Dhyāna-Pāramitā in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra

I. Introduction: The Deferred Question Arrives

The previous chapter polished the ontological scale to a shine. The Sarvāstivāda held that concentration has an own-substance — a separate dharma called one-pointedness of mind; the Theravāda folded it into the functional cluster of applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, and bliss; the Sautrāntika simply said it has no separate substance at all, being nothing but the settled mark of a continuing mind. After all three voices were set side by side, one line was left hanging as the deferred question: is the substance of concentration a thing, or a name?

The deferred question now arrives. But the way the Mahāyāna takes it up is neither to add a weight to the scale nor to remove one. It does not make adjustments inside the scale; it places the whole scale, together with every reading on it, into emptiness, and asks again. This is the perfection of dhyāna — prajāā, working as an operator, transforming one and the same ladder of absorption into a perfection that is entered without being dwelt in.

For just this reason the chapter must begin by saying what the perfection of dhyāna is not, because the term is too easily carried off by three misreadings.

First, the perfection of dhyāna is not a sum — dhyāna with a separate discipline called prajñā set down beside it. It is not that one first perfects the absorption, then cultivates a separate portion of wisdom, and the two added together make a perfection. Prajñā is not concentration's neighbour; it is concentration's operator. It acts upon this concentration, and what it changes is the nature of the absorption, not its quantity.

Second, the perfection of dhyāna is not the abandoning of concentration for the sake of wisdom — wisdom annulling concentration. The raft for crossing a river is for crossing on; one does not scuttle it midstream. Prajñā does not swallow concentration; it lets a person ride the absorption without being bound by it. The chapter holds this point throughout: concentration must not be swallowed by wisdom, for to do so is to sink the raft in the middle of the river, which is not reaching the shore.

Third, and least of all, the perfection of dhyāna is not the swapping out of the four dhyānas and the eight attainments for some "higher Mahāyāna meditative state," as though ordinary beings cultivate the four dhyānas while bodhisattvas cultivate a separate, more recondite set. The treatise is explicit: what the bodhisattva practises is still that same ladder of the four dhyānas, the four immeasurables, and the four formless attainments.¹ The ladder is not exchanged. What is exchanged is what frames the ladder, what operates upon it. The same concentration, freshly framed.

One slippery word must be pinned in advance. When the gateway into dhyāna is described below, the word "mindfulness" (念) will appear — desire, effort, mindfulness, skilful discernment, and one-pointedness are the five factors that give access to the first dhyāna. The "mindfulness" here is in the jhāna-factor sense (calling to mind the bliss of the first dhyāna, knowing the impurity of the desire-realm), the holding of the mind on its object so that it does not scatter. It is not the fourfold establishment of mindfulness, not the satipaṭṭhāna of the Pāli system. One-pointedness of mind is not the establishing of mindfulness. The dedicated chapter on "mindfulness" in this volume has treated this at length; here it is flagged once, lest two senses of one word quarrel in the reader's head.

This chapter opens the volume's Mahāyāna turn, so its pace is slower. First the provenance of the term "perfection of dhyāna" is laid out; then the two definitions the treatise gives in its own voice; and finally the hardest piece of evidence, the one for which neither giving nor moral discipline has any counterpart.

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II. The Term Was Not Coined from Nothing: A Lexical History and the Gateway into Dhyāna

To speak of how dhyāna becomes a perfection, one must first concede something the Mahāyāna narrative tends to overshadow: the term "perfection of dhyāna" was not dreamed up by the Prajñāpāramitā movement on a whim. It has a gradual lexical history.

The earliest traces lie in the third century. The Sūtra of the Collection of the Six Perfections, translated by Kang Senghui of the Wu around 251, already contains a "Chapter on the Perfection of Dhyāna, fifth," and orders the six as "first giving, second moral discipline, third patience, fourth effort, fifth dhyāna, sixth the perfection of clear understanding."² Note the term used here: "crossing-over without limit" — the archaic rendering of pāramitā, meaning to cross (the river) over to the limitless (far shore). And the content of that chapter is still the old technical apparatus — the four dhyānas, the five hindrances, the breath. Which is to say: what the Mahāyāna did here was not to forge a separate meditative method but to take over, wholesale, the dhyāna technique already matured among the disciples, fold it into the framework of the six perfections, and clothe it in a new motive — the liberation of beings. The technique is inherited; only the aspiration turns.

