Developing Immersion (AN 8.63)

Q & A
1

„When this immersion is well developed in this way, wherever you walk, you’ll walk comfortably. Wherever you stand, you’ll stand comfortably. Wherever you sit, you’ll sit comfortably. Wherever you lie down, you’ll lie down comfortably.” – Saṁkhittasutta (AN 8.63)

Isn’t this a wonderful promise by Buddha? I mean this is perfection! Everybody, knowingly or unknowingly, wants this.

I don’t quite understand the part where Buddha explains the way of developing the immersion.

„When this immersion is developed and cultivated in this way, you should develop it while placing the mind and keeping it connected. You should develop it without placing the mind, merely keeping it connected. You should develop it without placing the mind or keeping it connected. You should develop it with rapture. You should develop it without rapture. You should develop it with pleasure. You should develop it with equanimity.”

First he says „… placing the mind and keeping it connected.” Then he says the next situation: „… without placing the mind, merely keeping it connected.” Finally the Buddha says the third situation: „You should develop it without placing the mind or keeping it connected.” I don’t quite get this. Could somebody elucidate this?

2

That is just an atypical Jhāna ladder. :slight_smile: See DN 2 for a full list of how Jhānas lead to one another.

First Jhāna has both “Vitakka & Vicāra”, while Second Jhāna has neither.

Seems like this sutta explains an intermediate state between first jhāna and second jhāna with the “without placing the mind (Vitakka), merely keeping it connected (Vicāra)”.

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Like in this drawing series by the Picasso, the Buddha would start with a very elaborate meditation point, and gradually one lets go of things.

Vitakka/Vicāra is a dense topic, and my reflections should be hedged against the words of experienced teachers.

With that said, I find that most translations of vitakka / vicāra are too arcane for my tastes. I would humbly suggest something like this:

“you should develop this concentration with thinking [advertence] and wandering"

advertence is an interesting word, might not be best suited for a translation per se, but I think it covers the range of vitakka. Advertisement comes from the same family, for stealing your attention.

So, advertence is like mind being turned towards something. Basically, it seems that in Buddhist thought, “Thought” seem to be like the station that the mind arrives at, while Vicāra means something like wandering, as in exploring a theme.

Thinking thus would be generating thoughts, while wandering is kind of the more abstract, precursory mental movement about.

For example, from a stock passage of SN 22.59, we can think:

  • Vicāra: Wandering through the notion of “Form”.
  • Vitakka: As an advertence, generating a thought: “What is form?"
  • Vicāra: The mind wanders further around: permanence, impermanence, dukkha, etc.
    • Not the questions (or the answers) per se, but the fact of making the mind course / explore like this.
  • Vitakka: As an advertence, generating a thought: “Form is impermanent.?"

This passage makes it seem to me that between first and second jhānas, there’s a period where the mind no longer generates thoughts in this sense, but stays coursing around.

A note for the particular nerds:

I should note, with this sutta example and general, I kinda posit something different than bhante @sujato here:

(1.) Vicara is the ‘exploring’ of something, and in ordinary language refers to wandering about a place on foot. (2) Psychologically, it normally means a more sustained reflection or examination of a thought, a keeping in mind of the topic that vitakka has brought to mind. In jhana, it follows the same process. The coarse verbal reflection is long gone, and in its place is the gentle holding or pressing of the mind with its object.

I would think vicāra would be the subtler wandering of the mind, which generates vitakka, which can of course be another opportunity for further vicāra.

Seeing how coarser things are the first to disappear through Jhāna, and finer things appear first when moving downwards; vicāra seems like should be the subtler form of mind’s tendency to explore that appears first, while vitakka would be [generating] more crystallised thoughts born of this wandering.

Much as I (think I) understand Bhante’s exposition, he defines vitakka as the subtler, non-verbal part. I think it’s easier to understand vicāra to be this subtle, non-verbal, wandering aspect, and vitakka to be the courser, verbal arrival.

But the tradition is heavily on the, hedge your bets and figure it out, friends! :smiley:

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I must admit, I’m a bit lost here.

I actually found your latest additions, @Dogen, of advertence and wandering to the ever-growing lexicon of BHE compelling. I love the palpability of wandering: it’s like one can actually feel the wandering of the mind at the more rudimentary stages of immersion. Advertence, while certainly not as immediately tangible in terms of the imagery, is certainly no more abstract than terms like lovingkindness, unbinding, or aggregates of grasping. And, when supplemented by your very helpful advertising analogy/explanation, it was actually brought right back to embodied daily experience. So, great work all around! Thank you.

