Right Concentration
2.1 Right Concentration
That page of transition left a question behind: the word "right" in right concentration—where does it come from?
Concentration in itself is only the mind's ability to gather upon a single object. A hunter holding his breath over his aim has a mind gathered upon one object; a person nursing a grudge, turning the one thing over day and night, has a mind gathered upon one object too. Looked at as gathering alone, right cannot be told from wrong. So the word "right" does not live on concentration itself—it has another source.
This chapter goes to find that source.
A Fruit Borne Up by Seven Factors
Part One has already met the definition the Discourse on the Noble Path of the Madhyama Āgama gives for right concentration: secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states, up to the fourth jhāna—the content of right concentration is the four jhānas. But the same discourse, immediately after, says something weightier still:
Then one attains the way of the Dharma, namely noble right concentration. It has its cultivation, has its aid, and has also its requisites—there are seven factors. … What are the seven? Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness. When, with these seven factors as cultivation, aid, and requisite, the mind well-inclined attains one-pointedness—this is called noble right concentration.
"Cultivation, aid, and requisites" mean provisions, support, something to rest on. What the passage says is this: noble right concentration does not stand up alone; it has seven factors as its provisions and its resting-place—view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness—seven factors paving the road all the way, and only then does concentration make its entrance. A concentration without provisions, however deep, is only an unsupported, orphaned concentration; a concentration provisioned by the seven factors—to that alone the text grants the word "right."
The same discourse also lays out a sequence of arising: right view gives rise to right intention; right intention gives rise to right speech; factor giving rise to factor, until right mindfulness gives rise to right concentration—and "right view comes foremost." Take care: this chain is not about temporal order; it does not say you must first perfect right view before you are allowed to set out. It speaks of dependence—each factor takes from the factor before it the very ground of its being "right." The whole path is one interlocking whole; right concentration is the far end of this chain, the fruit it bears.
For this layer of the teaching the Saṃyukta Āgama left a superb simile. Sugar-cane, rice, wheat, and grape: sow the sweet seed, set it in the ground, water it in season, and the fruit that comes is sweet throughout; sow the bitter seed, and what comes is bitter. The "right" of a concentration, in just the same way, is decided not by how deep or how full it is in itself, but by what view was sown and which path waters it. The sweetness of the fruit is given by the seed; the rightness of concentration is given by the whole path.
The Same Concentration, Two Directions
Elsewhere the Saṃyukta Āgama speaks of right concentration in a different set of words. It does not mention the four jhānas; it says right concentration is of two kinds:
If the mind abides unscattered, unmoving, gathered in, stilled, collected, one-pointed—this is called right concentration that is mundane, of the world … the abiding of mental states associated with outflow-free reflection … this is called right concentration that is noble, supramundane.
One is mundane right concentration: the mind abiding unscattered, stilled and unified; an ordinary person can cultivate it, and what it ripens to are the good fruits of humans and devas. The other is supramundane right concentration: joined with the outflow-free noble path, facing toward nirvāṇa. Two passages, two faces—and they do not conflict; they complete each other. The Madhyama Āgama answers "what state is right concentration" (the four jhānas); the Saṃyukta Āgama answers "which way does right concentration face" (toward the world, or beyond it).
Lay the two faces over each other, and one weighty thing comes clear: the same four jhānas can face in two different directions. The state is the same; the direction differs. The later treatise-masters said this more bluntly: worldly people too have right view, and can cultivate deep concentration; but the worldly share of these—"those do not receive the name 'factor of the noble path'"—the same dharmas, only upon entering the noble path, receive the name of path-factor. The name turns with the direction, not with the depth.
Part One raised a wall: the two teachers' formless attainments reached the very top, and still did not tend toward nirvāṇa. Now that wall has its positive explanation—what those two concentrations lacked was not depth but direction; it was not that the concentration fell short, but that the path was not there. Depth itself has never guaranteed direction.
The Concentration Aggregate: Set Between Virtue and Wisdom
Then in the structure of the path, which seat does right concentration occupy? The Āgamas state it in plain text. The noble eightfold path gathers into the three trainings of virtue, concentration, and wisdom: right speech, right action, right livelihood belong to virtue; right mindfulness and right concentration belong to concentration; right view, right intention, right effort belong to wisdom.
Right concentration belongs to the aggregate of concentration. The seat looks ordinary; looked at closely, it carries real news: upstream of it is virtue, downstream of it is wisdom—concentration is set between "composing body, speech, and mind" and "knowing and seeing things as they really are." The position itself receives what comes before and opens what comes after; it is not a self-sufficient end-point. When the Saṃyukta Āgama teaches the three trainings, the sequence is more direct still: the higher-virtue training is the pure keeping of the precepts; the higher-mind training—"if a monk, secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states … dwells having attained the fourth jhāna"—the content of the training in concentration is exactly the four jhānas; and hard upon it comes the higher-wisdom training: knowing the noble truth of suffering as it really is.
Look at this arrangement. The training in concentration is not a stop to rest at here; it is a stretch of road leading on to the training in wisdom. From the precept concentration is born; from concentration wisdom is unveiled—this sequence was not arranged by later hands; the Āgamas arranged it themselves. That this book has walked from volume four, The Precept, to the present volume, Concentration, and points onward to wisdom, is simply the order the texts have held from the first.
A Ruler to Measure a Concentration
This chapter can be gathered up into a single ruler.
To measure a concentration, the world's habitual ruler is depth: how long one can sit, how quiet it gets, whether it can hold against disturbance. The ruler the texts hand us is not that one. The texts ask: this concentration—what bears it up? And where does it lead the person? A concentration borne up by the seven factors and facing toward nirvāṇa, however shallow, is right concentration; a concentration hanging alone outside the path, however deep, is only a deep concentration.
One thing must be seen clearly: to seek a measure of quiet, a measure of focus, to meet the demands of life—that is no bad thing; but that ruler measures usefulness, and cannot measure direction. The real question of the concentration gate has never been "is my concentration deep enough," but "to what is my concentration tied."
Among the seven factors that bear concentration up, closest beside it there stands yet another sequence—the seven awakening-factors, in which concentration sits sixth. In that sequence, concentration is not "cultivated" into being; it is "born." Born how? The next chapter: the channel forms when the water arrives.