More telling still is the fingerprint of one and the same lexical shift. The introductory section of the Ekottarika-āgama has a verse on the perfection of dhyāna — "all who sit in dhyāna, breathing in and out … this is called the crossing-over of dhyāna, not to be abandoned"³ — using the term "crossing-over of dhyāna." Yet in fascicle 19 of the same text, in the dialogue between Maitreya and the Buddha, "the six perfections" already appears in its standard transliterated form.⁴ "Crossing-over without limit," "crossing-over of dhyāna," "perfection" — these terms coexisting within one and the same text is exactly the fingerprint of a term caught halfway through a transition: the old translation-by-sense has not yet left the stage, and the new transliteration has already entered.

Drawing out this historical line is what lets the later argument stand on solid ground: when the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra says "the perfection of dhyāna," it is not conjuring a brand-new kind of meditation out of nothing. It is performing, upon a term already half-formed, the last and most decisive piece of finishing-work — giving it its nature by means of prajñā.

So how does one enter this dhyāna? The treatise answers in three stages. The chapter asks of itself, "By what skilful means does one attain the perfection of dhyāna?" and answers, "Reject the five [objects], dispel the five [hindrances], practise the five factors."⁵ First one reproaches the five sense-desires (form, sound, smell, taste, touch — which the treatise likens to honey smeared on a knife-blade: he who licks it craves the sweetness and does not know it cuts his tongue⁶); next one dispels the five hindrances; then one practises the five factors. The five factors are those flagged above — desire, effort, mindfulness, skilful discernment, one-pointedness; when the five are fully practised, one gains the five jhāna-factors and so the first dhyāna.⁷

This passage the chapter only describes; it does not prescribe. The treatise's line — "in the first and last watches of the night, with sustained diligence, regulating one's food and drink" — reads like an operating manual, but its status here is "the structure of the gateway as the treatise describes it," not an instruction to the reader on how to sit, how to count the breath, when to rise. How to practise belongs to a different genre. What this chapter looks at is what prajñā does inside the gate once the gate has been passed. As for the internal mechanics of the four dhyānas factor by factor — how applied and sustained thought come to rest, how rapture and bliss fall away, how the intermediate absorption is established — the Abhidharma chapters of this volume have already taken these apart layer by layer; here they are passed over in a sentence and not re-walked.

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III. The Spine: Two Definitions That Turn Dhyāna into a Perfection

Now to the spine of the chapter. The treatise raises the question against itself — "If what is meant is the perfection of dhyāna, why does the sūtra say only 'dhyāna'?" — and gives, in its own voice, two definitions. These two are the backbone the whole chapter rests on.

The first: great compassion plus the great vow. Dhyāna, the treatise says, is the root of the perfection; having gained this dhyāna, the bodhisattva pities beings — beings who have in their own minds the subtle bliss of the various absorptions and do not know to seek it, who instead seek pleasure out among things that are impure and are suffering. Seeing this, great compassion arises and the great vow is made: to bring all beings first to this inner bliss of absorption, and "next to the bliss of the Buddha-path." The treatise concludes: "It is then that dhyāna gains the name of perfection."⁸

The second: the prajñā operator, plus not-relishing and not-being-reborn-by-its-reward. The treatise continues: in this dhyāna one "does not relish it, does not seek its reward, is not reborn by its reward, and enters the absorption in order to discipline the mind; by the skilful means of wisdom one returns to be reborn in the desire-realm and liberates all beings — and it is then that dhyāna is called a perfection."⁸

These two sentences — and above all the chain of verbs in the second: not-relishing, not-reborn-by-its-reward, by-skilful-means, returning-to-the-desire-realm — are the true axis of the chapter. They state the answer cleanly: what makes dhyāna a perfection is not the depth or shallowness of the dhyāna itself, but the thing that operates upon it. The first definition gives the direction of the aspiration (compassion and the vow); the second gives the concrete operation of prajñā (not adhering to the savour, not following it into rebirth, and conversely returning actively into the desire-realm to liberate beings).

So on what does "not relishing" rest? Not on gritted willpower. The treatise is plain: "Because the bodhisattva knows the true nature of dharmas, the mind, on entering the absorption, is at peace and does not adhere to its savour; the various non-Buddhists, though they enter absorption, are not at peace in mind, and because they do not know the true nature of dharmas, they cling to the savour of absorption."⁹ The reason the bodhisattva does not adhere to the savour of dhyāna is cognitive: because the true nature of dharmas is known, there is, within that savour, nothing to adhere to in the first place. The non-Buddhists are exactly the reverse: because they do not know the true nature, they cling to the savour. This is the real mechanism of prajñā as an operator. It does not press an external prohibition — "do not crave" — onto the absorption from outside; it dissolves, from within, the very fact of "being-cravable." This mechanism is the perfection of dhyāna's own. It does not take giving's road of "the three things being unfindable," nor moral discipline's road; it takes this one — the cravability of the savour of absorption being dissolved by the wisdom of the true nature.

