Matching the Remedy to the Illness

3.1 Matching the Remedy to the Illness

Begin with an old affair the Saṃyukta Āgama records.

The World-Honored One had once praised the contemplation of foulness to the monks—to contemplate this body as foul is a potent medicine for cutting off sensual desire. The monks practiced hard as instructed, but the dose proved too strong: some grew weary of this body, weary to the very depths, and lives were lost. The Venerable Ānanda then addressed the World-Honored One: may the World-Honored One teach some other Dharma. So the World-Honored One taught instead mindfulness of breathing—attention to the in-and-out breath, an "abiding in the subtle"—and offered a simile: as a great rain settles the dust, arisen and not yet arisen.

This old affair is the root of everything this chapter has to say. The very same good medicine for cutting off the afflictions, given to the wrong person, dosed too strong, becomes a poison. So once the dozens of doors of meditation-subjects have been spread open, one most human question remains: these objects—matched to whom? The treatise-masters took up that question and worked it into a physician's method, which a single phrase says in full: matching the remedy to the illness.

Where the Illness Is, Not Who You Are

The treatise-masters begin by sorting practitioners into types. The Vimuttimagga lists fourteen kinds of "temperament" in fine detail, then folds them in, round by round, until three remain: the greed-temperament, the hate-temperament, the delusion-temperament—that is, the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion, and the question of which poison, at this moment, holds sway in this person's mind.

Here one thing must first be seen clearly, or the whole system will be read askew: temperament-typing asks not "who are you" but "which affliction now holds sway." It is not a badge to be worn for a lifetime; an affliction is an illness, not a personality. When the counteragent takes effect and the illness recedes, the type loosens too. So the treatise's methods of telling—watching how a person walks, dresses, eats, goes about his tasks—are written for teachers, to teach the teacher how to observe a student and prescribe to the symptom; they are not written for students to find their own seat in. The physician looks, listens, asks, and takes the pulse: what he reads is the illness, not an identity to be issued to the patient.

The Medicine Cabinet: Which Remedy for Which Illness

With the type of illness fixed, the prescription follows. The Vimuttimagga's table of assignments runs on one logic throughout:

The greed-temperament should cultivate the perception of foulness and mindfulness of the body, for this counteracts greed. The hate-temperament should cultivate the four immeasurables, for this counteracts hate. The faith-temperament should cultivate the six recollections, with recollection of the Buddha foremost, for the sake of the concentration that faith first finds. The intelligence-temperament should cultivate defining the four elements, the perception of repulsiveness in food, recollection of death, and recollection of peace, for these are deep. The speculative-temperament should cultivate counting the breath, in order to cut off discursive thought.

Read down the list, remedy by remedy, and everything is medicine set against illness. The one heavy with greed is given the contemplation of foulness and mindfulness of the body—to see the body as foul is the most direct antidote to craving. The one heavy with hate is given loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, the four immeasurables—kindness to moisten hate. The one strong in the faculty of faith is given the six recollections headed by recollection of the Buddha—calling the Three Jewels to mind, faith finds concentration most easily. The one of sharp, agile thought is given deep and subtle objects like defining the four elements and recollection of death—his faculties can carry the load. And the one whose thoughts fly and clamber without rest (the treatise calls this the speculative-temperament: "speculation" here is vitakka, that coarse stir of the mind) is given counting the breath—one breath out, one breath in, a countable measure, the surest way to gather in a mind that runs.

Only the delusion-temperament is the exception. The treatise-masters assign him no fixed object; instead they have him asking after the Dharma in words, hearing the Dharma in season, and dwelling with a teacher in reverence for the Dharma, to "cause wisdom to grow." A dim, strengthless mind cannot hold even one object steady; first lean on good friends to prop wisdom upright, and only then talk of prescriptions. No stroke shows the physician's hand more plainly: the medicine must match a person who can receive it; for the one who cannot, first build up the constitution.

The cabinet also holds a few broad staples. The treatise-masters say that recollection of death and defining the four elements are "supreme" among all objects—every type of person can use them; counting the breath and the kasiṇas, likewise, are at odds with no temperament. Look back now at the old affair that opened this chapter: the mindfulness of breathing the World-Honored One taught in its place is exactly such a staple—broadly suited, subtle, hard to be harmed by. The sutta calls it "the noble abiding, the divine abiding, the holy abiding"; from the beginner to the adept, all may dwell at ease in it. Strong medicine strikes its target; the staple gives a steady start—this method has all the measure of the clinic.

The Northern Tradition's Two Gateways

Here is the interesting thing: the treatise-masters of the northern transmission never read this southern table of assignments, yet walked independently to the same spot. The Abhidharmakośa establishes "the two gateways to the deathless" (amṛta-dvāra)—two essential doors into cultivation, like the nectar of deathlessness:

The two essential gateways for entering cultivation: the contemplation of foulness and mindfulness of breathing; one in whom greed or discursive thought predominates should cultivate them respectively, in this order.

The one heavy with greed cultivates the contemplation of foulness; the one whose mind is disordered by much discursive thought cultivates counting the breath. The northern masters add the pharmacology: counting the breath has few objects and turns at the inner door, so it can cure the scattered mind that clambers outward; the contemplation of foulness has many objects and turns at the outer door, so it answers exactly the greed that grasps outward. The inward-acting drug treats scatter; the outward-acting drug treats greed—why this medicine for this illness, the treatise-masters spell out down to the mechanism.

A southern grid of temperaments, a northern pair of gateways to the deathless—one elaborate, one spare, and at the bone a single insight: the object is matched not to "what this person likes" but to "which affliction holds sway." That the two traditions each arrived here on their own shows the insight to be a ridgeline native to the terrain, not a line some one school drew. The "five gateways for stilling the mind" that later circulated in China—foulness, loving-kindness, dependent origination, analysis of the elements, and counting the breath: five contemplations against five illnesses—is a mature framework assembled afterward out of these materials; its roots all run back to here.

A Plain Question

What this system leaves the reader is a plain question: at this moment, which affliction holds sway in my mind?

Only when the illness has been asked clear does the logic of the medicine come into use. And what this chapter has set out is the method of compounding—which medicine answers which illness—not how to fill your own prescription; the filling of prescriptions has its own line of teachers. Match the remedy to the illness, and when the medicine takes, the gate of concentration opens.

The medicine is matched; the mind has entered the gate. Inside the gate, within the state of concentration, what exactly is at work? That subtle stirring of the mind—how does it grow still, layer by layer? The next chapter lays a single jhāna-factor on the dissection table.