognized and shared by other respected experts in South Asian Buddhist history, while other claims are more original and exclusive to Prof. Polak. I summarize:
(1) Originally, according to the earliest layers of Indian Buddhist suttas which can be identified, enlightenment was centered on a relatively simple Jhana practice which culminated in the Fourth Jhana as the culmination and key to liberation. The suttas describe the Buddha as having tried and mastered various more intense, highly concentrated yogic forms of meditation before enlightenment, which methods he rejected as ultimately not freeing. Many of these intense forms of meditation are common in Brahmanic and Jain traditions, and were specifically criticized many places in the early suttas. Nonetheless, in the years and centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha, these very same intense and highly concentrated forms of yogic meditation crept back into Buddhism until they became accepted as the central Buddhist way of practice. The original simplicity of Jhanic meditation as described in the suttas was lost and reinterpreted by later commentators (most specifically in the commentary central to the Theravadan tradition, the Visuddhimagga) in ways that encouraged the attaining of extreme states free of all thought and awareness. Dr. Polak states his thesis in very strong language, emphasizing that other scholars share in many of these conclusions:
Likewise, the separation of the South Asian meditation traditions into "samatha" meditation and "vipassana," with the latter being a series of special practices for insight, was also not found in the oldest layer of suttas, wherein sitting jhana meditation naturally gave rise to insight and liberation.
(2) Although Polak does not believe that there was a direct historical continuance of the early Jhana meditation methods and certain kinds of Chan meditation which developed in China (Polak believes that the simularity is coincidence or, better said, has its roots in some shared aspect of human spirituality), Polak's book finds great parallels between the earliest forms of Buddhist meditation centered on the Jhana and Chan meditation much resembling early silent illumination. He writes in his book:
He describes a "non-method" common to both, in which effort is left aside. He cites various Suttas as example ...
Although Polak does not seem to go so far, I note that some other writers (such as Richard Shankman in his survey, "The Experience of Samadhi" -LINK) point out that, in the highest, Fourth Jhana, there manifests "an abandoning of pleasure/pain, attractions/aversions, a dropping of both joy and grief", a dropping away of both rapture and bliss states, resulting in a "purity of mindfulness" and "equanimity". Combine this with the fact that, more than a "one pointed mind absorbed into a particular object", there is a "unification of mind" (described as a broader awareness around the object of meditation ... whereby the "mind itself becomes collected and unmoving, but not the objects of awareness, as mindfulness becomes lucid, effortless and unbroken" (See, Shankman, pages 82-83) with emphasis on equanimity while present amid circumstances (and a dropping of bliss states).
This is very close to a description of Shikantaza, for example, as dropping all aversions and attractions, finding unification of mind, collected and unmoving, effortless and unbroken, in/as/through/not removed from the life, circumstances, complexities which surround us and are us, sitting still with what is just as it is. Dr. Polak also explains early anapanasati breath meditation as very similar to the current Zazen practice of simply following the breath.
While it is likely more convergence than direct influence, representing an approach to realization very common in many meditative traditions, it is interesting to see that Shikantaza may actually resonate so closely with early practice. (I will also note that I do not concur in all aspects of Dr. Polak's thesis, such as his assertion that such a "non-method" practice really had to occur in a monastic setting. Other than that, I found his book fascinating.) It is possible that our Shikantaza "Just Sitting" tradition is very ancient in style, and perhaps close to the original practices of Buddhism at its inception.