Here is where my personal confusion arises…

I make no claims to any ability to say much beyond the superficial regarding the words vitakka and vicāra; I have not made any sustained investigation into their meanings. But their respective received Chinese translations 尋 and 伺—or, alternatively, the less popular 覺 and 觀—I do understand. These share an affinity, in my opinion, with your advertence and wandering, which serves to confirm my sort of instinctive acceptance and approval of your word selections. However, it’s an inverted correspondence: that is, advertence tallies more with 伺/觀 and wandering with 尋/覺!

Again, I make no pretense to any real comprehension of vitakka and vicāra, but something’s off here; something’s “inverted.” Is it your grasp of this pair of phenomena originally expressed with Indic terms? Is it that of the Chinese redactors? Or is it me?

Let’s keep in mind that such situations are not unheard of in the transmission of Buddhist thought. We know it to be the case that, quite typically, confusion over some of even some of the most fundamental Buddhist terms arose very soon after the deaths of that first generation of community members, especially when the jargon consisting of paired terms. Muddling which began in South Asia with pairs like āna and āpāna (i.e., which is inhale and which exhale?) or tathā gata and tathā āgata (“thus come” vs. “thus gone”), led to confusion among translators in the Far East, to say nothing of us in the modern West.

So, to recap, I’m saying that I love @Dogen’s renderings; I think they’re very apt. But I suspect something may have gotten reversed somewhere along the line, and, if so, I’d like to see if we can find out what.

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No, you’re right about the inversion, partly. :slight_smile: As I said, tradition is heavily on the side of treating Vitakka as the initial thing, and Vicāra as the sustained attention of that very same placement (hence Bhante’s translation above).

I don’t think this is completely wrong, per se, but it doesn’t paint a fuller picture to what I understand, from the everyday context of the words.

Roaming sense of Vicāra is well established. For example, in Thag 19.1, Bhante Sujato translates “manovicāra” part as:

Uproot the wandering mind!”
Manovicāre uparundha cetaso’

SNP 3.2 has:

raṭṭhā raṭṭhaṃ vicarissaṃ
“I will wander/travel from country to country.”

In AN 4.199, Bhante Sujato translates taṇhāvicaritāni as “currents of craving”:

What are the eighteen currents of craving that derive from the interior?

Katamāni aṭṭhārasa taṇhāvicaritāni ajjhattikassa upādāya?

When there is the concept ‘I am’, there are the concepts ‘I am such’, ‘I am thus’, ‘I am otherwise’; ‘I am fleeting’, ‘I am lasting’; ‘mine’, ‘such is mine’, ‘thus is mine’, ‘otherwise is mine’; ‘also mine’, ‘such is also mine’, ‘thus is also mine’, ‘otherwise is also mine’; ‘I will be’, ‘I will be such’, ‘I will be thus’, ‘I will be otherwise’.

So these are the travels / wanderings of the mind, in a sense.

Meanwhile, vitakka as thinking/thought is well established.

For example, Ud 4.5:

And to the bull elephant also this thought came to mind,
Tassapi kho hatthināgassa evaṁ cetaso parivitakko udapādi:

Now, I’m speculating, and I flag as such. :slight_smile:

The tradition would read OP’s passage as “Mind is already placed, now it’s just sustained” (no vitakka, just vicāra).

However, what if an experienced meditator was traveling backwards in Jhānas, as the Buddha does in DN 16? Then, perhaps, between 2nd and 1st jhāna, we would have vicāra first, and vitakka later.

Thus, I don’t actually disagree with the part that vicāra can also imply traveling through vitakkas. This is also explained in SNP 5.4:

“What fetters the world?
“Kiṁsu saṁyojano loko,
How does it travel about?
kiṁsu tassa vicāraṇaṁ;

“Delight fetters the world.
“Nandisaṁyojano loko,
It travels about by means of thought."
vitakk’assa vicāraṇaṁ;"

But then, it’s not immediately clear how the mind can keep vicāra, or travel, without vitakka, when noting this verse.

And I can’t help but wonder if it’s kind of like wandering from town to town: The movement is the leading action; the stations are the result. So the sustained action in a sense would still be vicāra; however, I don’t think this on-going journey of the mind relies on establishing a prior vitakka.

And of course, there would be a circular relationship: Once you arrive in a town, your vicāra would naturally be among the parks, cafes, shops of that same town.