But here a very important line must be drawn: not-adhering-to-the-savour is necessary but not sufficient. The treatise sets itself a pointed objection: "The arhat and the pratyekabuddha both do not adhere to the savour — why do they not attain the perfection of dhyāna?" The answer: "Though the arhat and the pratyekabuddha do not adhere to the savour, because they lack great compassion they are not called the perfection of dhyāna; and further, they cannot practise all the dhyānas to the full. The bodhisattva practises all the dhyānas to the full … and so, in the bodhisattva's mind it is called the perfection of dhyāna, while in others it is called only dhyāna."¹⁰

That answer settles the boundary for good. The noble ones of the two vehicles are not people who adhere to the savour — they long since ceased to crave it. Yet theirs is still "only dhyāna"; they do not attain the perfection of dhyāna. Why? Because they lack great compassion, and cannot practise all the dhyānas to the full. In other words: not-adhering-to-the-savour is only the threshold, not the destination. Past the threshold there must also be great compassion, and the willingness to practise the whole range of the dhyānas to the full (for the sake of beings of different capacities); only then does that absorption truly reach the far shore.

So the perfection of dhyāna is not "a purer samādhi." A concentration deeper and freer of savour-adherence than the arhat's is still only dhyāna. The treatise sets three kinds of dhyāna side by side with great clarity: the dhyāna of the non-Buddhists has three diseases — relishing, wrong view, conceit; the dhyāna of the disciples is "thin in compassion … does not penetrate the true nature of dharmas with sharp wisdom, perfects only its own good, and severs the seed of buddhahood"; while the dhyāna of the bodhisattva "is free of these, and because it would gather all the dharmas of the buddhas, in every absorption it does not forget beings, extending loving thought even to the insects."¹¹ Three set in a row, and the difference lies not in the depth of the concentration but in what carries it and whom it faces.

The treatise also gives a negative image, a reminder of where adhering to the savour leads. Among the gods of the form-realm, "those who have attained the path do not come down again; those who have not, because they delight in and adhere to the savour of dhyāna, do not come down — and because they adhere to the savour, their wisdom too grows dull."¹² Adhering to the savour not only holds a person up there, unwilling to come down and liberate beings; it directly blunts wisdom. A more extreme instance: the treatise speaks of the sage Udraka-Rāmaputra. After long reflection he attained absorption and was reborn in the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception; when his lifespan there was exhausted, he descended and was reborn as a flying wildcat, killing fish and birds, committing measureless wrongs, and falling into the three evil destinies — upon which the treatise concludes, "this is the karmic occasion of an adhering mind within absorption."¹³ This is a doctrinal cautionary mirror the text carries of itself, showing how an adhering mind can turn even the highest absorption into a cause of falling — it is the exact reverse of the definition "not relishing."

Set this negative image against the positive side above: the first definition (great compassion and the great vow) answers "toward whom"; the second definition (prajñā, not relishing) answers "by what one is kept from being held fast." Together, dhyāna turns from "root" into "reaching the far shore."

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IV. The Signature Move: Prajñā Empties the Very Mark of Dhyāna

Section III described prajñā "dissolving the cravability of the savour of dhyāna." But the chapter's true signature move emerges only here: prajñā does not merely dissolve the savour of dhyāna — it empties the mark of dhyāna itself, and empties it so far as to take the jhāna-factors in too.

The treatise says: "Know, therefore, that to grasp the mark of distraction can give rise to anger and the rest of the afflictions; to grasp the mark of absorption can give rise to clinging. The bodhisattva grasps neither the mark of distraction nor the mark of absorption — because distraction and absorption are of one mark — and this is called the perfection of dhyāna."¹⁴

This sentence must be read slowly. The ordinary assumption is that the direction of cultivating absorption is to leave "distraction" behind and seize "absorption" — distraction is bad, absorption is good, the more absorbed the better. The treatise will not go that way. It says: grasping the "mark of distraction" gives rise to anger and the rest — no surprise there; but grasping the "mark of absorption" gives rise to "clinging" — to seize the mark "I have attained absorption" is itself a kind of adherence. So the bodhisattva grasps neither: neither the mark of distraction nor the mark of absorption. The reason is that "distraction and absorption are of one mark" — in the true nature, distraction and absorption are not two opposed things.