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image.png
Gassho, J
stlah
I have just completed reading two fascinating works by Buddhism historian and philosopher Grzegorz Polak, a professor in Poland who writes on early Buddhism and its meditation traditions (LINK TO PROFILE). One is an essay entitled "Reexamining Jhana: Towards a Critical Reconstruction of Early Buddhist Soteriology" (LINK), and the other is his recent book, "Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan: A Different Meditative Paradigm" (Introduction available: LINK). He makes some claims that may surprise many practitioners. As noted below, some of his assertions are now recognized and shared by other respected experts in South Asian Buddhist history, while other claims are more original and exclusive to Prof. Polak. I summarize:
(1) Originally, according to the earliest layers of Indian Buddhist suttas which can be identified, enlightenment was centered on a relatively simple Jhana practice which culminated in the Fourth Jhana as the culmination and key to liberation. The suttas describe the Buddha as having tried and mastered various more intense, highly concentrated yogic forms of meditation before enlightenment, which methods he rejected as ultimately not freeing. Many of these intense forms of meditation are common in Brahmanic and Jain traditions, and were specifically criticized many places in the early suttas. Nonetheless, in the years and centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha, these very same intense and highly concentrated forms of yogic meditation crept back into Buddhism until they became accepted as the central Buddhist way of practice. The original simplicity of Jhanic meditation as described in the suttas was lost and reinterpreted by later commentators (most specifically in the commentary central to the Theravadan tradition, the Visuddhimagga) in ways that encouraged the attaining of extreme states free of all thought and awareness. Dr. Polak states his thesis in very strong language, emphasizing that other scholars share in many of these conclusions:
Until recently, the issue of early Buddhist meditation was not seen as particularly problematic or controversial. It was almost taken for granted, that the meditative tradition of Theravāda Buddhism was able to preserve the meditative teachings of early Buddhism in their pure form. This view can however no longer be maintained. It appears that there are several fundamental discrepancies between the early suttas and the later meditative scriptures of Theravāda Buddhism. .... Most controversies are connected with the status and the role of the meditative state known as 'jhāna: .... Jhāna was not originally a yogic [deep concentration] type of meditation. In fact, it was often described as standing in direct opposition to yoga, which was negatively evaluated in the earliest Buddhist scriptures. .... Jhāna was misinterpreted as yoga .... The Visuddhimagga [the main commentary of Theravada] contains many important new elements, which cannot be traced down in the earlier suttas. The presence of these new elements can only be explained as a result of a wider trend to interpret jhāna as a yogic form of meditation. .... The introduction of the new elements and the reinterpretation of the other ones were supposed to supply the 'missing' information. ...
(2) Although Polak does not believe that there was a direct historical continuance of the early Jhana meditation methods and certain kinds of Chan meditation which developed in China (Polak believes that the simularity is coincidence or, better said, has its roots in some shared aspect of human spirituality), Polak's book finds great parallels between the earliest forms of Buddhist meditation centered on the Jhana and Chan meditation much resembling early silent illumination. He writes in his book:
While it has long been acknowledged that Chan differs in many ways from more mainstream forms of Buddhism, recent scholarship has also resulted in an increasing awareness of the originality of early Buddhist teachings found in the Nikāyas and their distinctiveness from the later doctrine of classical Theravāda. This book is inspired by passages in Nikāya and early Chan texts that can be read as expressing surprisingly similar and at the same time very unconventional ideas about meditation, consciousness, and reality. While due to their unorthodox character, these passages have often been ignored or explained away when studied in the context of just one tradition, the new perspective provided by their comparative analysis allows a more direct reading to be considered, thereby drawing out their radical implications. This book argues that the unconventional concepts found in Nikāya and early Chan texts are part of a unique and coherent meditative paradigm that is very different from the one commonly associated with Buddhism and dominant in its history. One of its central ideas is that certain crucial meditative states cannot be directly attained through methods involving acts of will and mental effort such as active concentration, but their occurrence is dependent on a specific way of life, state of mind and existential condition. To make better sense of Nikāya and early Chan views that are often at odds with commonly held beliefs about mental functioning and the structure of reality, and to assess their plausibility, they are compared with relevant developments in Western philosophy and cognitive science.
A comparison with the stock description of the third jhāna may be helpful in this regard:
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"Again with the fading away as well of rapture, he abides in equanimity (upekkhako), and mindful (sato) and fully aware (sampajāno) still feeling pleasure in the body, he enters upon and abides in the third jhāna on account of which, the noble ones announce: ‘He has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful" (MN 51; tr. Ñan. amoli and Bodhi, 1995: 451).
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This comparison leaves no doubts as to the relation of the practice of developing the faculties to the jhānas. ... This means that the four jhānas cannot be interpreted as the states in which the senses would come to a halt. This is of course at odds with the popular view on the jhānas as the states of deep absorption, where one is so strongly focused on his meditation object, that he is not aware of anything else. ...
