The Scale of Concentration

1.4 The Scale of Concentration

In deep concentration, what actually happens?

Many people imagine deep concentration as a black box: you are either inside it or outside it; once in, it is another world. But the picture the suttas and treatises give is not a black box; it is a scale. Deep concentration is not a point; it is a road with an internal structure, evolving layer by layer. With each layer deeper, you do not gain some mysterious new experience; you set down some of what had been disturbing clarity—like taking down scaffolding no longer needed, so that the structure of the house only shows the clearer.

What this chapter sets up is that scale. It is the spine of the whole volume: the four jhānas, and above them, the four formless.

The Four Jhānas: Setting Down, Layer by Layer

In the Āgamas the four jhānas come in a passage of highly fixed form. The Madhyama Āgama's Discourse on the City-Simile:

Secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states, with vitakka and with vicāra, with the rapture and ease born of seclusion, he attains and dwells in the first jhāna … With vitakka and vicāra already stilled, inwardly still and unified in mind, without vitakka, without vicāra, with the rapture and ease born of concentration, the second jhāna … With the fading of rapture, dwelling in equanimity and seeking nothing, mindful and fully aware, experiencing ease with the body … the third jhāna … With pleasure ceased and pain ceased, the rapture and sorrow of before already gone, neither-painful-nor-pleasant, equanimity, mindfulness and purity—he attains and dwells in the fourth jhāna.

Take this passage apart, and at each layer look at only two things: what this layer has stilled, and what it leaves.

The first jhāna: born of seclusion from sensual desires and from unwholesome states. The mind settles for the first time, still carrying the activity of vitakka and vicāra—vitakka is the initial casting of the mind toward its object; vicāra is the sustained adhering that follows the cast. Arising along with them are the rapture and ease born of seclusion.

The second jhāna: "vitakka and vicāra already stilled." The mind no longer needs that cast-by-cast projecting and adhering; it turns "inwardly still and unified in mind"; rapture and ease are no longer drawn along by vitakka and vicāra but well up from concentration itself. What is set down is vitakka and vicāra; what remains is a purer rapture and ease, a deeper unity of mind.

The third jhāna: "with the fading of rapture." Even the welling of rapture withdraws, leaving a fine-woven, steady ease, and a "mindful and fully aware" that stands out the more plainly.

The fourth jhāna: "pleasure ceased and pain ceased." Even ease is set down, together with the rapture and sorrow long since ceased, and the mind comes home to the neither-painful-nor-pleasant. What remains is only "equanimity, mindfulness and purity"—an equanimity that holds all evenly, a mindfulness that is pure.

Read down the four layers and the direction is perfectly clear: the deeper the layer, the more is set down—not the more is gained. Vitakka and vicāra, rapture, ease exit in turn; by the fourth jhāna almost nothing is left but equanimity and mindfulness.

Here one thing must be seen clearly—and it is the most important point in the whole volume: setting down is not dullness. Go back to the words of the text—"stilled," "fading," "ceased": they speak of quieting, of withdrawing; the third jhāna says in plain words "mindful and fully aware," and the fourth says in plain words "mindfulness and purity." Awareness has not disappeared; it grows all the clearer once the disturbance withdraws. That state of foggy mind and drowsy head has a name in the Buddha's teaching—dullness—and it is an obstacle to concentration, not a deepening of it. Whenever you say a factor has been set down, you must be able to say what remains—read this way, and the direction cannot go wrong.

The Unchanging Through-Line: One-Pointedness

Vitakka and vicāra, rapture, ease—each exits at its own layer. Then what runs through from the first jhāna to the fourth without ever falling away? It is "one-pointedness" (ekaggatā)—the very substance of concentration itself, the mind focused upon a single object.

The treatise-collection follows this through-line to the bottom. The Abhidharmakośa counts the "factors" of the four dhyānas layer by layer: the first has five factors—vitakka, vicāra, rapture, ease, concentration (the Āgamas' older Chinese rendering called this first pair "awareness" and "examining," the treatises' newer rendering "applied thought" and "sustained thought"—the names differ, the pair of mental operations is the same); the second has four factors, the third five, the fourth four. The count flickers between five and four, yet inside there runs only one thread, and the treatise's author lays it bare in a single line:

By progressively shedding the prior factors the second, third and fourth are established … In just this sequence, then, one-pointedness divides into four kinds.

The second, third, and fourth dhyānas are each established "by progressively shedding the prior factors": shed vitakka and vicāra and the second stands; shed rapture and the third stands; shed ease and the fourth stands. And the last clause matters most—the four are not four different things; they are four depths of one and the same one-pointedness. The treatise says further: only concentration is both the substance of dhyāna and a factor of dhyāna; the remaining factors are merely adornments attending the substance. Layer by layer the adornments are laid aside; layer by layer the substance of concentration comes into view—this is the inner logic of the whole ladder.

How can the second jhāna set down vitakka and vicāra at one stroke? The Dharmaskandha left behind a simile that has traveled a thousand years:

As when a bell is struck, the coarse sound bursts out at once and the subtle sound follows after; the coarse sound is the image of vitakka, the subtle sound the image of vicāra.

