Sutta on music as micca samadhi mentioned by Ajahn Sona

Q & A
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In some of Ajahn Sona’s talks, he mentions a sutta that talks of immersion in music as micca samadhi. However, the point he makes is that the immersion does include the jhana factors - the issue is that it relies on something external.
See, for example: https://youtu.be/LmHeNDYZIBg?t=1458
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uk5mBuaX74&t=1740s

Part of the automatic transcription of the first clip, with some light editing:

The Buddha talks about this musician who comes to the Buddha, or somebody who appreciates music, and says when you’re
talking about this Samadhi or this jhana stuff that sounds like what I
experienced when I listen to music and the Buddha says yes he says is that
Samadhi when am I having Samadhi when I experienced that kind of bliss and joy
and focus and attention when I that absorption I listen to music and the
Buddha says yes it is Samadhi but it’s micca Samadhi it’s the wrong one.

I knew this story for a long time because it was a musician but it
always ended with: “Yeah but it’s the wrong one”, like the punchline of the story is: “Yeah yeah but it’s the wrong samadhi”.
It’s an incredibly important story because that’s a super normal
state is when you’re really enjoying and really moved and absorbed.
It’s not your normal state that’s why people like it …

This is very very important because the Buddha is saying yeah all of these characteristics of Samadhi are there and
the only problem with this is that is externalized is based on sound the structures of sound …

I’ve done some searches, including the Comprehensive Index of Pāli Suttas under music and samadhi, but with no luck…

In the second clip Ajahn Sona mentions the name of the person that the Buddha is talking to, which the auto-transcription renders as:

carnatic is his name

Frustratingly, he doesn’t give even a hint of a sutta reference…

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I don’t think that’s a sutta reference, it’s maybe confused with a commentarial story.

But I don’t think it’s right to say that being concentrated while listening to music is “wrong samadhi” according to the suttas. It’s not samadhi at all. Wrong samadhi is jhana practiced with wrong vew, so it leads to rebirth rather than Nibbana. But it is samadhi.

Same applies for all the path factors. Wrong action is not no action; wrong intention is not no intention, etc.

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Probably a hail marry as I don’t see him posting around these parts but paging @Vensonata

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Bhante, there are suttas which talk about wrong liberation. You are saying that wrong samadhi doesn’t differ from right samadhi in its implementation and experience - the only difference is absence or presence of the right view. If it is the case, then there are not going to be any differences between the liberation of someone with a wrong view and someone with the right view. This would mean that it is possible to get liberated without the right view. Due to this fact I don’t agree that, for example, wrong samadhi is practiced and experienced the same way as right samadhi.
What are your thoughts? Thanks.

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Ajahn Sona here. The point of the story about the musician who says he experiences the samadhi or jhana factors is this: There are all kinds of immersive states of mind that produce joy and ease of body. In fact that is why people spend so much time doing them. Joy and ease or pleasure in the body (piti and sukha) are not exclusive to either “wrong jhana or right jhana” The emotive states occur in both “worldly” types of experience and unworldly types of experience. But how do you build a bridge or simile between worldly experience which a spiritual seeker may have had and the unworldly experience of jhana? The Buddha uses similes, it is the only way to communicate these new experiences by which a person can confirm they are having them. Notice the words “piti” and “sukha” are borrowed from ordinary vocabulary. They are not invented by the Buddha. In many cases the Buddha takes a common word, a common experience, and gives it new and special meaning in the context of the noble eightfold path. This is the point of my explanation that the “piti and sukha” of the jhana is not totally alien to normal human experience but arises from a different, and internal source. That is frequently portrayed in the similes which the Buddha gives for each of the four jhanas.

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Wouldn’t being concentrated while listening to music be like being in a trance, not right samadhi?

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“In the suttas samadhi is defined as mental one-pointedness, (cittass’ekaggata M.i,301) and this definition is followed through rigorously in the Abhidhamma. The Abhidhamma treats one-pointedness as a distinct mental factor present in every state of consciousness, exercising the function of unifying the mind on its object. From this strict psychological standpoint samadhi can be present in unwholesome states of consciousness as well as in wholesome an neutral states. In its unwholesome forms it is called “wrong concentration” (micchasamadhi), In its wholesome forms “right concentration” *(sammasamadhi).” This, at least, is one way of looking at it.