The mechanism, carried to its end, is this passage: "Contemplating in this way the hindrance of sensual craving, it is then one with dhyāna; and so for the remaining hindrances. If one attains the true nature of dharmas, then contemplating the five hindrances they are without any existence, and one then knows that the true mark of the five hindrances is the true mark of dhyāna, and the true mark of dhyāna is the five hindrances. The bodhisattva who can thus know that the five sense-desires and the five hindrances, the absorption and its factors, are of one mark, and who enters the absorption with nothing to depend on — this is the perfection of dhyāna."¹⁵

"The absorption and its factors are of one mark" — this clause is the chapter's fingerprint. The perfection of giving speaks of the emptiness of the three things — giver, receiver, gift; the perfection of moral discipline speaks of the unfindability of the mark of wrongdoing; both still rest at the level of the object. The perfection of dhyāna goes a layer deeper: it places even dhyāna's own components — those jhāna-factors of applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, bliss, one-pointedness — into emptiness along with the rest. The true mark of the five hindrances is the true mark of dhyāna; the true mark of dhyāna is the five hindrances; and so the jhāna-factors and the five hindrances are, in the true nature, also of one mark. Prajñā does not merely empty dhyāna's object; it empties as far as dhyāna's internal architecture. This is a depth that neither giving nor moral discipline reaches.

For just this reason the treatise can state the boundary so cleanly: the bodhisattva, "within all dharmas, through the analysis of particular marks attains freedom from the desires. Others gain only the name 'dhyāna,' not the perfection."¹⁶ Others who cultivate dhyāna obtain the name "dhyāna"; they do not obtain "the perfection." This sentence is a sibling to giving's "gains only the name of giving and does not reach the far shore," but it is dhyāna's own sentence (the wording differs, and giving's sentence may not be borrowed to stand in for it), speaking of dhyāna's own matter.

What most rewards a pause in this section is how the treatise itself closes the whole chapter — and closes it by locking head to tail. The sūtra quoted at the chapter's head (the epigraph of this paper): "Because it is undistracted and unsavoured, one should fulfil the perfection of dhyāna."¹⁷ As the whole chapter draws to its close, the treatise quotes it again and names its source: "Again, because it is undistracted and unsavoured, it is called the perfection of dhyāna. As the Buddha told Śāriputra: 'The bodhisattva, abiding in the perfection of wisdom, fulfils the perfection of dhyāna, because it is undistracted and unsavoured.'"¹⁸ One sūtra-sentence at the head, the same sentence quoted again at the close, and the whole chapter in between is the unfolding of just these terms — "undistracted," "unsavoured." The treatise's argumentative structure is, in fact, the sūtra's own head-to-tail lock: "undistracted" answers to the move of Section IV (not grasping the mark of absorption; of-one-mark, nothing-to-depend-on); "unsavoured" answers to the move of Section III (not adhering to the savour because the true nature is known). This is not a frame fitted on by later hands; it is the circle the treatise draws around itself.

Here a seeming paradox must be faced, or everything said above will trip over it. If prajñā empties even the mark of dhyāna and the jhāna-factors, then what carries this act of emptying? The answer: it is itself still a samādhi — the samādhi of emptiness (or the samādhi of signlessness). That is to say, the prajñā that deconstructs dhyāna deconstructs dhyāna by way of a dhyāna: it uses a kind of absorption that carries prajñā to empty the savour-adherence of ordinary absorption. This is not the contradiction of "using absorption to abolish absorption"; it is a crucial hinge — the samādhi of emptiness is not out to dismantle the absorption but to keep the absorption from being treated as a home one can dwell in. Read as "wisdom annulling concentration, cultivating emptiness so as to do without concentration," the hinge has been read backwards, and one has fallen back into the second misreading rejected in Section I. The raft is still a raft; only this raft knows it is a raft, and does not mistake itself for the shore.

Last, a wall must be set, and this wall runs on from the chapter on the substance of concentration in this volume: this "emptying of the mark of dhyāna" by prajñā is not the Sautrāntika's "concentration has no separate substance." The Sautrāntika said concentration has no body of its own — but that is within the Abhidharma realist framework, where it counts one fewer mental factor on the scale; it is subtraction. What the Madhyamaka does here is altogether different: it does not add or remove mental factors inside the framework; it places the whole framework (together with the very question "does concentration have a substance") into ultimate emptiness. The previous chapter already marked it: the Sautrāntika is not the Madhyamaka, and the two must not be conflated. So "the absorption and its factors are of one mark" cannot be read as "the jhāna-factors in fact have no own-substance and so can be dispensed with" (that is the Sautrāntika's subtraction); it must be read as "the jhāna-factors and the five hindrances are non-dual in the true nature, and one enters with nothing to depend on" (that is prajñā's ultimate emptiness). One is to count one entry short; the other is to set the whole ledger into emptiness.