The stroke upon the bell: the heavy crash rises first—that is vitakka; the thin, lingering hum that follows—that is vicāra. One coarse, one subtle: a pair that arises joined. What the second jhāna does is let this whole pair of mental stirrings subside—the bell-sound stops, and only then does the stillness show itself entire.

Above the Four Jhānas: The Four Formless

When the four jhānas are walked, the scale has not yet reached its end. Above them, the suttas list four further, subtler states of concentration. The Madhyama Āgama's Great Discourse on Causation:

Going completely beyond perceptions of form, with the ending of perceptions of impingement, not attending to perceptions of diversity, [aware that] space is boundless, he attains and dwells in the dimension of space … going completely beyond the dimension of boundless space, [aware that] consciousness is boundless … going completely beyond the dimension of boundless consciousness, the dimension of nothingness … going completely beyond the dimension of nothingness, [the dimension of] neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

Set the two side by side and a turn comes into view. The four jhānas advance by "shedding factors"—stilling the vitakka and vicāra, the rapture, the ease upon the mind; the four formless advance by "transcending perceptions"—going beyond the object itself. First one goes beyond all perception of form, to abide in boundless space; then beyond space, to abide in boundless consciousness; then beyond consciousness, to abide in "nothingness"; until at last even the thought of "nothing at all" is all but stilled, at the threshold between perception and non-perception. The summit the two teachers of the last chapter had climbed is the seventh and eighth rungs of this extended scale—a deeper reach of the scale, not another road.

Four jhānas plus four formless: eight rungs in all, traditionally called "the eight attainments"—"attainment" (samāpatti) being the zhèngshòu explained in chapter one, the state of being in concentration. And note a usage in passing: the texts call the four jhānas "jhāna" and the four formless "dimensions"; they do not call the formless "jhāna." The popular phrase "four jhānas and eight concentrations" circulates widely enough, but strictly speaking it is four jhānas plus four formless, together making the eight attainments. This fine point of usage is quietly disclosing one thing: the definition of right concentration takes in the four jhānas only—the formless stand outside the core.

The Top of the Scale: Calm Hands the Baton to Wisdom

There is a discourse in the Saṃyukta Āgama that counts this scale through from beginning to end. The Buddha tells the venerable Ānanda what each concentration, layer by layer, brings to stillness:

When one is in the attainment of the first jhāna, speech is stilled. When in the attainment of the second jhāna, vitakka and vicāra are stilled. In the third jhāna, the heart's rapture is stilled. In the fourth jhāna, the in-and-out breath is stilled. In the attainment of the dimension of space, perception of form is stilled … When in the attainment of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, the perception of the dimension of nothingness is stilled; when in the attainment of the cessation of perception-and-feeling, perception and feeling are stilled. This is called the progressive cessation of the formations.

Above the eight attainments one more rung is added: "the cessation of perception-and-feeling"—even perception and feeling themselves are stilled; the later treatises call it the attainment of cessation. The eight attainments plus this ninth rung are together called the nine progressive abidings.

And it is exactly at this ninth rung that the track of calm reaches its own boundary. The Great Discourse on Causation, speaking of the highest liberation, adds one clause at the cessation of perception-and-knowing: "and knowing through the wisdom that sees the cankers exhausted." Look clearly at these few words. At the top of the scale, concentration can no longer walk alone—the cessation of perception and feeling must be bound together with the wisdom that sees the cankers exhausted before it can stand. This summit is the place where calm hands the baton to wisdom.

Look back, then, at where right concentration was anchored, and everything falls into place. Right concentration is anchored in the four jhānas, not at the formless summit; and on the night of the Buddha's awakening, it was exactly in the fourth jhāna—the mind concentrated, purified and bright—that the three knowledges arose and the Way was realized: not in some higher formless dimension. The fourth jhāna is the platform from which the light of wisdom rises. Deeper on the scale does not mean nearer to liberation; however neatly the eight rungs are ranged, the cart's direction, always, is wisdom. The last two chapters laid this line down; here it is nailed once more, onto the scale itself.

Where Is the Entrance?

The spine stands: from the first jhāna to the fourth, vitakka and vicāra, rapture, and ease are set down layer by layer, growing layer by layer clearer; above, in the four formless, the object is transcended layer by layer; at the ninth rung, the track of calm hands the baton to wisdom.

One more word is owed on this book's measure: this chapter has described the structure of the scale—what each layer sets down, what it leaves—not the method of entering concentration. How to sit, how to practice, how to enter jhāna: that is the work of actual practice under a teacher, and it lies outside the range of this book. What this book does is lay the structure plain, so that the reader knows: concentration is no mystical talk; it has a road that can be plainly described.

But this vertical axis is not entered through one single entrance. For the practice of calm, tradition lists several dozen practices that can serve as the object, each leading to a different depth on this scale. The next chapter spreads these entrances out before us: forty doors.