The Rose-Apple Tree and the Two Teachers

1.2 The Rose-Apple Tree and the Two Teachers

Begin with a scene.

A seeker of the Way comes to study under a teacher. He practices without slackening, and before long realizes the very highest state the teacher's whole life has taught. Overjoyed, the teacher invites him to sit level with himself and lead the community together—the highest honor a student could be given. And at just this moment the student rises to take his leave. He says: where this practice carries me is not where I am going. He leaves, finds a second teacher; realizes the same height again; and once again rises and walks away.

This student was the one who would later be the Buddha. What he twice took leave of was no middling teaching; it was the highest summit the entire Indian world of practice could then reach.

This story is the true opening of a volume on concentration. For it sets the concentration gate's most pressing question before our eyes from the very start: can the deepest concentration be, itself, liberation?

Six Years of Austerities, and a Childhood Memory

By the record of the Chinese Buddha-biographies and the Madhyama Āgama, the prince, after leaving home, first walked through a stretch of years in austerities. Cutting back food, holding the breath, pressing the body to its limit—in that day this was a revered road of seeking: the body's pain traded for the heart's purity. Six years on, his judgment was clear. The biography sets down the turning:

He had practiced austerities for nearly six years, and had not won liberation; therefore he knew this was not the path.

Pain is not the door.

At just this moment, with his strength spent, a memory from far back floated up. He remembered a scene from his boyhood: it was the day his father led the assembly in the plowing rite in the fields, and he sat in the shade of a rose-apple tree, where his mind left sensual desire of its own accord, left unwholesome thoughts, and entered the first jhāna—a stillness born of seclusion from desire, clear and secure.

This memory forced out a crucial discrimination. For a long time he had mixed the pleasure of jhāna together with the pleasure of the senses, taking them as one thing a seeker ought to fear and abandon. The memory under the rose-apple tree let him look again: the ease born of that childhood first jhāna and the pleasure born of indulging desire are not the same thing at all. So he asked himself: why am I afraid of that pleasure? That pleasure has nothing to do with desire, nothing to do with unwholesome states. And at once he concluded: "That is the path to awakening!"

The weight of this beat must be weighed slowly. The pain of austerities is not the door; the pleasure of indulgence is not the door; only the pure ease born of seclusion from desire, seclusion from unwholesome states, is the entrance to awakening. In other words, what he recognized here was not that the deeper the concentration, the better; it was that the nature of a concentration decides whether it is the path—a jhāna that has cut its ties with craving, be it only the first jhāna, is closer to awakening than any profound state that has left that condition behind.

There is one more thing to see clearly. The scene under the rose-apple tree is the memory of a concentration—a jhāna once personally lived through is remembered, and from it the direction is recognized. It is not itself the cultivation of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the foundation of awareness; concentration is the gathering-in built upon that foundation; what happens here is that a concentration is remembered anew and valued anew—not that concentration is dissolved back into mindfulness. The line drawn in chapter one still stands at this scene.

Two Teachers, One Same Verdict

With the direction established, look back now at the road of ascent he walked at the start of his leaving home. The Discourse on Rāma in the Madhyama Āgama records that the prince studied under two meditation teachers in turn.

The first was named Āḷāra Kālāma. Under him, the prince realized "the dimension of nothingness"—the mind passing beyond all, abiding in the sphere where "there is nothing at all"—one of the deepest concentrations in the meditation teaching of the day. The discourse records the teacher's own declaration: "I have transcended the dimension of infinite consciousness, and have attained and dwell in the dimension of nothingness." What you have realized is the same as what I have realized. Āḷāra thereupon invited him to lead the community at his side.

The second was named Uddaka Rāmaputta. "Rāma" was his father's name; what he transmitted was the state his father Rāma had personally realized—"the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception." Here the mind is refined to the very threshold of perception and non-perception, where even the thought "nothing at all" has all but subsided. This is the summit of mundane concentration, called by tradition "the peak of existence": within the three realms, there is no concentration-state above it.

At this step there is no further up to go. By the logic of "the deeper the concentration, the better," the story should close here in fulfillment.

Yet he rose and left. Twice. And the verdict the discourse records is, both times, word for word the same:

This dharma does not tend toward knowledge, does not tend toward awakening, does not tend toward nibbāna. Better that I set this dharma aside and seek instead the unailing, unsurpassed sanctuary, nibbāna …—and I set this dharma aside.

Where does the weight of this verdict lie? It does not say that the dimension of nothingness or of neither-perception-nor-non-perception is bad, or wrong; it says these concentration-states "do not tend toward" nibbāna—they do not lead there. What this practice can guarantee is rebirth, in the next life, into the corresponding high jhāna heavens; and however high the heavens, they are still within birth and death. It is an exceedingly tall tower, but the tower still stands inside the city wall.

The weight of this judgment lies in its not being a bystander's critique. The one who made it had personally dwelt inside those two concentration-states. He was not someone who had never tasted deep concentration and yet held forth against it; he realized the top of that road, and then walked out of it from within. So this boundary is the strongest line in the whole study of concentration, a line grown from the inside—drawn outward from concentration's own deepest point.

The Madhyama Āgama has one more line, which nails this judgment deeper still:

The dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception is still conditioned … impermanent … suffering.

Even the summit of mundane concentration is still "conditioned"—made by fabrication. Whatever is made by fabrication is impermanent; whatever is impermanent is, in the end, suffering. Deep concentration can bring suffering to a temporary stop; it cannot cut suffering's root. That root is tied somewhere else.

Right Concentration, Anchored in the Four Jhānas

Did the Buddha then turn against concentration from that point on? Quite the opposite.

After His awakening, He set "right concentration"—the eighth factor of the noble eightfold path—firmly upon the four jhānas. The Discourse on the Noble Path in the Madhyama Āgama:

What is right concentration? Here a monk, secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states … dwells having attained the fourth jhāna—this is called right concentration.

Look clearly at this placement. He did not banish concentration from the path of liberation; He gave concentration a new seat: its value lies not in being pushed to the formless extreme, but in the four jhānas—in the work it does as the platform that leads to wisdom. To set aside the formless attainments is not to set aside concentration; it is to set concentration back in its proper place.

The story has one more close. After the awakening, the first persons the World-Honored One thought to deliver were these two teachers who had once led him to the summit. On asking after them, both had already died—Āḷāra seven days before, Uddaka fourteen days before. Their concentration stood at the highest point anyone of that age could reach; yet both of them stopped on this side of the line of liberation. The step they lacked was not depth of concentration.

A Question Left for the Next Chapter

This chapter has told of a road walked in person. The childhood first jhāna told him: wholesome jhāna-ease is precisely the door. The two teachers' absolute depths told him: the highest concentration-state is still not liberation. Concentration can still suffering for a while; it cannot cut suffering at the root—and the cutting of that root hangs on wisdom.

So the question floats up of itself: what, in the end, is the relation between concentration and wisdom? Are they two forking roads, where taking the one means never arriving by the other? Or are they the two wheels of one cart, and missing either, the cart does not move?

The next chapter sets this pair in their places: calm and insight—two tracks, one vehicle.