A note in passing. When the chapter takes up the objection "in an absorption without applied or sustained thought, how can the bodhisattva still teach the Dharma?" the treatise answers with the asura's lute: the asura's lute, with no one to play it, yet constantly sounds of itself and shapes melodies at will.¹⁹ The dharma-body bodhisattva is constantly in absorption and yet able to teach the Dharma, just like this lute. The image brings "entered without being dwelt in" to life: entered into the deepest absorption (without applied or sustained thought), and at the same time most freely benefiting beings (sounding and teaching of itself). The two need not exclude each other; to suppose that "once one enters absorption one can do nothing" is, again, to treat absorption as a home to move into. The treatise also cites in passing the method of "sitting in meditation" that the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa (毘摩羅鞊, the Kumārajīva-era transliteration) gives for Śāriputra — the kind of sitting that "does not depend on the body, does not depend on the mind, does not depend on the three realms"²⁰ — as a corroboration of the same import. This thread has its own dedicated treatment later in the volume, in the part on prajñā and concentration; here only its bearing on "entered without being dwelt in" is drawn, and it is not developed.

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V. The Hardest Evidence: The Bodhisattva Does Not Take Rebirth by Dhyāna

If Section IV's "the absorption and its factors are of one mark" is the chapter's sharpest blade, what this section treats is the chapter's hardest stone — the thing for which the perfection of giving and the perfection of moral discipline simply have no counterpart.

To cultivate the four dhyānas and the four formless attainments is, by the ordinary law of karmic reward, to be reborn in the corresponding heavens of the form-realm and the formless-realm, and with very long lifespans. A person who adheres to the savour of a deep absorption, at the end of life, is naturally carried by that absorption to be reborn in that heaven — which is exactly the karmic side of the form-realm gods who, in the previous section, "delight in and adhere to the savour of dhyāna and do not come down." But the bodhisattva does not. In fascicle 27 the treatise lays out a genealogy of four kinds of bodhisattva, and cites the sūtra: "This bodhisattva, by the power of skilful means, is not reborn by dhyāna, is not reborn by the immeasurable minds, is not reborn by the four formless attainments; wherever there are buddhas, he is reborn there, never apart from the practice of the perfection of wisdom."²¹ The treatise explains this fourth bodhisattva: by the power of skilful means he is not reborn by dhyāna, by absorption, or by the immeasurable minds; at death, pitying beings, he vows to be reborn in a land where a buddha is now present, and continues in correspondence with the perfection of wisdom. The treatise speaks his reason for him: "If I were reborn by dhyāna, I could not benefit beings widely."²²

This sentence is the crux. The ordinary cultivator of absorption, having perfected a deep absorption, is carried upward by karmic reward — moving with dhyāna's gravity. The bodhisattva deliberately moves against that gravity: though he has the power to be reborn in a high heaven and to enjoy the very long bliss of absorption, by the power of skilful means he holds back that pull and actively "returns to be reborn in the desire-realm" (the same act as in the definition of Section III), going to where there are beings and where there is Buddha-Dharma. Fascicle 29 folds this move into the reading of prajñā: "When the bodhisattva-mahāsattva practises the perfection of dhyāna, conforming to the mind of omniscience, depending on nothing among all dharmas, and not being reborn by dhyāna — this is the perfection of wisdom of the bodhisattva-mahāsattva when practising the perfection of dhyāna."²³ "Not reborn by dhyāna" is right here explicitly recognized as "the perfection of wisdom when practising the perfection of dhyāna."

Set back in the volume's context, this point answers, head to tail, a seed planted very early. The opening of the volume, treating the Buddha's right concentration, set down a boundary: the Buddhist right samādhi (sammā-samādhi) is not the same as the non-Buddhist concentration that takes the formless, absolute absorption as its final resting-place — a pure, absolute concentration that stops there, unmoving, is not the destination. At the time that was only a sentence of boundary. Here at the perfection of dhyāna, the boundary is cashed out into a concrete act of refusal: the bodhisattva refuses to take rebirth by the highest absorption. The Buddha then set aside the formless absorptions and did not take them as ultimate; the bodhisattva now declines rebirth by dhyāna and returns to the desire-realm — the same judgment, appearing in two different places: however deep the concentration, it is not a home one may settle into.

This too is the hardest watershed between the bodhisattva's dhyāna and that of the two vehicles. The two vehicles also do not adhere to the savour (Section III said so), but the two vehicles have no act of "going against the gravity, actively returning to rebirth." Whether one can decline rebirth by dhyāna, whether one is willing to return into the desire-realm — this is what neither giving nor moral discipline could ever produce by analogy. Giving may have all three things empty; moral discipline may have the mark of wrongdoing unfindable; but "having perfected the highest absorption and yet declining to enjoy it, turning back instead to plunge into the sea of suffering to liberate beings" — only the perfection of dhyāna can speak of this, because only dhyāna has that karmic gravity, the pull that carries a person up to the high heavens, which can be run against.

