Samatha Bhāvanā in the Theravada School

The Tipiṭaka, which dates to 1st century BCE, known as well as the Pāli Canon, gives the most comprehensive insight into Buddha’s meditation methods and aims. The Silk Road transmission of Buddhism introduced meditation to other oriental countries, and in 653 CE, the first meditation hall was opened in Japan. Around the 5th to 6th centuries, many different forms and kinds of meditation appeared and were developed in Confucian and Taoist China, and in Buddhist India. The major break between Hindu and Buddhist meditation occurred when the Buddha’s followers no longer believed that meditation should be used to reach a closer understanding with Brahma, which was the aim of Hindu meditation. Instead, they accepted that meditation provided a means of realizing and seeing how all things are according to reality, or “things as they really are” (yathā-bhūta).

The most well-known sources of non-Buddhist meditation were discussed by the Buddha in the Brahmajālasutta, in which he listed 62 wrong views, many of which were derived from or reinforced by misinterpretations of samādhi experiences, including both form jhāna and formless attainments. ⁴⁰

Buddha, in the Ariyapariyesanasutta, described his studies under the guidance of two masters: Ālāra Kālāma and Uddaka- Rāmaputta . Furthermore, in the Mahāsaccakasutta, he also ⁴¹ ⁴² explained several ascetic practices he engaged in before discovering the path to nibbāna. In the Majjhima Nikāya, there are three places in which the Buddha describes two meditation methods — “meditation without breath” and “reduced intake of food” (ahāre patikkūlasaññā) — which were taught by his teacher Uddaka Rāmaputta, who claimed to be a vedagū, a master of the Vedas. The Buddha sought to achieve ⁴³ enlightenment through these methods, but did not find the final cessation of dukkha. According to the Ariyapariyesanasutta, it was through ⁴⁴ the teachings of Ālāra Kālāma that the Bodhisatta Siddhattha achieved the “sphere of nothingness” (akiñcaaññaāyatana) and it was under Uddaka-Rāmaputta that he accessed the sphere of neither-perception-

nor-non-perception (nevasaññān-āsaññāyatana). This shows that ⁴⁵ Gotama followed the traditional meditative techniques and attained identical jhānic states previously realized by the other śramaṇas, but his evaluation of the jhānic states was different. He, like the Ārūpyavādins, rejected the interpretation of the various pleasant feelings (vedanā) as nibbāna, the ultimate spiritual goal. On the other hand, he alone appreciated the mental qualities of purified mindfulness, for example, which enabled him to experience the neutral feeling (adukkham-asukhavedanā) in the fourth thrall of jhāna. He did not value any subjective pleasant experience that was temporarily free from dukkha. He was, therefore, able to get detached from the feeling of adukkham-asukhaṁ, but he did not enter into any trance-like state of infinite space and so on.

According to the Mahāsaccakasutta, when the Buddha came to the ⁴⁶ conclusion that the states of consciousness that he had attained could provide a happy and peaceful life but could not stop dukkha (rebirth, illness and death), he moved on to the jhāna experienced naturally by him in childhood under the rose-apple tree. He understood that this was the ⁴⁷ right way to enlightenment (esova maggo bodhāyāti). When he applied this particular mental state, he gained three knowledges, one of which was bodhi, the complete and perfect wisdom. According to the Dvedhāvitakkasutta , in the first watch of the night, he had ⁴⁸ recollection of all his past lives and this realization covered many aeons of world contraction and expansion. This knowledge took him out of the cycle of repeated births and deaths. In the second watch of the night, he attained the knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings according to their actions. This knowledge enabled him to fully understand the Law of Kamma. In the third watch of the night, he gained the knowledge of the Four Noble Truth, the exhaustion of āsāvas, and then, knowing that he had eradicated all defilements and achieved the end of dukkha, he declared:

“When I knew and saw thus, my mind was liberated from the taint of sensual desire, from the taint of being, and from the taint of ignorance. When it was liberated, there came the knowledge: “It is liberated”. I directly knew: “Birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more coming to any state of being.”” ⁴⁹

He knew that he had become liberated and would never be born again. The liberation, which Gotama attained, may be termed cetovimutti. This particular method, by which he achieved the final liberation (nibbāna), the Buddha named vipassanā. ⁵⁰

Notes

Brahmajālasutta DN 1.
Pāsarāsisutta MN 26.
Mahāsaccakasutta MN 36.
Udakasutta SN 35.103.
Dhammacakkappavattanasutta SN 56.11.
Pāsarāsisutta MN 26.
Biswadeb Mukherjee, “A Pre-Buddhist Meditation System and Its Early Modifications by 46 Gotama the Bodhisattva”, Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal, No. 9 (July 1996): 310.
Mahāsaccakasutta MN 36.
Dvedhāvitakkasutta MN 19.
Mahāparinibbānasutta DN 16.
Pāsarāsisutta MN 26.