Can you hear sound and feel body in jhāna?

Essays
42

I am surprised you should say this, although Ven. Analayo seems to make the same argument.

The gradual progress of samādhi requires a gradual narrowing of perspective, as more and more of one’s experience is given up. In the first two steps of the Ānāpānasati Sutta one is aware of the length of the breath. A gradual deepening of samādhi would suggest that the next step (the third) should be more refined, not an expanded awareness of the body.

The fourth step is passambhayaṃ kāyasaṅkhāraṃ. Kāyasaṅkhāra is elsewhere used to refer to the breath, and so in this instance the instruction is to calm the breath. Are we really seeing a focus on the breath, with a subsequent calming of the breath, but with a full body focus in between? I cannot help but seeing this as implausible.

At the end of the first tetrad the breath is specifically said to be a kāya, “a body.” (Kāyesu kāyaññatarāhaṃ, bhikkhave, evaṃ vadāmi yadidaṃ—assāsapassāsā.) It seems to me that this is very significant and should be taken as strong support that kāya in the third step should also be interpreted as referring to the breath.

And, of course, this is all supported by the commentary.

It is for these reasons that the apparently more explicit reference to the breath in the Chinese translation, quoted by Llt, caught my interest.

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43

I think if we were to take Kamabhu’s definition in SA 568, and then apply that to SA 810, then it would support that idea.

It’s an interesting subject, and apparently it was phrased two different ways in the SA. In SA 803, it has awareness of the entire body (一切身覺). In SA 810, it has awareness of all bodily formations (一切身行覺知). But for the fourth practice, both texts refer to calming bodily formations.

MA 81 and MA 98 have that he trains mindful of the entire body on the in-breath (學一切身息入), and mindful of the entire body on the out-breath (學一切身息出). EA 3.8 has that he completely observes the body (具觀身體), fully observing and knowing it from the head down to the feet (從頭至足皆當觀知).

On this same subject, Sarvastivadin anapana traditions included observing the breath as it moves through the different parts of the body, from the nose, through the body, and down to the toes (inhalation), and then back again (exhalation). This was termed the stage of “following” (anugama). According to Florin Deleanu (1992), in Buddhasena’s Yogacarabhumi, which is commonly called the Dharmatrata Dhyana Sutra, the stage of “following” is held to be a practice that cuts off external attachments. This text includes:

When he fully discerns [the breaths] as being long or short,
and fully experiences his whole body;
His bodily activities (kaya-samskara) gradually become calmed;

But there are profound implications to this idea that bodily formations are the breath. Buddhasena’s text further embraces the idea that breathing becomes “extinct”, or at least ceases in some manner, and goes into much detail about the different stages of practice.

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44

So it’s complicated!

Ok, but here we need to be careful not to read a later situation into the earlier suttas. There may be a connection, but not necessarily so.

45

Are there any Sanskrit originals? I’m wondering if we find any relevant sutta quotes in the Kosa or Yogabhumisastra.

46

might I suggest to move the discussion over here:
thread - ānāpāna in the saṃyukta āgama

47

Venerable Bodhi: “I used to think that Commentary was completely right on this but…” For his full explanation of this step please listen to this talk (from 47:20).

48

ok everyone,
I added this subsection to the top post essay, please edit and fill in. for the “kaya as anatomical body” section, i’ve already posted some of analayo’s agama parallel quotes from his book.

EBT where kāya does NOT refer to anatomical body

this will make it easier to collect all the evidence arranged in an organized way, instead of being scattered haphazardly and lost in the jungle of a long thread.

Matt,
you’re welcome to post a link to that thread in the essay, top post, and as the thread matures we can decide how to consolidate common elements, or break it up into more sub threads.

also, currently there is no notification when the essay wiki (first post) is updated. there have been lots of updates to it the last few days that is going unannounced

49

his SN and AN translation was published more recently than MN, so unless told otherwise, i’m going to assume Ven. Bodhi agrees with Ven. Anaalayo that step 3 of 16 steps anapana as “whole anatomical body”.