Seen against another tradition, this watershed comes into sharper focus. In the early Pāli teaching, moral discipline, concentration, and wisdom are often arrayed as a linear causal chain — fulfilled moral discipline yields non-remorse, non-remorse yields gladness, gladness yields tranquillity of body, tranquillity yields bliss, bliss yields concentration of mind, concentration yields knowing-and-seeing as things really are.²⁴ On this chain, concentration is the indispensable station before wisdom, and the whole chain is a single, one-directional teleology oriented toward liberation: up the steps, no turning back. The way the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra takes this up is different. It does not deny that upward chain (the bodhisattva still practises all the dhyānas to the full), but it adds, at the top of the chain, a reverse act: at the moment when one ought to be reborn by absorption, prajñā has him not be reborn by it, has him return instead. On the conventional truth, that upward ladder is walked as before; on the ultimate truth, the whole ladder is taken over by emptiness and not dwelt in. It is not that the linear chain is cut; it is that the chain is made to hold in both truths at once under the tension of the two truths — able to climb, yet not clamped at the summit.

As for the more matured non-dwelling — entering and leaving absorption at will, abiding without being abided in, even to the point of not realizing the [reality-]limit — that belongs to the main stage of the next layer in this volume, and here only a direction is pointed, not entered: this chapter treats the constructive side of prajñā's transforming of dhyāna (how dhyāna becomes a perfection), while that more thorough systematic critique — that the mark of absorption too is empty — is left to a later dedicated treatment.

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VI. Conclusion: What Prajñā Adds to Concentration

Return to that scale at the start. The previous chapter used the full toolkit of Abhidharma analysis to ask whether concentration has an own-substance, and in the end could only leave it hanging between "thing" and "name" — the limit of analysis: no dissection, however fine, can answer "toward whom this concentration is to be turned, and by what it is kept from binding."

What this chapter singles out is precisely what that analysis cannot supply. What makes dhyāna into the perfection of dhyāna is not any attribute of the concentration itself — not deeper, not purer, not freer of savour-adherence (the two vehicles are already free enough of it, and theirs is still only dhyāna). It is prajñā as an operator, plus the direction of great compassion: cognitively it dissolves the cravability of the savour of dhyāna (not relishing); it places even the mark and the factors of dhyāna into ultimate emptiness (of-one-mark, nothing-to-depend-on); and when karma would carry a person up to the high heavens, it has him run against the current and return (not reborn by dhyāna). The three acts together carry one and the same concentration from "root" across to "the far shore." Without prajñā, one "gains only the name 'dhyāna,' not the perfection." Prajñā is the necessary and sufficient condition for dhyāna to become a perfection.

A word, in honesty, about the state of research. In Western scholarship, dedicated study taking this chapter on the perfection of dhyāna in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra as its object is very nearly a blank — it has drawn even less notice than the treatise's chapter on moral discipline; what exists is mostly a chapter-level passing-over within general surveys of the six perfections. This chapter, following the text of fascicle 17 section by section and threading the two definitions together with "the absorption and its factors are of one mark" and "not reborn by dhyāna" into a single structural line, is meant to fill that particular textual gap, not to claim some new invention. A word, too, on authorship: throughout, this chapter takes "the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra" and "the treatise" as its subject, and does not adjudicate any passage as "Nāgārjuna's own autograph assertion." Whether the treatise issued from a single Nāgārjuna's hand is much disputed in modern scholarship (Lamotte and others); the confirmable textual fixed-point is the Chinese version settled by Kumārajīva's translation workshop under the Later Qin, in the Hongshi era (c. 405–406); no Sanskrit or Tibetan original survives for collation. The traditional ascription is "composed by Nāgārjuna, translated by Kumārajīva," but the prose does not, on this basis, score specific arguments as Nāgārjuna's own demonstrations. Further: this chapter renders the treatise's term uniformly as "the perfection of dhyāna" (禪波羅蜜), without the extra syllable — the latter form belongs to Xuanzang's seventh-century rendering (靜慮波羅蜜多), which is not the same usage as Kumārajīva's fifth-century workshop and may not be mixed into Kumārajīva's citations.

Two red lines, looped back once more. First, description, not adjudication of practice: in describing the gateway into dhyāna and the falling-away of the jhāna-factors, the chapter describes the doctrinal structure the treatise states — it does not teach anyone how to sit or how to count the breath. How to practise is the responsibility of a different genre. Second, mindfulness is not concentration: the "mindfulness" among the five factors is in the jhāna-factor sense, not the mindfulness of the fourfold establishment — and if that one word slips, the whole line goes awry.

A very faint foreshadowing is left, undeveloped. This volume will, in the end, return to one question: if pure concentration is not the ultimate, where, in the end, does concentration return to? This chapter has already given the first syllable of that direction — prajñā. The long line of concentration returning to prajñā will close only at the sealing of the whole volume; here it is touched with a single stroke.