So, it’s a bit complicated. :slight_smile: I plan to bring a fuller post detailing the uses of these words later sometime; I’m just sharing why the standard reading doesn’t make sense to me considering the overwhelming usage of these two words in places outside the jhāna descriptions. :sweat_smile:

And jhāna descriptions, apart from commentaries / Abhidhamma etc, give us absolutely zero regarding what is meant with the pair! So, I think the context should be drawn out first exclusively from establishing what these words mean in simple, everyday usage. :slight_smile:

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Please pardon me if I’m being unnecessarily thick-headed here, but, allow me confirm that I’m understanding you…

If I can distill the point you’re making, it’s that the inversion (as I’m calling it) lies in the tradition identifying vitakka as what takes place initially and vicāra as something arising subsequently, which you take issue with. You, then, are positing that the more diffuse vicāra (“wandering”) is instead what occurs first, and vitakka (“advertence”) results from a sort of focusing or concentrating of that. Am I representing you position correctly?

If so, although the order of the phenomena themselves was not what I was referring to per se, though your point may nonetheless be relevant to what I’m saying, which was that the characters 尋/覺 and 伺/觀, given as translations of vitakka and vicāra, respectively, seem to make more sense as translations of vicāra and vitakka instead—especially as per your understanding of these terms.

Granted, the reasoning is circular, but, if I’ve understood you correctly, then it is clear to me that our stances mutually support one another: 尋/覺 and 伺/觀 (which always appear in Chinese in that order) being more apt as translations for vicāra and vitakka, respectively, would support the notion that vicāra should precede vitakka; and vicāra before vitakka being the true ordinal representation of what takes place phenomenologically within absorption would explain why the Chinese terms appear to be the inverse of what the tradition takes them to be.

However, nowhere have I ever seen or heard of a record of an alternative order to vitakka before vicāra or that the Chinese held themselves to be translating any such alternative order. And, I don’t expect we’ll find one.

But, would you happen to know of any vibhaṅga text (among the discourses, commentaries, exegetical writings, etc.) where vitakka and vicāra are perhaps given definitions supporting your understanding?

If not, the, lastly, someone please “share the love” and show me the errors of my ways: that is, disprove my contention that 尋/覺 and 伺/觀 are far better translations for vicāra and vitakka than for vitakka and vicāra.

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Basically, “placing the mind” means attention falling onto some subject. It might be a verbal question, like a topic to contemplate. Or, I think, it might be non-verbal, like hearing a noise while meditating and attention turning to it. “Keeping the mind connected” is the subsequent cognition about what has been given that initial attention. I think the “wandering” implied by vicāra is a wandering into the space of the thing that has gotten the mind’s attention, not wandering around in search of something to give attention. That’s why is follows vitakka, and the traditional explanations define it that way.

An example I’ve used in the past is an encounter with an animal while walking in the woods. Maybe it’s early morning or late evening, or the woods are shady–whatever the reason, the light is dim. An animal emerges from the underbrush onto the path in front of us. We notice it and stop. That moment is vitakka. We might have been thinking of something else or nothing in particular, but now there is the sudden “thought” of this animal on the path in front of us.

If the animal also stops and looks at us, then there is time for vicāra to take place. The initial surprise dissipates and we look at it closer, trying to discern what sort of animal it is. Our attention is now to finer details - not just it’s size and color in general. We see that it’s sitting upright on hind legs and has a bushy tail held in a vague “S” curve. It has a pointy snout and ears sticking straight up … Ah, it’s a squirrel. Our exploration has brought a finer discernment of the animal in question.

If the squirrel doesn’t scurry off right away, we might have time to examine it further. If we know the signs of different squirrel species, we might immediately realize which it is - an eastern grey or an American red squirrel perhaps. We could tell it’s gender perhaps, and so forth. All of that is the finer and finer discernment of vicāra, or exploration of the subject.

That’s the way I look at it, using an ordinary experience as an example. In meditation, it would be more abstract. Maybe the meditator begins contemplating a point of Dharma or some other exercise used to begin the process.

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Indeed, @cdpatton. Thank you for that very clear analogy. Yet, though that works for the Pāli vitakka and vicāra, I don’t see how you’re going to map 尋/覺 and 伺/觀 onto your metaphor.

It may work with 覺 and 觀 to the extent that you initially sense (覺) the arising of a percept and subsequently look (觀) into it more deeply.

But 尋 and 伺 (especially 尋 in the initial position) seem to tell a different story.

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I’ve not fully grasped the real distinction between the two terms, other than 尋 often means “immediately” in normal usage, while 伺 usually means “to inquire” or “lie in wait” (like a hunter). I guess there is still the initial/crude take implied by 尋 and a longer examination by 伺. Is there more to it than that? I haven’t looked into these terms in exegesis like Xuanzang’s works that uses them.

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Apologies for the delayed reply, @cdpatton. I ran a somewhat less than fully exhaustive search through T 21218, 《一切經音義》a few days ago, but I only got time to review the file today.