50

but isn’t part of mastery of samadhi skill in attainment, range, application? i take that to mean if we want our attainment to be infinite space, it can be infinite space, if we want mind only, it can be mind only, if we want only perceptions of bodily tactile sensations, we can have that. stillness and range are different variables.

there are so many problems with with taking step 3 to mean “whole body [of breath]”. i’ll name a couple. the buddha, if he really wanted to be clear he intended “kaya” to mean breath, he could have used “assapassa”, or whatever the exact pali word is for physical breath. or he could have at least stuck with the consistency of step 4 and used “kaya sankhara” instead of just “kaya”.

big problem number 2 is you wouldn’t expect all monks to memorize MN 118 anapanasati sutta. you would expect SN 54.1 though, which is just the basic 16 steps. The basic 16 steps does not have the “breath is a body among bodies instruction.”

51

Yes, that’s his actual position.

53

Unfortunately there are no surviving Sanskrit originals for Buddhasena’s Yogacarabhumi. This is pretty typical for meditation manuals from the Northwest, though. The text does cite this sutra definition of bodily formations, though. From the translation by Chan Yiu-wing:

One should know that
if life extinguishes,
breaths will not return.
That explains
all sentient beings
must be arisen
from the vital faculty (jivitendriya).
Breathing is, in fact,
the bodily activity (kaya-samskara)
as taught by the Buddha.
It is also known
as the fundamental support (samnisraya).
It is where
life of all sentient beings (sattva-nikaya, sattvakya)
begins to come into being.
Should breathing extinguish,
life will have nothing
to rely upon.
Because that could uphold
the vital faculty (jivetendriya)
that is why it is known
as that which pertains
to all sentient beings (sattva-nikaya, sattvakya).
The practice of anapanasmrti
is to rely on the wind
as a sphere of the mind (visaya).

The text here is upholding the Sarvastivada view of the vital faculty as a distinct dharma, while explaining it in terms of the breath and bodily formations. It also describes this stage of anapana at several points, such as in section 1.26:

When he fully discerns as being long or short,
and fully experiences his whole body,
his bodily activities (kaya-samskara)
gradually become calmed (pratiprasrabdha/prasrabdha),
and all is then fit for [the stage of] penetration.

In section 7.24:

After having achieved [the stage of] penetration
one should again apply the other efforts
until one’s whole body
is filled up with illuminating awareness
and all out-breaths and in-breaths
and bodily activities (kaya-samskara)
have come to a complete rest.
This is the awakening
acquired by spiritual cultivation
which is, indeed, penetration.

The Chinese translation is difficult to read, but fortunately Chan Yiu Wing did a study and translation of this work into English as his PhD thesis.

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54

since it’s relevant to the main topic, one phrase caught my attention in the 2nd jhana simile

Just like a lake with spring-water welling up from within, having no inflow from east, west, north, or south, and with the skies periodically supplying abundant showers, so that the cool fount of water welling up from within the lake would permeate and pervade, suffuse and fill it with cool waters, there being no part of the lake unpervaded by the cool waters; even so, the monk permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of composure. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born of composure…

could it be a metaphor of sensory input absence? if it could, then the fact that the first such reference comes up in the context of the 2nd jhana may be an indication of the stage at which senses do get shut off

although i’m aware this is kind of a stretch

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55

Thanks. But i should have been clearer, I was thinking of Asanga. And as it turns out there is a passage in the Sravakabhumi. I can’t link to the exact text, but you can search for āśvasan:

http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/srabhu_u.htm

And an alternate text here:

http://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/srabhusu.htm

Also, I should have remembered, we have a Sanskrit text on SC, from the Arthaviniscaya:

Translation by Anandajoti:

With a detailed study on his site:

http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Arthaviniscaya/index.htm

Have at it.

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56

To add a bit from the Mahavibhasa, the text describes the third stage as awareness throughout the body (覺遍身), and even considers this to be at the stage of the Third Dhyana. The key term here is throughout (遍). Then in the Fourth Dhyana, bodily formations cease (止身行), and breathing through the nose basically stops at this point. The Sarvastivadins held that when one’s practice of anapana is mature, one only needs to breathe through the pores of the body, like a lotus root.

From scroll 26 of the Chinese translation:

念短息者是初靜慮。
Mindfulness of short breaths is the First Dhyana.
念長息者是第二靜慮。
Mindfulness of long breaths is the Second Dhyana.
覺遍身者是第三靜慮。
Awareness throughout the body is the Third Dhyana.
止身行者是第四靜慮。
The cessation of bodily formations is the Fourth Dhyana.