[And with regard to the original "highest" jhana, the Fourth Jhana, the Sutta says]:
"With the abandoning of pleasure and pain… he enters and abides in the fourth jhāna… which has neither pain nor pleasure and purity of equanimity due to mindfulness. On seeing a form with the eye… hearing a sound with an ear… smelling an odor with the nose… tasting a flavor with a tongue… touching a tangible by the body… cognizing a mind-object with the mind, he does not lust after it if it is pleasing; he does not dislike it if it is displeasing. He abides with mindfulness of the body (kāyasati) established, with an immeasurable mind and he understands as it actually is the deliverance of mind, and deliverance by wisdom, wherein the evil unwholesome states cease without remainder" (MN 38; tr. Ñan. amoli and Bodhi, 1995: 360).
.
This passage makes it very clear that in the state of the fourth jhāna, the senses of the meditator are not coming to a halt. On the contrary, they are functioning in a smooth, continuous way, because their activity is not disrupted by the arising of lust or aversion directed towards their objects. It is also worth noting that the Mahātanhāsankhaya Sutta describes in slightly different words the same state, which is depicted in the Indriyabhāvanā Sutta. The Mahātanhāsankhaya Sutta describes it as not lusting/disliking either pleasing/displeasing sense objects, while according to the Indriyabhāvanā Sutta one can remain mindful, alert and equanimous, when faced with objects that are agreeable/disagreeable.
.
"Again with the fading away as well of rapture, he abides in equanimity (upekkhako), and mindful (sato) and fully aware (sampajāno) still feeling pleasure in the body, he enters upon and abides in the third jhāna on account of which, the noble ones announce: ‘He has a pleasant abiding who has equanimity and is mindful" (MN 51; tr. Ñan. amoli and Bodhi, 1995: 451).
.
This comparison leaves no doubts as to the relation of the practice of developing the faculties to the jhānas. ... This means that the four jhānas cannot be interpreted as the states in which the senses would come to a halt. This is of course at odds with the popular view on the jhānas as the states of deep absorption, where one is so strongly focused on his meditation object, that he is not aware of anything else. ...
[And with regard to the original "highest" jhana, the Fourth Jhana, the Sutta says]:
"With the abandoning of pleasure and pain… he enters and abides in the fourth jhāna… which has neither pain nor pleasure and purity of equanimity due to mindfulness. On seeing a form with the eye… hearing a sound with an ear… smelling an odor with the nose… tasting a flavor with a tongue… touching a tangible by the body… cognizing a mind-object with the mind, he does not lust after it if it is pleasing; he does not dislike it if it is displeasing. He abides with mindfulness of the body (kāyasati) established, with an immeasurable mind and he understands as it actually is the deliverance of mind, and deliverance by wisdom, wherein the evil unwholesome states cease without remainder" (MN 38; tr. Ñan. amoli and Bodhi, 1995: 360).
.
This passage makes it very clear that in the state of the fourth jhāna, the senses of the meditator are not coming to a halt. On the contrary, they are functioning in a smooth, continuous way, because their activity is not disrupted by the arising of lust or aversion directed towards their objects. It is also worth noting that the Mahātanhāsankhaya Sutta describes in slightly different words the same state, which is depicted in the Indriyabhāvanā Sutta. The Mahātanhāsankhaya Sutta describes it as not lusting/disliking either pleasing/displeasing sense objects, while according to the Indriyabhāvanā Sutta one can remain mindful, alert and equanimous, when faced with objects that are agreeable/disagreeable.
This is very close to a description of Shikantaza, for example, as dropping all aversions and attractions, finding unification of mind, collected and unmoving, effortless and unbroken, in/as/through/not removed from the life, circumstances, complexities which surround us and are us, sitting still with what is just as it is. Dr. Polak also explains early anapanasati breath meditation as very similar to the current Zazen practice of simply following the breath.
While it is likely more convergence than direct influence, representing an approach to realization very common in many meditative traditions, it is interesting to see that Shikantaza may actually resonate so closely with early practice. (I will also note that I do not concur in all aspects of Dr. Polak's thesis, such as his assertion that such a "non-method" practice really had to occur in a monastic setting. Other than that, I found his book fascinating.) It is possible that our Shikantaza "Just Sitting" tradition is very ancient in style, and perhaps close to the original practices of Buddhism at its inception.
.
image.png
Gassho, J
stlah
)
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