I’ve uploaded the search results for any interested parties, having—albeit, somewhat hurriedly—parsed and punctuated them as well:
T 2128 一切經音義.pdf (418.5 KB)
(There were also a few misprinted characters which I’ve given in bold, red print and highlighted in yellow.)

Here is one citation which lies particularly close to your reading and, I would say, gives the most detailed definition, at least among the entries I found:

T 2128 641 a07-8：尋伺(𦙃、吏反。梵言：毗恒迦，此云尋；毗遮羅，此云伺。尋，謂：尋求；伺，謂：伺察。或思，或慧於境推求：[夕/鹿]位名尋；即此二種於境審察：細位名伺；故言尋伺。舊名覺觀者，案梵本菩提各覺，毗鉢舍那名觀，譯人不尋本語，致斯乖失也。)

Ad hoc translation:

Xun and si (Xu, li fan[qie]*. Indic word: vitakka, this is called xun; vicāra, this is called si. Xun - that is, “searching and seeking”; si - that is, watching and observing. Either intellection or wisdom [applied] with respect to seeking and inquiring into a given sphere, [being] crude, is classified as xun; precisely these same two with respect to careful observation of a given sphere, [being] meticulous, is classified as si. Therefore, it is said, “xun and si.” Regarding their having been formerly rendered jue and guan, the Indic bodhi [and] vipassanā being rendered jue and guan, translators refrained from using the original terms, resulting in this error of inaccuracy.)

*Fanqie refers to the ancient Chinese system of phonetically representing a character by employing two other characters, with the initial of the first and the final of the second representing the initial and final of the original character, respectively.

So, as I understood you to be saying, vitakka/尋/覺 and vicāra/伺/觀 denote respectively more crude or more fine strands of mental investigation into a field of dhammas. Though not explicitly stated here, I think it’s justifiable to conclude that this should simultaneously point to both a narrowing (one might also call it a “focusing”) of said “field” as well as a weakening of the volition and a calming of the activity driving the investigation. This conclusion I draw not only from what we know of jhāna practice as a whole, not only limited to this very narrow context, but also from these two Chinese words, 尋 and 伺 (and similarly with 覺 and 觀). The words synonymously associated with 尋 (including 覺, as well as 度, 逐, 繹, 理) all bespeak investigation accompanied by great movement or activity; whereas those associated with 伺 (i.e., 觀, along with 察, 候, 見, 視) simply denote watching or seeing: and, moreover, quiet watching.

To return to your analogy of observing animals, hunting animals—or, more accurately, lying quietly in wait for animals, as in an ambush—is actually the meaning given for 伺:

《說文》云：伏，伺也。伏，伺人也。
Shuowen states: “Ambush, 伺; ambush, a person who 伺s.”

Again, I don’t think the pouncing part of the ambush (伏) is so much the point here, but the spying, the quiet observation:

《方言》：自江而北謂：相竊視為伺。
Fangyan: “North of the Yangtze, watching through a chink is 伺.”
《方言》曰：伺，視也。自關而北，凡竊相視謂之伺也。
Fangyan says: “伺, watching. North of the border, all watching through a chink is referred to as 伺ing.”

All of the foregoing was taken from T 2128; so these were entries which, although taken from traditional, secular reference works, were selected by the medieval Chinese Buddhist community. But, if we do a little searching of our own, we find that the fundamental connection between 伺 ocular activity is further evidenced in the variant 覗.

And modern dictionaries give, as meanings for 伺,

  1. 暗中偵察。
    “Inspecting in the dark.”

and, even more illustrative of the still, even passive quietude of 伺,

  1. 守候、等待。
    “To keep and hold; to wait.”

And, of course, when we take into account 's variant pronunciation, cì, we get the word 伺候, meaning, “to wait on” (侍候), “to submit to in service” (服侍).

The quieting, the calming, the tranquilizing, as you and I both maintain, is clearly in 伺 rather than 尋, which really portrays a search (or even a pursuit) which takes place over a somewhat wider area. (Keep in mind that 尋 was also the name for a unit of measurement of length: eight traditional Chinese feet, as I recall.) I think you and I both agree not only that the Chinese terms reflect this, but that this is furthermore an accurate depiction of what a meditator should experience phenomenologically.

However, my point is, was, and shall remain that, contrary to all of the above, vitakka and vicāra inexplicably indicate the converse: that is, thinking followed by wandering. (Or, at least so it appears prima facie to someone only superficially familiar with Indic languages such as myself.)

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Thank you for taking the time to find all of these glosses.