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Thank you for your reply, Bhante. I’ve found your talks very useful, but I would really like a reference to the text that you discuss regarding listening to music and micca samadhi.

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Thank you.

some impressions about jhana. Maybe you are willing to comment on them?
I do not mean to say i comment on your views because i do not really know them yet very well, but more views about jhana in general. Views that i have seen.

I had never heard before of right and wrong jhana. Jhana is jhana, i believe. Maybe one can be confused about what jhana is, but one cannot have wrong jhana, i believe. Such are strange ideas.

In MN44, concentration is defined as unification of mind. Mind is not scattered and all over the place.

One pointedness functions only as entrence to jhana but once in jhana mind is unified. It is also not one-pointed anymore. In 4th jhana one can even direct the mind towards the knowledge of former lifes and mind is extremely wieldy.
Jhana is not some state in which one cannot use the mind.

I believe, jhana is never trance-like and is also never a very fixed attention upon something. Jhana is also not described that way in the sutta’s. Jhana are states cut of temporary from urges, passion and exactly because of that they are not trance-like and have no element of obsessiveness at all.

Being moved by music, one with a rythm, dancing, unware of something else is never right concentration but more like trance. Right concentration is more like driving a car and being able to have a conversation but still be focussed on driving and integrating all the visuals, smell, sounds etc. without becoming distracted on driving. It is not one-pointedness.

Knowing that right samadhi is unification of mind we can also understand what wrong concentration is (i have not seen it defined somewhere). I believe a scattered mind, all over the place, a monkey mind.

AN5.113 also gives a clue about what wrong and right concentration is: if one cannot endure what is sensed… one cannot have right concentration and if one can, one can have right concentration. This does not imply jhana, i feel.

MN117 describes the difference between mundane right concentration, which is jhana, and supra mundane right concentration. This refers to that concentration that is based upon supra mundane right view, right intentions (beyond bright) etc. With noble right concentration all thesePath factors seem to come together.
I believe this is not jhana as some voltionally produced temporary state.

AN4.196 describes right concentration as that kind of concentration that sees khandhas as….this is not me, not mine, and not myself. Also this does not require jhana, i believe. Insight can be used in jhana, but also not in jhana.

I know that right concentration is described as jhana but to say it IS jhana is an overstatement. Some people also read that vinnana knows and then also overstate this as…only vinnana knows …which is also not said and an overstatement. The same happens with jhana, i believe.

Suttas support that not only jhana is right concentration. I feel it is even not conducive to think that one must abide in jhana to be rightly concentrated.
If right concentration would really depend on a voltionally produced temporary state (jhana) we are in big problems.

So my conclusion is: those who think the suttas share that jhana IS right concentration overstate this.

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I sit there and play three or four notes repeatedly on my stringed instrument. I move into a concentrated state where that’s all that has my attention, without effort.

I am aware of the experience. At any time I can move out of it while still playing the notes and reflect “I’m doing this right now.” I don’t feel like it’s a trance state although I only know such a state as daydreaming – which I don’t do anymore (and I’ve never taken a substance that might induce one).

Similarly I might go out and hit 80 golf balls … the same basic stroke repeatedly (albeit I make sure to pause about 30 or 45 seconds between each one).

I’m not as fully immersed as with the music but it still feels like some level of concentration.

I get a similar effect if I go to a gym and do 50 or so basketball freethrows. (There I don’t have the luxury of someone giving me one ball after the other :rofl:)

Well, playing the same notes over and over again is the best example. I experience it as a form of concentration that might elicit delightful feelings. The train of thought goes on pause. But it does not yield any kind of insight into, broadly, the Buddha’s liberation program. Not like when I’m meditating.

I would call this a form of non-samadhi per Bhante Sujato’s comment. But this is my own conjecture, obviously.

In fact, it’s easier for me to “tune out” playing the instrument (by tuning in and playing :grinning:) than it is to sit long enough to approach concentration. It’s a lot faster. But it doesn’t yield any insight.

Personal note (warning Will Robinson!):

As someone diagnosed with OCD many years ago, especially with regard to the “O” part, I found repeating thoughts or phrases in my mind to be a kind of concentrated state that calmed the anxiety. Now, maybe that is a kind of trance.

So there must be something in the brain and nervous system that responds well to rote repetition as a form of calming. I think certain kinds of music can have this effect.