(The Mahavibhasa puts short breaths before long breaths, based on some interpretation of the experiences of Gautama prior to his enlightenment, as recounted in the Prajnaptisastra. But if you actually examine what they are saying in the Mahavibhasa, they are just interpreting long and short breaths differently from other texts. From what I could tell, all major texts agree that as meditation progresses, the breathing becomes slower. Terms like long and short are unfortunately vague and inadequate.)

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57

Interesting, this is useful. As you meditate more deeply, the breath becomes shallower, but the time for each breath becomes longer. These days I use “deep” and “shallow” instead of “long” and “short”.

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58

@frankk

I am not sure if the exact interpretation of kāya here makes much practical difference. If you go with experiencing the entire physical body, the breath will be an important part of that. If you instead focus on the entire breath, the body will still be there in the background. I don’t think there is any vast difference between the two, but more like a difference in emphasis and degree.

Differences in interpretation become crucial when we are dealing with the goal of the path, or substantial sub-goals (e.g. jhāna). But sabbakāyapaṭisaṃvedī, the third step of ānāpānasati, is only part of a much bigger process, and it is largely defined by the steps on either side of it. If the overall process is heading in the right direction, then getting the exact meaning of the third step is not so crucial.

But since there are bigger issues around the meaning of kāya, it may still be useful to discuss this in greater detail.

Perhaps, but they are not independent of each other. If you are focused on a movie to the exclusion of all other sensory input, you have a high degree of non-distraction, which is one of the qualities of samādhi. But this would not qualify as samādhi from a sutta point of view. Samādhi, as opposed to mindfulness, requires a high degree of focus. If there are too many things going on, there is no proper focus, no convergence (perhaps Bhante Sujato is on to something!), and no real stillness either.

This, I think, is asking too much of language. Language is messy and convoluted. Words have multiple meanings that evolve over time, and there are multiple ways of saying the same thing, each with slightly varying emphasis. The above argument could be used in almost any context, and for that reason it is really no argument at all.

In fact this is what we see in one of the Sanskrit parallel quoted below by Bhante Sujato:

Sarva-kāya-saṁskāra-pratisaṁvedī āśvasan sarva-kāya-saṁskāra-pratisaṁvedī āśvasāmīti yathā-bhūtaṁ prajānāti | sarva-kāya-saṁskāra-pratisaṁvedī praśvasan sarva-kāya-saṁskāra-pratisaṁvedī praśvasāmīti yathā-bhūtaṁ prajānāti

We don’t know which is more original, if any, but it is all pointing towards the breath. If the Pali version is more original, then the Sanskrit version shows us that the early Buddhists interpreted sabbakāya as the whole breath. If the Sanskrit version is more original, then this is even more clear. Moreover, the whole sutta is about mindfulness of breathing, not mindfulness of the body.

Monks, and others, would have memorised different things, and it is quite possible that some would not have remembered even the basic sixteen steps. The Buddha teaches in brief and he teaches in detail. As you point out, many would have just remembered the brief statements. But this does not mean that the detailed explanations are irrelevant. It just means that if you had any doubts you would go to someone who knew more than you and ask for advice.

The extra information in MN118 is actually very significant and it is attested in other versions of this sutta. It is this extra information that makes it clear that ānāpānasati on its own can take you all the way to awakening, via fulfilling the satipaṭṭhānas and the factors of awakening. As part of this it explains how watching the breath fulfils the contemplation of the body. The answer is that the breath is itself considered a kāya (“conglomeration”), among all sorts of kāyas.

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59

Do you feel the power of the dark side?

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60

Right, this can get a bit confusing. I use the terms “coarse” and “subtle.” Coarse breathing would have a high respiration rate and high tidal volume. Subtle breathing would have a low respiration rate and low tidal volume.

For that state in which people seem to not be breathing at all, but the breathing is just very subtle, the common term is breath suspension. I think that in at least some cases when an author is saying that the breath ceases, that it is technically breath suspension.

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61

“Coarse and subtle” also works fine. “Deep and shallow” is more idiomatic, but I’m not entirely confident about it.

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62

That’s what I always thought, and I couldn’t figure out why clever people like Bhikkhu Bodhi would express surprise that “long” came before “short”. Especially given the simile in MN 10 which points to it being long and short in terms of distance. I see you’ve translated with deep and shallow to make that even clearer…

It is like a skilled carpenter or carpenter’s apprentice: when making a deep cut they would clearly know ‘I am making a deep cut’, and when making a shallow cut they would clearly know ‘I am making a shallow cut’.