SAMATHA TRANQUILITY MEDITATION
THE TRANSCENDENTAL CALM ABIDING
Before we begin with the details of the Samatha Meditation you must be clear that the Samatha Tranquility Meditation and the Vipassana Meditation go hand in hand and are not to be considered individual and full Paths to Liberation. For some that may indeed be so, but the majority, chained to this world by Social obligations ruled by Identity, will require a more gradual approach to that liberation.
Those who have pride in their own Intelligence will plunge in at the deep end of the pool, but will find only at the end of the audition and arrogant showy water exercise that all they will encounter is their own faulty Awakening, which will no doubt bring their Identity great pleasure and be a danger to others who hear their heady dialogues.
Buddha began with the Tranquility Meditations before moving on to Insight and then the final Supra-mundane Insight path. We believe therefore that reading this following introduction to Buddha´s first meditation might be useful before considering the Samatha meditations
CALM ABIDING
SAMATHA TRANQUILITY MEDITATION
Personally I like to refer to Samatha Tranquiity Meditation as Calm Abiding, because the experience is one of dwelling within a place of complete Serenity without being conscious of the Cognitive mind that is such a useful but nonetheless debilitating influence if it runs astray with habit strength.
ACCESS TO SAMATHA ABSORPTION
During acess the meditator is conscious of sensory input and is conscious of the particular irritations of the body and environmental "noise."
But if exercised correctly, the principal object is a dominant thought which may be upon the four elements of the body, the loathsomeness of food or, what is considered perhaps the best, any of the Reflections. Most frequently chosen is the Mindfulness of Breathing, which it must be remembered is not only an access object of meditation but an object which can be carried beyond access.
The mind will wander off and it must be brought back to the breathing. There may emerge, although they are not always present, experiences of zest and perhaps an early stage of rapture. Sometimes there are illusions of luminous shapes, flashes of bright light and a body sensation of lightness. But all these are of no importance and should not be retained in any form.
The meditative space can still have conjured up names and forms, for this is a very precarious state where the meditation can easily fall apart.
With correct practice there will suddenly be a locking into the breathing like a yoke to an ox.
The mind seems to sink into the object of the meditation without a cognitive consciousness.
This is the point when you have attained access.
It is important to have organized the meditation so that if at the point of access the object of the meditation is changed then the breath continues correctly in the background, preventing inhibiting thoughts while the transition to a first jhana object flows in quite smoothly without cognitive interference.
Within this First Jhana State, you will continue "yoked" to whatever topic has been organized and with sustained attention to the primary object all hindering thoughts, sensory experiences, including body heat and pain, will fall away.
There arises then the experience of Rapture, Bliss and One-pointedness.
Rapture may be experienced at this level as chilling raising of hairs on the body, flahes of joy, a sensation of joyful levitation or as a pervasive suffusion.
Bliss is a more subdued state of continued ecstasy. Now beware. Do not let expectations arise. This first jhanic state may last only for a mind moment and with practice it can be sustained for progressively longer intervals. Do not be in a hurry. That is an Identity debilitating event. Don't try bypassing the organization to reach higher jhanas.
Attain mastery so that the jhana can be raised, whenever, wherever, as soon as and for as long as the organization has been generated.
If the first jhana has been stabilized and the second organized in a pre-programmation, then it will flow naturally from the first and the meditation will automatically become more intensified. That is because the energy for the initial and sustained application of attention is now eliminated.
One, through understanding within the previous organization, will automatically find a turning towards the Rapture and Bliss so that they become intensified with re-distributed attention. Regardless of this intensity, the level of absorption will appear as more subtle and stabilized.
Consciousness of the object of the meditation as having name and form will have been eliminated and you will dwell in the three experiences of a sharp one-pointedness with the presence of the Rapture and Bliss.
Attain mastery so that the jhana can be raised, whenever, wherever, as soon as and for as long as the organization has been generated.
After the mastery of the Second jhana and after the discernment of the Second jhana has been made, the meditator will easily determine that the factor of Rapture as gross with respect to both the Bliss and One-Pointedness attained.
This effectively influences him when organizing the third Jhana.
Once more the meditator can enter meditation rapidly and, after sequentially abandoning the cognitive aspects of the object, release automatically the Rapture.
With the energy released from the abandonment of Rapture, there is a rising of the rejection of even the highest Rapture and Equanimity that rises in him.
As in the previous jhanas, there may be a rise and fall in this attention between the abandoned Rapture and the rising Equanimity. As stability continues, there is a rise in the sweetness of the encountered Bliss.
This risen level of mindfulness of the Bliss, together with the Equanimity, dismisses completely the Rapture.
Attain mastery so that the jhana can be raised, whenever, wherever, as soon as and for as long as the organization has been generated.
After the mastery of the Third Jhana and after the discernment of the Third jhana has been made, the meditator will easily determine that the factor of Bliss that appeared so great is really gross with respect to both the arisen Equanimity and the continued One-Pointedness attained.
Once more on the base of the present organization of the meditation, the meditator abandons Bliss. Thus, the energy released is applied automatically to the Equanimity and One-Pointedness that now attain full strength and great clarity.
The mind then abides with the One-Pointedness upon Equanimity and it can be determined that Tranquility has become completely calm and the lightly conscious background breathing appears to cease altogether.
The meditator wil emerge then on the base of what has been organized.
With practice and sustained meditation upon these four jhanas the jhana is actually resided upon for only mind moments before automatically reaching the following level.
Attain mastery so that the jhana can be raised, whenever, wherever, as soon as and for as long as the organization has been generated.
It will be noticed that we have refered to the meditation Organizing frequently and this, despite the fact that Buddha repeats the organizing of each trance in his own meditating, is ignored as if it were unimportant. This is an error.