However, after years of suffering with it and finally stabilizing it, I recognized that that’s all that was going on and that there were other ways to work with the mind to achieve calming. Basically when I started practicing mindfulness diligently.

Importantly, I still take a mood stabilizer which mutes piti and sukha to some extent during meditation.

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That phrase can make sense according to how it works and the suttas below. It’s not to undermine the experience, what you’re saying about its power is true. But that doesn’t mean that every time it happens, it couldn’t have gone better. Besides the interpretation that wrong jhāna/samādhi is simply not entering those (which is how right livelihood is described), one who entered it can still make some better choices with a little more knowledge. We just use these concepts to teach how to end suffering when it comes to the depths of meditation. Here are some ways it could not be full and right:

See AN9.35

Mendicants, suppose there was a mountain cow who was foolish, incompetent, unskillful, and lacked common sense when roaming on rugged mountains. She might think, ‘Why don’t I go somewhere I’ve never been before? I could eat grass and drink water that I’ve never tried before.’ She’d take a step with a fore-hoof; but before it was properly set down, she’d lift up a hind-hoof. She wouldn’t go somewhere she’d never been before, or eat grass and drink water that she’d never tried before. And she’d never return safely to the place she had started from. Why is that? Because that mountain cow was foolish, incompetent, unskillful, and lacked common sense when roaming on rugged mountains.

In the same way, some foolish, incompetent, unskillful mendicant, lacking common sense, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. But they don’t cultivate, develop, and make much of that basis; they don’t ensure it is properly stabilized.

They think, ‘Why don’t I, as the placing of the mind and keeping it connected are stilled, enter and remain in the second absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of immersion, with internal clarity and mind at one, without placing the mind and keeping it connected.’ But they’re not able to enter and remain in the second absorption. They think, ‘Why don’t I, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enter and remain in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.’ But they’re not able to enter and remain in the first absorption. This is called a mendicant who has slipped and fallen from both sides. They’re like the mountain cow who was foolish, incompetent, unskillful, and lacking in common sense when roaming on rugged mountains.

Suppose there was a mountain cow who was astute, competent, skillful, and used common sense when roaming on rugged mountains.

In this case, they weren’t really ready and rushed it.

And the chapter SN34

“Mendicants, there are these four meditators. What four?

One meditator is skilled in immersion but not in entering it.

One meditator is not skilled in immersion but is skilled in entering it.

One meditator is skilled neither in immersion nor in entering it.

One meditator is skilled both in immersion and in entering it.

Of these, the meditator skilled in immersion and in entering it is the foremost, best, chief, highest, and finest of the four.

(Repeats for emerging from, remaining in, and other factors that lead up to it)

This is saying there is such a skilled and unskilled samādhi, as well as even dividing it into being skilled in the entering and emerging parts. If you don’t include that, then I guess it depends on how narrow the definition is, but these are a part of the overall experience. I suspect it’s talking about specifically jhāna since that’s the name of the chapter and it calls the meditator a “jhāyi”.

It’s also possible some people wrongfully conclude there is a soul from that experience, even though it exposes not-self. In DN1#3.21.6, there’s the conclusion of self with jhāna:

Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, this self enters and remains in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected. That’s how this self attains ultimate extinguishment in the present life.

This is also implied by the idea that there are some students who go to heavens and come back as opposed to some who do not come back, and how gods eventually suffer when they die.

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Yes, thank you…in this regard i like the very brief Dhamma instruction i once read:

Whatever becomes ones fixed abiding place, there is fettering, there is suffering, there is no end to suffering. For example, if one makes inner peace, emptiness, stillness ones fixed abiding place, ones home, there is no end to suffering. One must go beyond all.

Any kind of fixedness leads to suffering. I can see this is true.
One must just abandon all ideas like…’ this stillness, this peace, this emptiness that is really me, my self’. Nor sankhata nor asankhata must be seen that way.

This also means one must never strive for some fixed state of peace, stillness, emptiness. That is not Nibbana. Nibbana is the ultimate flexibility of mind, extremely pliant. It is not some fixed state. It is the unconstructed.
(i notice i become intense talking about it)

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Related to this, I like Ajahn Jayasaro’s advice on music for laypeople. I don’t recall the exact Q&A talks he said this in, but in at least two responses to questions about the appropriateness of listening to music for laypeople, he essentially said not to make such a big deal out of it. If a 5-preceptor layperson wants to listen to music for enjoyment, that’s fine.

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