The next chapter turns into the constructive śamatha-vipaśyanā of the Yogācāra — how the Yogācārabhūmi lays concentration out as the graded engineering of the nine stages of mental abiding. If this chapter is prajñā giving dhyāna its nature, the next is another tradition giving dhyāna its model. The same ladder will be measured all over again, by a wholly different language.

Ride dhyāna without dwelling in dhyāna.

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References

Primary Buddhist Sources (Taishō)

• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (《大智度論》), composed by Nāgārjuna (ascribed), tr. Kumārajīva (Later Qin, Hongshi era, c. 405–406), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509.
• Sūtra of the Collection of the Six Perfections (《六度集經》), tr. Kang Senghui of the Wu (c. 251), Taishō vol. 3, No. 152.
• Ekottarika-āgama (《增壹阿含經》), tr. Gautama Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō vol. 2, No. 125.
• Larger Prajñāpāramitā (《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》), tr. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, No. 223.
• Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa (《維摩詰所說經》), tr. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 14, No. 475. (Cited in this chapter as self-quoted within the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, not as an independent citation.)

Pāli Parallel (CC0)

• Aṅguttara Nikāya 11.1, Kimatthiya-sutta (PTS edition; cited here as a traditional comparison, by paraphrase, not quoted verbatim).

Modern Scholarship (engaged by paraphrase, not quoted)

• Lamotte, Étienne. Le Traité de la Grande Vertu de Sagesse de Nāgārjuna (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra). 5 vols. Louvain: Institut Orientaliste, 1944–1980. (In French; under copyright, engaged by paraphrase only and embedded nowhere verbatim.)
• Wright, Dale S. The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009 (ch. 5, "The Perfection of Meditation").
• Dayal, Har. The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature. London: Kegan Paul, 1932 (ch. 5, "The Pāramitās").

Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short name	Full title	Composer / translator	Taishō no.
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Nāgārjuna (ascribed), tr. Kumārajīva	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗
Six Perfections Collection	Ṣaṭpāramitā-saṃgraha	tr. Kang Senghui	T0152《六度集經》T3, No. 152View on CBETA online reader ↗
Ekottarika-āgama	Ekottarika-āgama	tr. Gautama Saṅghadeva	T0125《增壹阿含經》EkottarāgamaT2, No. 125View on CBETA online reader ↗
Larger Prajñāpāramitā	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra	tr. Kumārajīva	T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗
Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa	Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa	tr. Kumārajīva	T0475《維摩詰所說經》Vimalakīrti-nirdeśaT14, No. 475Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 406 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗
Aṅguttara Nikāya 11.1	Kimatthiya-sutta	—	AN 11.1

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Cross-References

• Part III, the chapter on the substance of absorption: whether concentration is a thing with an own-substance — the three-voice dispute of the Sarvāstivāda, the Theravāda, and the Sautrāntika. This chapter takes up the "thing-or-name" question left at its close and re-frames it through prajñā.
• The volume's spine and jhāna-factor chapters: the ladder of the four dhyānas, the four immeasurables, and the four formless attainments, and the layer-by-layer falling-away of the jhāna-factors, are taken here as ground and not re-walked.
• The opening of the volume (the Buddha's right concentration): the boundary by which the Buddha set aside the formless, absolute absorption and did not take it as ultimate is cashed out here into the bodhisattva's refusal to take rebirth by the power of dhyāna.
• The DĀNA volume (from giving to the perfection of giving) and the SĪLA volume (Nāgārjuna on the perfection of moral discipline): each transforms a practice into a perfection by the same prajñā operator of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra — giving runs through "the three things unfindable," moral discipline through "wrongdoing and non-wrongdoing unfindable," and this chapter through "the mark of dhyāna too is empty, the absorption and its factors of one mark." The three mechanisms differ.
• Part IV, the next chapter (forthcoming): the śamatha-vipaśyanā and the nine stages of mental abiding of the Yogācārabhūmi — how another tradition models "concentration."
• The volume's closing chapter (forthcoming): the long line of concentration returning to prajñā, of which this chapter has given the first syllable.

