Two Tracks, One Vehicle

1.3 Two Tracks, One Vehicle

Meditation courses today commonly hang out two kinds of sign. One teaches "focus": settle the mind on a single object, in search of stillness. One teaches "observing": watch the arising and passing of body and mind, in search of clarity. Each side has its teachers, each its way of putting things. A beginner standing between them is often stopped by one question: must one first cultivate very deep concentration before wisdom can even be spoken of? Or is concentration only the run-up, the real work being done by insight?

The question left by the last chapter is this same question: are concentration and wisdom two forking roads, or two wheels of one cart? This chapter sets it in place with the scriptures' own words.

Calm and Insight, Each to Its Own Work

First, set up two words.

Calm (samatha) is the work of letting the mind grow quiet—gathering in the scattered, subtracting the restless, so that the mind can stay. Insight (vipassanā) is the work of seeing reality clearly—seeing into the impermanence, the suffering, the non-self of all fabricated things. To make a comparison: calm is letting the water's surface grow still; insight is seeing clearly, through the stilled surface, to the bottom.

The Aṅguttara Nikāya has a passage that sets these two words as a pair, each to its own work. Cultivating calm develops the mind, cuts greed, and accomplishes "freedom of heart"; cultivating insight develops wisdom, cuts ignorance, and accomplishes "freedom by wisdom." Notice the structure: the text does not rank calm and insight as higher and lower; it sets them out as a division of labor—one counters the bonds of feeling, the other the veiling of knowing. The two roads point to two faces of one same liberation.

Four Roads, One Destination

How, then, are these two tracks to be run together? The Aṅguttara Nikāya has another discourse, the Yuganaddha-sutta, spoken by the Venerable Ānanda to the assembled monks. Ānanda says: all who truly realize arahantship walk no road outside these four.

The first: cultivating calm first, insight after—first let the mind grow settled, then with the settled mind see into reality. The second is the reverse: insight first, calm after. The third: calm and insight yoked together—the two developed abreast, side by side. The fourth: one whose mind is held fast by restlessness and unease counters that unease first; when the mind at last grows settled, he enters upon the right path.

Four roads, and the ending is one same sentence: the path is born, the fetters are cut, and one same fruit is realized.

The word "yoked"—yuganaddha—is in the original, literally, the yoke: two oxen harnessed to one same crossbar, drawing one same cart. This is the scriptures' own simile: calm and insight are not two carts; they are the two wheels of one cart. They do not each go their own way—they bear one yoke together, and move toward one same place.

So, returning to the question that troubles the beginner—which to choose, calm or insight—the scriptures' answer is: this was never a question of choosing. One may settle first and see through after; one may see through first and settle after; one may go in tandem. Whichever way is walked, in the end both must be complete. Lacking either one, the cart does not arrive.

The Same Structure in the Āgamas

This account is no system patched on by later hands. Turn to the Chinese Saṃyukta Āgama, and the same structure was there all along.

One passage is precisely the Chinese parallel of the Yuganaddha-sutta. Ānanda here lists four ways of teaching the path, and one of them says in so many words "calm and insight conjoined, running together"—that is the yoking.

Another passage is cleaner still. Ānanda asks an elder: which two dharmas should one cultivate? The elder answers: calm, and insight. Then comes the sentence that matters most:

Cultivating calm, one in the end accomplishes insight; having cultivated insight, one likewise accomplishes calm. That is to say, the noble disciple cultivates calm and insight together, and gains the elements of liberation.

Cultivating calm brings insight to accomplishment; cultivating insight in turn accomplishes calm—the two strengthen each other; this is no one-way ladder. And where does the sentence finally land? On "the elements of liberation." Calm and insight are always for the sake of that fruit; they were never the destination themselves.

There is one more line, which speaks concentration's place within wisdom down to the root:

One should constantly cultivate skillful meditation, inwardly stilling the mind. And why? Because a monk who constantly cultivates skillful meditation, inwardly stilling the mind, observes things as they really are.

"Inwardly stilling the mind" is concentration; "observes things as they really are" is wisdom. In the very syntax, the former is the latter's precondition—the mind must first grow quiet before it can see clearly. This is the source, in the Āgamas, of the line "from concentration wisdom is unveiled."

Here one thing must be seen clearly: what the text says is that concentration is what wisdom depends upon—the condition by which wisdom can come about, a supporting condition. It does not say that once one enters concentration, wisdom appears of itself. Concentration is the platform, not the lamp upon the platform; build the platform as high as you like, the lamp must still be lit on its own.

Two Tracks in Parallel, and the Direction Is Wisdom

The two tracks run in parallel—but do they weigh the same? There is a set of materials in the discourses that lets this finer layer of the relation show.

The Discourse to Assaji in the Madhyama Āgama sorts liberated persons into types. One type is called "liberated-both-ways": the deep concentrations and the wisdom that severs the defilements, both complete. Another is "liberated-by-wisdom": without that deep concentration of free entering and leaving, yet by wisdom cutting the defilements to the last, all the same. In the Discourse to Susīma of the Saṃyukta Āgama, a group of monks who declare themselves arahants are pressed one by one: have you attained the first jhāna? The second, the third, the fourth? The monks answer, every time: no. And they say of themselves: we are liberated by wisdom.

Here a word must first be seen clearly, lest the reading go astray. The text says the one liberated-by-wisdom "does not gain the attainment"—and this "attainment," this zhèngshòu, means the deep concentration of free entering and leaving, the four jhānas and the formless attainments—the samāpatti noted in chapter one—not the "right concentration" of the noble eightfold path. The one liberated by wisdom is not without concentration; he has the share of concentration that tending toward liberation requires—he simply has not walked the full course of the four jhānas and the eight attainments.

Set the two types side by side, and what shows is an asymmetry between the two tracks: a person can be liberated without possessing the deepest concentration, but no one can be liberated without wisdom. What liberation hangs on is wisdom's severing of the defilements, not the depth of the concentration. The two tracks run in parallel; and the cart's direction, always, is wisdom.

At the same time, the other face must be held fast: this in no way says concentration is dispensable. The one liberated by wisdom still has concentration—only not the full course. What this set of materials shows is the minimum of the calm track, not its absence. Concentration cannot be pulled out; it simply need not be pushed to the utmost—which is the other face of that wall from the last chapter.

Taking One Wheel Apart

Calm and insight may be cultivated separately, may be yoked together, and return at last to one; the two tracks run in parallel, and the direction is wisdom. This is the first step in how this volume sets the relation of concentration and wisdom in place. As for the deepest layer—that at concentration's utmost, even the samādhi-state cannot be grasped—that is held back for the close of the whole book, where it will truly be redeemed.

What lies at hand now is to take one of the wheels off and turn it over, to see its inside. The calm track is not one even sheet of quiet; it has a scale running from shallow to deep. The four jhānas, and the four formless above them—in the next chapter, we set this scale upright, one notch at a time.