Transition ① · From the Pāli Roots to the Concentration in the Āgamas

Part One has walked up to a map, and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

With Part One done, you hold a complete set of things in your hands: three words told clearly apart (samādhi is a faculty, samatha is a method, jhāna is an attainment); a wall personally verified and personally set aside (the deepest mundane concentration is still not liberation); a pair of matched tracks (calm and insight, bearing one yoke together, the direction wisdom); a scale set firmly on its feet (the four jhānas shedding their factors, the four formless attainments crossing beyond perception, the baton at the top handed on to wisdom); and a map of the entrances (dozens of doors, each leading to its own depth).

This set of things speaks entirely of concentration "in itself"—what it is, how deep it goes, where one enters it.

Is that enough?

If all you wish to know is what sort of thing concentration is, it is enough. But there is one thing the language of Part One cannot handle, and it has hung there all along.

That thing is: concentration has never existed alone.

Part One took concentration down to look at it, the way one takes a wheel off a cart, turns it over, and studies its spokes, its hub, its rim. The looking was done clearly. But a wheel must in the end be mounted back onto the cart—and a wheel mounted on the cart is not the same thing as a wheel lying on the ground. Its position, the load it bears, how it meshes with the other parts—all of this can be seen only on the whole cart.

When the Buddha taught concentration, He always taught it mounted on the cart.

He taught the noble eightfold path, where concentration stands as the eighth factor, named "right concentration"—ahead of it right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness: seven factors paving the road all the way, and only then does concentration come on stage. He taught the seven awakening-factors, where concentration is one factor among them—before it mindfulness, investigation of states, energy, rapture, tranquility; after it, equanimity. Concentration is always one member of a roster, always with something before and something after, something received and something handed on; it never takes the field alone.

Hidden here is a question Part One never answered head-on: that 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 a single object; a person eaten by hatred, turning one thing over day and night, has a mind gathered upon a single object too. Gathering alone cannot tell right from wrong. What makes concentration "right concentration" is not concentration itself but the seven factors ahead of it—when the seeing is right, the thinking is right, the conduct and the livelihood are right, a mind gathered in upon that basis is called right concentration. Concentration's "right" is given to it by the whole cart.

There is one more thing that can be seen clearly only on the cart: concentration's opposite. Part One said that the deeper the concentration, the more is set down—but those things to be set down, while they are not yet set down, what are their names? Why can the mind not settle? The Āgamas give a list—five items, together called the five hindrances: sensual desire, ill-will, dullness-and-drowsiness, restlessness-and-remorse, doubt. A hindrance is a cover: five things laid over the mind, and the mind turns murky, turns dark, cannot bring its strength to bear. Half the work of concentration lies in lifting away these five covers.

So what Part Two will do is take that wheel, taken down and examined, and mount it back onto the cart: to see what position right concentration holds in the noble eightfold path and what load it bears; to see, among the seven awakening-factors, whom the concentration factor receives from and whom it hands on to; to see how the five hindrances cover the mind, and how concentration lifts them away one by one.

What concentration is, Part One has finished saying. Where concentration stands, Part Two begins to say.

We turn the page, to look at that cart.