Footnotes

1. The ladder-structure of the four dhyānas, the four immeasurables, and the four formless attainments has been treated in detail in the Abhidharma chapters of this volume (on the ladder of the four dhyānas, on the jhāna-factors, on the forty meditation-objects) and is not restated here. ↩

2. Sūtra of the Collection of the Six Perfections, fascicle 1 (the prefatory ordering of the six) and fascicle 7 (the Chapter on the Perfection of Dhyāna, fifth), tr. Kang Senghui of the Wu (c. 251), Taishō vol. 3, No. 152. ↩

3. The verse on the perfection of dhyāna in the introductory section of the Ekottarika-āgama, Taishō vol. 2, No. 125, p. 550a. ↩

4. Ekottarika-āgama, fascicle 19, Maitreya and the Buddha on the six perfections, Taishō vol. 2, No. 125, p. 645b. "Crossing-over of dhyāna" (translation-by-sense) and "the six perfections" (transliteration) appearing together in the same text is the fingerprint of a term in transition. ↩

5. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, "reject the five [objects], dispel the five [hindrances], practise the five factors," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 181a. (Note: in the transmitted text, glosses such as "the five dusts" and "the five hindrances" are interlinear collation-notes, not Kumārajīva's main text.) ↩

6. Ibid., the simile of the five sense-desires as honey smeared on a knife-blade, p. 181a. ↩

7. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the five factors (desire, effort, mindfulness, skilful discernment, one-pointedness) yielding the five jhāna-factors and so the first dhyāna, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 185a. Here "mindfulness" names calling to mind the bliss of the first dhyāna and knowing the impurity of the desire-realm; "one-pointedness" names constantly binding the mind to its object so it does not scatter — both in the jhāna-factor sense, not the mindfulness of the fourfold establishment. ↩

8. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the two definitions of the perfection of dhyāna, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 187c. ↩ ↩²

9. Ibid., not adhering to the savour as grounded in knowing the true nature of dharmas, p. 188a. ↩

10. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the objection-and-answer "the arhat and pratyekabuddha both do not adhere to the savour — why do they not attain the perfection of dhyāna," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 188a. ↩

11. Ibid., the three-voice comparison of the three diseases of non-Buddhist dhyāna / the thin compassion of disciple dhyāna / the bodhisattva dhyāna that does not forget beings, p. 188a. ↩

12. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 27, the gods of the form-realm who delight in and adhere to the savour of dhyāna and so do not come down, and whose wisdom grows dull through adhering to the savour, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 337a. ↩

13. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the doctrinal cautionary instance of Udraka-Rāmaputra's falling through an adhering mind, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 189a. This is a negative doctrinal mirror the text carries of itself, not an image drawn for the sake of killing. ↩

14. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, "because distraction and absorption are of one mark, this is called the perfection of dhyāna," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 189a. ↩

15. Ibid., "the absorption and its factors are of one mark; entering the absorption with nothing to depend on — this is the perfection of dhyāna," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 189b. This is the chapter's signature — prajñā emptying the jhāna-factors along with the rest, distinct from the perfection of giving (the three things unfindable) and the perfection of moral discipline. ↩

16. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, "others gain only the name 'dhyāna,' not the perfection," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 188b. ↩

17. Same as ²⁵, the chapter-head sūtra-sentence, p. 180b. ↩

18. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the chapter-end re-citation "because it is undistracted and unsavoured, it is called the perfection of dhyāna … as the Buddha told Śāriputra," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 189c. The sūtra-sentence it draws on is found in the Larger Prajñāpāramitā (Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra): "abiding in the perfection of dhyāna, purifying the path of omniscience, ultimate emptiness, because it is undistracted and unsavoured" (tr. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, No. 223, p. 229a). ↩

19. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, the simile of the asura's lute that sounds of itself with no one to play it, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 188c. ↩

20. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, self-citing the method of sitting in meditation from the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa (毘摩羅鞊, Kumārajīva's fifth-century transliteration), Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 188a. Vimalakīrti's sitting in meditation and the single-practice samādhi have their own dedicated treatment in the part of this volume on prajñā and concentration; here only the facet corresponding to "entered without being dwelt in" is drawn. ↩

21. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 27, the sūtra cited in the genealogy of four bodhisattvas, "by the power of skilful means, not reborn by dhyāna," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 338c. ↩

22. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 27, the fourth bodhisattva's "if I were reborn by dhyāna, I could not benefit beings widely," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 339b. ↩

23. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 29 (commentary on the Chapter on Setting Out), "depending on nothing among all dharmas, and not being reborn by dhyāna … this is the perfection of wisdom when practising the perfection of dhyāna," Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 386c. ↩

24. The linear teleology of moral-discipline → non-remorse → gladness → tranquillity → bliss → concentration → knowing-and-seeing as things really are, see Aṅguttara Nikāya 11.1 (AN 11.1, Aṅguttara Nikāya vol. V, PTS edition). Cited here as a traditional comparison, by paraphrase, not quoted verbatim. ↩

25. The sūtra-lemma quoted at the head of the chapter on the perfection of dhyāna, Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, fascicle 17, Taishō vol. 25, No. 1509, p. 180b. The base text used here is Kumārajīva's translation (Later Qin, Hongshi era, c. 405–406), public domain. ↩