Toward a Unified Account of Advanced Concentrative Absorption Meditation: A Systematic Definition and Classification of Jhāna (original) (raw)
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The Science behind Buddhist Meditation
Taking the correlation between Buddhism and altered states of consciousness (ASC) as a breakthrough, this paper attempts to explore the science behind Buddhist meditation from a unique perspective. Firstly, Samadhi is the most mysterious phenomenon in Buddhist meditation. From a psychological perspective, we argue that the essence of Samadhi is perception shutting down to activate a new mode of apperceiving, one totally different from the usual five sense mode of perception. That’s why one feels that everything in daily life disappears and he and the universe assimilate each other in Samadhi. Hallucinations also disappear in Samadhi because perception shuts down. Secondly, enhanced awareness is an essential phenomena in ASC which is often neglected. It could be explained by a perception-filtering hypothesis in light of Henri Bergson’s innovative idea: In ordinary conditions, perception has a natural threshold for its sensitivity for the purpose of biological survival; but in ASC, awareness becomes more sensitive because the perception-filtering function gets weakened to allow the influx of more details, resulting in various unusual capabilities, one of which is Vipassana. That is to say, enhanced awareness makes the deep insight of the five aggregates possible, just like watching a slow-motion film. This would lead to the insight that no Self could be found in each aggregate, which is also known as enlightenment in Buddhism. That there is a fixed entity underlying all aggregates is just an illusion resulting from that all these happen so quickly in ordinary conditions. Thirdly, besides Samadhi and enhanced awareness, hallucinations and paranormal phenomena are the other two essential phenomena in both Buddhist meditation and ASC. In a previous paper, we have proposed an original model to interpret hallucinations which are extremely miraculous and perplexing in ASC, and suggested that paranormal phenomena such as extrasensory perception are delusions that happen along with deep hallucinations. Finally, to figure out the relationship among hallucinations, Samadhi and enhanced awareness, we introduce time dimension by putting forward that there are three stages in ASC (the weakening of self-control, the obliteration of self-control and the recovering of self-control) since the loss of self-control is the direct inducement for all kinds of ASC. Although enhanced awareness appears since the first stage, the simultaneous hallucinations may interfere with it, making Vipassana impossible in this stage. Samadhi and deep hallucinations both happen in the second stage and most past materials including The Tibetan Book of the Dead focus on how to get rid of deep hallucinations to achieve Samadhi in this stage. A close study of experiential descriptions of coming out of Samadhi demonstrates that, hallucinations would be temporally inhibited after Samadhi, making enhanced awareness work fine in the third stage. Thus, the long-standing mystery of Buddhist tranquility and insight is brought to light: Enhanced awareness after Samadhi in ASC is the path toward liberation. Buddha didn’t attain enlightenment after achieving the fourth jhana and even the highest formless jhana, until he discovered this path six years later. What’s more, our discovery of the science behind Buddhist meditation would also be quite helpful to understand and interpret Buddha Dharma.
God is No-thing: An Apophatic Assertion, 2020
Buddhist scholar Grzegorz Polak has proposed a silent model of Jhana meditation to explain the meditation of Shakyamuni Buddha under the Bodhi tree 2500 years ago to attain Awakening. Like other Apophatic traditions, the foundation of Jhāna meditation is the stable establishment of virtue, sense-restraint, freedom from dogma, freedom from social identity, mindfulness and clear comprehension in a devotee’s life. Therefore, once virtue is firmly established, to attain the different levels of jhāna, one does nothing more than sit serenely in a quiet environment as the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. By doing so, the devotee naturally brings the inherent Jhana qualities to a higher level. In other words, according to Professor Polak, there is no distinct ‘method’ of ‘practicing’ the jhāna. One should simply sit quietly and enter in a deep and relaxed state. By doing this, all hindrances will become removed in a gradual way and the devotee becomes aware of and let’s go of everything that takes them away from direct awareness of ‘life’ or Being.
Developments in Buddhist Meditation Traditions: The Interplay between Theory and Practice
2022
This book examines four developments in Buddhist meditation traditions from the viewpoint of an apparently ongoing interaction between theory and practice: A gradual reduction of the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing to just focusing on the breath; an apparent fascination with light and fire imagery leading to investing the mind with intrinsic luminosity and purity; a tendency to grant increasing importance to absorption as indispensable for the progress of insight or even as intrinsically liberating, and a change of compassion meditation from a boundless radiation to directing this quality toward specific individuals and eventually just aiming it at oneself.
Ethnography of Meditation - Appendix: The Codebook
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2019
We present the shortened version of the codebook used to analyze the acquired samples of experience. See Figure 3 for an overview of categories at different levels of coding, and Figure 4 for an example of an original, uncut codebook entry (for the II-order category Processing content). Due to the spatial limitations, the categories are presented in a brief and eclectic manner: some of them only with the definition, others only with examples, and some whose names are self-explanatory enough even without any additional explanation. The orders of coding are indicated by Roman numerals next to the category names for orders III and IV; the names of II-order categories are italicized.
