Meditation and the Getting of Wisdom (Bhavana)

The getting of wisdom by meditation has various terms including Samadhi (concentration), samatha (peacefulness of mind) and jhana (absorption) and meditators seek Ekagrata (one-pointedness). Meditation and the arrival at wisdom thereby are the second and third parts of the marga following on from the sila of my last post and are all about the clarifying of the mind begun by learning to follow the rules or vinaya.

Siddhartha himself, as I’ve noted, began by following the methods of at least two of the great Sramana teachers of his day in his region but then he added his own steps. He realised that the two teachers only taught the clarifying of the mind for its own sake so his additional step was a thought process designed directly to get wisdom from an apparently already clarified mind. This next stage of wisdom development is called prajña, vipasyana (insight) and smrti (awareness).

The realisation that different traditions may validly differ on how to bring wisdom about relies on the teaching of the Buddhist concept of skilful means (upaya). The idea here is that Siddhartha recognised there were several paths to enlightenment suited to different people depending upon their current states and interests. As always, pragmatism and experimentation were orders of the day. Incidentally some Mahayana teachings include that Siddhartha was actually a Buddha from birth who underwent his own trials and errors merely as an example to us to be prepared to engage in a trial and error approach as we seek knowledge. There are sometimes said to be 84,000 (or 84,000,000) doors or more appropriately, perhaps, doorways (a less literal translation from the Indian would be heaps of doorways) to the house of wisdom. Siddhartha did apparently give the punters options as they sought their own truths. A way of understanding the entrances is said to be via the metaphor that when a finger is pointed at the moon, one is meant to see the moon rather than examine the finger. Here then are a few of the approaches that have arisen:

One approach is that while in an enhanced state the meditator should analyse the theory of non-self taught to her or him as s/he recites it in her or his imagination. This is held to lead to real experience of its truth.

One Theravada tradition called vipassana in Pali (vipasyana in Sanskrit) takes leaps of stages directly from basic breath training to promotion of awareness that is held to spark the insight required for the wisdom required to be attained. There are held to be four ways to get there this quickly (to the required state of mindfulness). It’s about first noting the rising and passing of emotions, being fully aware of the emotions, not reacting to the emotion in the habitual way and finally being aware of the result and effect of not reacting in that way. This produces the requisite realisation of the error of the past thoughts and short-circuits the 12 links of dependent arising that I mentioned earlier. All of impermanence, non-self and dukkha can thus be realised by this experience of relative and relatively unobstructed and undistorted clarity of mental ‘vision’. So it’s an intellectual pursuit and it’s about breaking unskilful habits. The Platform Sutta of the Sixth Patriarch discusses this method.

Another method is the well known one of focusing on conundrums (called koens in Zen Buddhism) such as what is the sound of one hand clapping?

Meditating on the five aggregates and the twelve links of dependent arising directly may reveal the truth. The links that I’ve discussed earlier are sometimes divided for this purpose into three aspects of samsara: klesa (defilements – links 1, 8 and 9), karma (actions – links 2 and 10) and dukkha (results – links 3 to 7, and links 11 and 12). The wheels created by especially Tibetan Buddhist artists could be used in the meditation on the 12 links and contained all the information apparently needed for even illiterate monks.

One may choose to use, as a practical form of Bhavana, Metta or Maitra Bhavana (cultivation of loving kindness or friendliness). There is also a Metta Sutra that bears meditation upon. One wishes for the happiness of all beings beginning with one’s friends and eventually getting to strangers and even enemies who hate and want to hurt us. There are a group of related Bhavanas related to this one that are collectively called the divine abodes (brahmavihara) and they include cultivation of things such as compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity (often done first when they are all done together). The name of the next Buddha, Maitreya, evidently points to the belief that s/he is expected to be all about this loving kindness/friendliness lark.

Visualising attributes of Siddhartha and/or of Buddhas generally is another form of Bhavana used (called buddhanusmrti or Buddha remembrance).

In the next posts, I'll discuss the ideas of nirvana, non-self and truth some more before discussing some more history of Buddhist thinking in the lead-up to discussing the major split between what are now called the Mahayana and Theravada traditions of Buddhism.