No worries. I’ve been out of action for the most part for the past couple weeks because of the crazy humid summer heat we’ve been having in Southern California lately. I’ll probably not get back to this until later this month, as I’m behind on editing and releasing a big translation that should be done already.

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Yup.

Here’s the Pali Text Society translation of the same passage:

When, monk, this concentration is thus made-become and developed by you, then you should make become this concentration with initial and sustained application; make it become without initial application but with sustained application only; make it become without either initial or sustained application; make it become with rapture; make it become without rapture; make it become accompanied with pleasure; make it become accompanied with indifference.

(AN 8.63)

“Initial and sustained application” would appear to belong to the first concentration (rupa jhana). “Rapture”, sometimes translated by the Pali Text Society as “zest”, is present in the first and second concentrations but absent in the third. “Pleasure”, sometimes translated by the Pali Text Society as “ease”, is present in the third concentration along with equanimity (“indifference”).

I sometimes think that the first of the further concentrations, marked by the extension of “love” in Bhante Sujato’s translations and the extension of “friendship” in some PTS translations, is synonymous with the fourth concentration. That might account for Gautama not stipulating a cessation of ease (“pleasure”), in the passage from SN 8.63, as that would have been practiced in the concentration that involved the extension of “love” (“friendship”).

So Gautama is only speaking about making the first three concentrations occur, in this case preceded by the Deliverances through the Deliverance of “the excellence of the heart’s release” by the extension of the mind of equanimity through the four quarters, above and below, without limit (see MN 7; tr. Pali Text Society vol I p 48).

Bhante Sujato’s translation of the induction of the first concentration:

And what is the faculty of immersion? It’s when a noble disciple, relying on letting go, gains immersion, gains unification of mind. Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, they enter and remain in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.

(SN 48.10)

Pali Text Society translation of the same passage:

Herein… the (noble) disciple, making self-surrender the object of (their) thought, lays hold of concentration, lays hold of one-pointedness. (The disciple), aloof from sensuality, aloof from evil conditions, enters on the first trance, which is accompanied by thought directed and sustained, which is born of solitude, easeful and zestful, and abides therein.

SN 48.10, tr. Pali Text Society vol V p 174; “noble” substituted for Ariyan)

No mention of placing the mind and keeping it connected in the Pali Text Society translation. Instead, vitakka and vicara are “thought directed and sustained”. Yes, I’ve read Bhante Sujato’s explanation of why he rejects that translation, but I believe he is alone in his translation of vitakka and vicara as “placing the mind and keeping it connected”.

“One-pointedness” has an implication that is different from “unification of mind”, namely that the mind (consciousness) can take place at a singular particulate of the body. Here’s Gautama’s metaphor for the first jhana:

… just as a handy bathman or attendant might strew bath-powder in some copper basin and, gradually sprinkling water, knead it together so that the bath-ball gathered up the moisture, became enveloped in moisture and saturated both in and out, but did not ooze moisture; even so, (a person) steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.

(AN 5.28, tr. Pali Text Society vol. III pp 18-19; emphasis added)

Extending zest and ease in that manner allows consciousness to take place at any point in the body, to retain “one-pointedness” and an ease even as reflex activity of the body is generated by the place of occurrence of consciousness.

Bhante Sujato is not wrong when he speaks of placing and connecting the mind in the first concentration, except that I would stipulate that the mind or consciousness is placed involuntarily, takes place rather than is placed, and the places that consciousness occurs can become contiguous in the relaxed movement of inhalation and exhalation.

I would say this happens automatically immediately before sleep. Here’s another way to find the experience, from Zen teacher Koun Franz:

Okay… So, have your hands in the cosmic mudra, palms up, thumbs touching, and there’s this common instruction: place your mind here. Different people interpret this differently. Some people will say this means to place your attention here, meaning to keep your attention on your hands. It’s a way of turning the lens to where you are in space so that you’re not looking out here and out here and out here. It’s the positive version, perhaps, of ‘navel gazing’.

The other way to understand this is to literally place your mind where your hands are–to relocate mind (let’s not say your mind) to your center of gravity, so that mind is operating from a place other than your brain. Some traditions take this very seriously, this idea of moving your consciousness around the body. I wouldn’t recommend dedicating your life to it, but as an experiment, I recommend trying it, sitting in this posture and trying to feel what it’s like to let your mind, to let the base of your consciousness, move away from your head. One thing you’ll find, or that I have found, at least, is that you can’t will it to happen, because you’re willing it from your head. To the extent that you can do it, it’s an act of letting go–and a fascinating one.

(“No Struggle [Zazen Yojinki, Part 6]”, by Koun Franz, from the “Nyoho Zen” site)

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Thank you all for your inputs on this topic of immersion.