Insight from modern science into 'insight meditation'
Insight meditation or Vipassanaa # , as it is popularly known today, is a powerful technique for purification of mind through self-observation. The unique feature of this meditation, as being taught in the present times by Shri S.N.Goenka and his assistants, is to train the mind to observe continually, without any reaction, the somatic sensations and the concomitant mental conditions. It is claimed that the roots of the impressions stored in the subconscious mind, lie in these somatic sensations. Though these sensations are occurring incessantly in human body-due to various bio-chemical and electromagnetic interactions-these remain below the threshold of awareness of most people, unless the mind is suitably trained. But the so called " subconscious/ unconscious" mind is constantly in "touch" with these and therefore governs our response to them. This response, based on our past conditionings, is that of craving for the pleasant sensations and aversion towards the unpleasant ones. Since these sensations are evanescent, and would naturally change, the reactive mind is always dissatisfied, full of what the Buddha, the discoverer of this technique of developing mindfulness, calls tanha (or trishna in Sanskrit)--craving for the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant. This tanha , or the desire to have it (and all things in life) otherwise, as one likes, is the root cause of perpetual dissatisfaction that characterizes the modern life. The practice of non-reactive observation of these sensations as taught in Vipassana enables us to "train" the mind to remain equanimous, in view of the fact of impermanence of everything in this sensory world. This reduces tanha and enables the practitioner to accept the present cheerfully, thus liberating him from the bondage arising from the reactions of an unwise mind.
PLOS ONE, 2018
The science of meditation has grown tremendously in the last two decades. Most studies have focused on evaluating the clinical effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions, neural and other physiological correlates of meditation, and individual cognitive and emotional aspects of meditation. Far less research has been conducted on more challenging domains to measure, such as group and relational, transpersonal and mystical, and difficult aspects of meditation; anomalous or extraordinary phenomena related to meditation; and post-conventional stages of development associated with meditation. However, these components of meditation may be crucial to people's psychological and spiritual development, could represent important mediators and/or mechanisms by which meditation confers benefits, and could themselves be important outcomes of meditation practices. In addition, since large numbers of novices are being introduced to meditation, it is helpful to investigate experiences they may encounter that are not well understood. Over the last four years, a task force of meditation researchers and teachers met regularly to develop recommendations for expanding the current meditation research field to include these important yet often neglected topics. These meetings led to a cross-sectional online survey to investigate the prevalence of a wide range of experiences in 1120 meditators. Results show that the PLOS ONE |
The Interplay Between Meditation Theory and Practice
Insight Journal, 2021
The present article briefly surveys four developments in Buddhist meditation traditions from the viewpoint of an apparently ongoing interaction between theory and practice: a gradual reduction of the sixteen step of mindfulness of breathing to just focusing on the breath; an apparent fascination with light and fire imagery leading to investing the mind with intrinsic luminosity and purity; a tendency to grant increasing importance to absorption as indispensable for progress to awakening or even as intrinsically liberating; and a change of compassion meditation from a boundless radiation to directing this quality toward specific individuals and eventually just aiming it at oneself.
Cahn&Polich 06 Meditation States and Traits Review
Neuroelectric and imaging studies of meditation are reviewed. Electroencephalographic measures indicate an overall slowing subsequent to meditation, with theta and alpha activation related to proficiency of practice. Sensory evoked potential assessment of concentrative meditation yields amplitude and latency changes for some components and practices. Cognitive event-related potential evaluation of meditation implies that practice changes attentional allocation. Neuroimaging studies indicate increased regional cerebral blood flow measures during meditation. Taken together, meditation appears to reflect changes in anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal areas. Neurophysiological meditative state and trait effects are variable but are beginning to demonstrate consistent outcomes for research and clinical applications. Psychological and clinical effects of meditation are summarized, integrated, and discussed with respect to neuroimaging data.
Buddhist Meditative Practices on the Path Towards Awakening
The phenomenon of awakening is beyond our ability to frame, deconstruct or analyse; however, we can observe the path taken and psychological changes that take place as one walks towards this ineffable experience. To understand the psychology of spiritual growth it is important to frame the meaning of awakening within the context of the tradition which is analysed. The context is the path, soteriology, textual and historical framework. Within the early Buddhist community, we often find reference to the path of insight or panna as a means to awakening through the popular practice of Vipassana. Although this is the key ingredient to the permanent psychological change involved in radical freedom, the path of jhana is often overlooked as an integral practice which supports insight. This paper focuses on the phenomenological attributes of jhanas and the importance of concentration or calm abiding on the path to awakening within the early Buddhist context. To contextualise the practices, we must first understand the early Buddhist notion of what awakening is and what are its phenomenological attributes. We can do this by examining how the jhanic states act as a support for insight to arise. Through the analysis of the definitions used in early textual sources such as the Pali Canon and Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga to describe the phenomenological outcome in each jhana we can understand how different meditative practices create appropriate conditions for awakened states to arise.