How Others Have Experienced Absorption — Part ThreeThere are several reputable meditation teachers within the Theravada tradition to learn from who have written or spoken about the steps or stages necessary for the attainment of absorption. Among these are three prominent contemporary figures within the tradition: the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah (b. 1918 - d. 1992), the American master Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff, b. 1949- ), and the English master Ajahn Brahmavamso (Peter Betts, b. 1951- ).
For those who are unfamiliar, Ajahn Brahmavamso, an Englishman who goes by the shortened name Ajahn Brahm, was a student of the Thai master Ajahn Chah for nine years before being asked to assist in establishing a forest monastery near Perth, Western Australia in 1983, where he is now the the spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an American who travelled to Thailand in 1976 to study with Ajahn Fuang Jotiko until the latter's death in 1986, helped established the Metta Forest Monastery near Valley Center, California in 1990 where he is currently its abbot.
As one might imagine, each of these meditation masters, having come from different training backgrounds and perspectives, might have occasion to be varied in their explanations about the process of meditation. And since one, Ajahn Brahm, was a student of the other, Ajahn Chah, you might tend to think that both might describe absorption in a similar way. But this is not necessarily the case. Thanissaro Bhikkhu's descriptions comes closer to Ajahn Chah's descriptions of the practice of jhana than does his own student Ajahn Brahm. This does not mean that two of these masters are right and the third is wrong when looking at their descriptions. It just points out that different people perceive things in different ways. It is up to us, as individual practitioners, to decide which description best fits our own perception of the experience.
In the 2004 Fall issue of
Buddhadharma magazine, Ajahn Brahmavamso published an excellent article which included descriptions of the practice of jhana absorption. Toward the end of that article there is the following paragraph:
"Another feature of jhana is that it occurs only after the nimitta is discerned as described above. Furthermore, you should know that while in any jhana it is impossible to experience the body (e.g., physical pain), hear a sound from outside or produce any thoughts, not even “good” thoughts. There is just a clear singleness of perception, an experience of nondualistic bliss that continues unchanging for a very long time. This is not a trance but a state of heightened awareness. This is said so that you may know for yourself whether what you take to be a jhana is real or imaginary."What is of particular note in the above paragraph are the passages which are underscored. On reading this paragraph, one might come away with the impression that according to Ajahn Brahm, true absorption is a state which
excludes certain perceptions of phenomena altogether, and that unless one's absorption is of this depth, that one is truly not experiencing absorption according to Ajahn Brahm's mind map. However, to accept this view without question or further examination may lead one into a possible confusion regarding what absorption
is. To his credit he
does qualify that this state is not a trance. Yet curiously, he contradicts himself by calling it a "state of heightened awareness" without identifying the nature of the subject of which one is aware. If one is not aware of the body, sounds or thoughts, of
what, exactly, is one's awareness heightened? Curiously, he doesn't say.
On the one hand, Ajahn Brahm seems to be asserting that unless one's absorption reaches the level he describes (the total exclusion of all sense impingement from the outside or the inside), then it is not true absorption. And yet even his own teacher, Ajahn Chah states quite clearly that:
"In appana samadhi the mind calms down and is stilled to a level where it is at its most subtle and skilful. Even if you experience sense impingement from the outside, such as sounds and physical sensations, it remains external and is unable to disturb the mind. You might hear a sound, but it won't distract your concentration." The
appana samadhi, or fixed unification of mind, that he is speaking about is, generally speaking, equivalent to the first four levels of jhana.
In an interview which Thanissaro Bhikkhu did with Richard Shankman for his book
The Experience of Samadhi: An In-Depth Exploration of Buddhist Meditation, Thanissaro mentions:
"There are also states of jhana where sensory input is not totally cut off, but it doesn't intrude on the mind. With these states there's more of an ability to observe what's going on in the jhana while you're still in it. It's a little like the first jhana piggybacking on the other jhanas, because you can evaluate what's going on and you can see where there's stress, what you're doing that's causing the stress, and you can see how you can drop that particular activity." Here, Ajahn Thanissaro states what Ajahn Brahm neglects to state: that what is heightened is one's
awareness of what is going on
in the jhana while you're still in it, meaning that insight is possible while one is in the kind of jhana experience described by Ajahn Thanissaro.
So, who is telling it like it is? In my experience, I have experience both scenarios, although not within the exact same context or circumstance. And it is a good thing that I have, since if I had blindly accepted Ajahn Brahm's definition of jhana,
my mind might not have been open to the possibility of Ajahn Chah's (and Thanissaro's) definition as also being true. Can both these descriptions be true? Well, yes they can. And let me explain how. The difference comes about because of the different circumstances of being in absorption.
Under one scenario, in cultivating tranquility, when the goal of the meditation is calmness (samatha) in an effort to cultivate deeper and deeper levels of calmness, the mind is able to dive so deeply within itself that all exterior phenomena (sound, touch, and smell in particular) can be drown out from the mind's perception of them. Within the so-called ninth jhana, "the cessation of perception and feeling" (
sannavedayita-nirodha, also known by the designation
nirodha-samapatti), mind's ability to be conscious of anything has temporarily ceased and a profound peacefulness or lack of any movement (mental or physical) whatsoever is what is recalled once the meditator returns to normal consciousness from this state. In this circumstance, this is taking samatha practice to its ultimate limits, that is, there is nothing else to experience beyond "the cessation of perception and feeling."
Under the second scenario, in cultivating insight (vipassana), when the goal of the meditation is insight into one of the themes of the Dhamma, the mind in
samadhi, in focusing upon the chosen Dhamma theme, is able to maintain its focus upon the subject despite any disturbance from an exterior phenomenon such as sound. When the mind in
samadhi is focusing on an insight theme it can be aware of disturbances from the outside while remaining unified upon its subject. The awareness of the outside disturbance in no way interferes with the unification of the mind on its meditation subject. It is as though this awareness of the disturbance remains on the periphery of one's attention, just as when one is visually focused upon an object and yet sees on the periphery another object.
Now, to be perfectly fair, Ajahn Brahm would likely deny that the circumstance that he was speaking about involved "the cessation of perception and feeling" or the ninth jhana. As he clearly states in the above quotation he is referring to "
any jhana" and not just one specific level of jhana. One possible answer to this seeming dilemma might be found in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's writings wherein he echos the sentiment found in the suttas that
"some develop strong powers of concentration before developing strong discernment, whereas others gain a sound theoretical understanding of the Dhamma before developing strong concentration. In either case, both strong concentration and sound discernment are needed to bring about Awakening." This explanation would seem to infer that perhaps Ajahn Brahm's interpretation of his discernment may not be as well developed as he thinks. Whether or not one accepts this explanation, it certainly serves as a valid way to explain the difference between the perception of the master (Ajahn Chah) on the one hand and the perception of his student (Ajahn Brahm) on the other.
As for myself, I have always been taught to observe my own experience of any phenomenon and to accept that and nothing else. My experience tells me that the possibility of sense impingement is present in any of the first four jhanas, unlike Ajahn Brahm's unyielding assertion above, and that the essence of Ajahns Chah and Thanissaro's statements are correct: that any sense disturbance from the outside remains external and is unable to distract the mind's concentration.
As Thanissaro Bhikkhu stated further on in the interview:
"When you're fully into even this sort of jhana, particularly from the second one up, you're not going to be doing any thinking or evaluating at all, but you can pull back a little bit without destroying that state, because it's not totally dependent on blocking off all outside input." This also accords with my experience of jhana.