Without that Organizing, the Tranquilty meditations may be a complete failure, which perhaps explains why the Tranquilty meditations have been so ignored.
How is that Organizing accomplished? Well, it perhaps is better termed Pre-programming or Pre-conditioning.
It is a good idea to understand what is happening with this Organization and how it actually can work. So I shall try and describe it in a simple way here and trust that you may understand.
In normal circumstances outside of meditation, attention is in a waking state in full operation and after a state of Repose there are various sequential events whenever there is an irritation (stimulus) externally or rising internally within the system.
That series of Attention events starts with a state of Alert, goes through Movement to the target area when there is a capture of the event. This all occurs very rapidly and almost immediately there is a concentration or natural one-pointedness upon the target.
Now in Meditation, the meditator starts with attention upon breathing and nothing else and when reflection moves to the Target of the meditation, whatever that is, and captures it, the normal one-pointedness is eliminated, favoring through the training only the mindfulness of Breathing.
The normal system then being thwarted experiences stress which grows during this interval, where the normal one-pointedness has been eliminated. The level of the stress increases to the point when it can be contained no more.
Though it cannot move to a non-meditative target it moves to the contemplation device which has been organized on the base of the meditation required. Just like reading a compact disc, the meditation unfolds automatically in the direction commanded by the organization.
I hope that this makes the process more clear and explains why these events occur with organization effectively without cognitive control and why organization is so important.
But the question is, how does this Organization take place?
It is certainly not an intellectual exercise in which one plans what is going to happen. Buddha would never imagine such an idea.
No, the Organization is an experience in and of itself produced as often as possible outside the meditation and it consists of imagining like a mental rehearsal exactly what you expect to actually happen when you are in the meditation.
It is not unlike the imagination of a child who imagines himself as a perfect fireman or the golfer who imagines exactly how is going to make each stroke before he makes it ... or the person who has planned a dinner for a loved one and imagines how it is going to unfold.
You see, these are reinforcing experiences in which you imagine the perfect meditation unfolding.
Now those who have really been atending to this presentation will have noted that at every jhana, after the event we speak of discernment. Those who have not noticed and have not questioned what this is should try to attend in a more sincere way, for it is important.
This discernment is an instruction which you imagine giving during the Organization, in a way in which the subconscious, on experiencing the state of the mind and body, "takes a picture" and sends it to Memory. This is unavailable during the meditation, but what then happens is that the Orgnization elicits that it is received within consciousness with the best approximation possible to a cognitive experience.
This is noted as the conscious discernment. For example:
At the end of the second jhana, the factor of Rapture is seen as gross with respect to both the Bliss and One-Pointedness
At the end of the third jhana, the factor of Bliss is seen gross with respect to both the arisen Equanimity and the continued One-Pointedness attained.
At the end of the fourth jhana it is seen that as mental factors are eliminated concentration is intensified.
You can begin to see how this Organization and the Discernment work together.
We come now to the important Four Formless jhanas. They are important for many reasons.
It is by way of these four Jhanas, with Vipassana as a base, that Buddha attained his Great Awakening. It is also important for Chan Contemplators that these are understood, for they also give a clearer understanding of the Emptiness of Emptiness Contemplations.
Now we will not describe these four jhanas separately as we have done with the first four jhanas, for they are better understood taking them together as a series leading to the eighth jhana.
Remember that this eighth jhana can also be attained through the Mindfulness of Breathing and through the Kasinas. So it is with the Kasinas that we will start.
One enters the Fifth Jhana using the Kasina meditation, after establishing the Organization.
Let me now explain that, when one captures the sign of one of the kasinas (the after-image) without interfering flaws, and can reproduce that sign whenever one wills, that sign can be made smaller or larger at will, with greater or lesser intensity.
So the Kasina, as a luminous though not bright disk, is expanded gradually to its limit as the meditation device. One then dwells within that infinite space, with a discerned consciousness complete with Equanimity and the One-Pointedness.
This is then called the Jhana of Infinite Space.
Having mastered the Fifth Jhana, one enters the Sixth Jhana from the Fifth, abandoning the thought of Infinite Space, discerning that it is Consciousness that has been dwelling in that boundless Infinite Space. Turn Consciousness then towards that infinity. See that Consciousness is also Boundless. In this Sixth Jhana then dwell within that Infinite Consciousness.
The Dwelling within is the absorption of Infinite Consciousness
Having mastered the Sixth Jhana, one enters the Seventh Jhana from the Sixth, abandoning the thought of Infinite Consciousness as non-existing. Contemplate then that Non-Existence of Consciousness, being Nothingness, dwelling within that state.
That Non-Existence is the absorption of Nothingness
From the Chan viewpoint we can say that this is effectively the dwelling upon the last conceptualization of Infinite Consciousness. Within that meditation the conscious experience gives way to an unconscious experience which can be discerned within memory and directly retrieved after the meditation as a cognitively conscious approximation.
Having mastered the Seventh Jhana, one enters the Eighth Jhana from the Seventh, and having discerned that Nothingness, being the base of all perceptions, is valueless in and of itself, it is discerned that No-Perception is more sublime.
The mind is turned away from the experience of Nothingness, dwelling within a state in which there is neither Perception nor No-Perception. This is actually an ultra-subtle meditative experience.
That State is the absorption of Neither Perception nor No-Perception.
From the Chan viewpoint, we can say that this is effectively the dwelling upon the last conceptualization of Perception, where all naming is dissolved leaving a non-differentiated mass of unconscious form. It has been a Contemplation of the Last Conceptualization of Perception. We can say that the potential perceptual residuals exist in a state of near absence.