Kammaṭṭhāna and the Object-Structure of Absorption

I. The Question — Which Object Should I Use?

Most Western readers who have sat a course in insight meditation have met the phrase "access concentration." It is nearly a fixed term of the introductory curriculum: the threshold at which the mind, not yet sunk into full absorption, has nonetheless steadied enough to turn toward the cultivation of insight. Yet there is a plain philological fact about it that is seldom pointed out — the pair of terms "access" (upacāra) and "absorption" (appanā) cannot be found even once in the discourses the Buddha himself spoke. They are markers the later commentators cast in retrospect, to score graduation-lines onto a process the suttas describe only as "the mind gradually settling." Familiar, and misplaced — and to mistake this pair of commentarial marks for gates the Buddha himself installed is the first misunderstanding this chapter means to take apart carefully.¹

Take up the question left standing at the close of the previous chapter: that vertical axis, running from the scattered mind to pure equanimity, is not entered through a single door.² A more basic question then surfaces — which object should one use? Three misreadings of that question are common. The first treats the object as a menu: as if the forty objects were equal options laid side by side, to be chosen by taste. The second treats the object as the only one: as if absorption could be reached through some single object and no other, the rest being so many wrong turns. The third treats the object as beside the point: as if it were merely a tray to give the mind something to rest on, the one thing that mattered being "concentration" itself, with no difference made by what one attends to.

The three misreadings share a single error: each treats the object as something external to the mind — a card to be chosen from a deck, a fixed appliance one is either using or not, a neutral peg on which to hang an attention that is the only thing really at work. But the texts do not hand over an external thing of any of these kinds. They hand over a structure that the mind takes on. To work an object is not to fix the gaze upon something out there; it is to let the field of the mind narrow and refine until it has become the shape of that object — and that is why which object one takes up is not indifferent, and not a free choice, and not the whole story either.

None of the three is accurate. The proposition of this chapter is that the forty (thirty-eight) kammaṭṭhāna are not a menu for the picking but a map with a structure. Each object has its own structural nature, and that nature settles how deep it can carry the mind; and "how the object deepens into absorption" follows, in turn, a pipeline that can be described. Set these three together, and "the structure of the objects" is "the structure of the entrances to absorption."

A self-restraint in the manner of reading must be declared first. What this chapter reads is the textual structure of the objects, not anyone's inventory of experiences upon entering concentration — the scheme of the forty kammaṭṭhāna, the progression of signs, the thresholds of access and absorption may equally be the structure of a text, a teaching, a normative dispute, rather than a transparent report of an inner state.³ In the same spirit, the chapter is descriptive throughout: it describes why an object becomes, structurally, the entrance onto a given depth, and it does not instruct anyone how to choose or work an object. Any sentence that would read as "you should pick such-and-such" or "in practice you will notice such-and-such" has been recast as a third-person structural statement. The chapter does not re-narrate the ladder of the four jhānas — that vertical axis was set firm by the previous chapter; here we ask only after the doors that open onto it.

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II. The Seeds of the Objects, and the Birth of the List

To see the forty kammaṭṭhāna as "a map the commentators drew," one must first go back to the terrain before the map was drawn. The Āgamas and the Nikāyas do hand over a wealth of practices that can serve as objects: the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati), the several perceptions of foulness (asubha), the six recollections (anussati), the four immeasurables (brahmavihāra), the analysis of the elements, the perception of the repulsiveness of food — the materials are abundant. But one piece of internal evidence shows best how they exist within the discourses. The Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle twenty-seven, bundles a dozen and more objects in a single phrase:

"As with the perception of impermanence, so with the perception of impermanence-as-suffering, the perception of suffering-as-not-self, the perception concerning food, the perception that nothing in the world is worth delighting in … the perception of foulness, of the livid corpse, of the festering corpse, of the bloated corpse, of the decaying corpse … the perception of the skeleton, the perception of emptiness — each is its own discourse, just as set out above."⁴

Those five words — "each is its own discourse" — are the key. The several objects each stand as a discourse in their own right, sharing one and the same formula of the awakening-factors or of full understanding, and were never, among themselves, woven into a single table sorted by their natures. The discourses, in other words, give scattered objects; they do not give a classification.

Here the first philological seam must be marked plainly. "Kammaṭṭhāna" is the commentators' word, not the discourses' word. The four Āgamas and the Nikāyas do not use it as the category-word for "the forty objects"; where the discourses speak of the object of meditation they say ārammaṇa (the object), or simply name the practice itself. To treat kammaṭṭhāna as a filing-cabinet able to hold all forty items is the fruit of the later commentators' arranging. Therefore —

❌ One must not write "the Buddha taught forty kammaṭṭhāna in the Āgamas." That is an anachronism. The Buddha taught the practices one by one; the list called "the forty kammaṭṭhāna" is the commentators' work of filing.

This seam is not meant to belittle the commentators. Quite the reverse: to gather the practices scattered, unsorted, across the Nikāyas, and to order them into one coherent architecture of the path, is itself a real intellectual achievement. To see what was achieved, one need only try to hold the discourses' materials in mind without the list — the breath here, the foulnesses there, the recollections somewhere else again, each its own discourse, none cross-referenced to the rest. The list is what makes the field thinkable as a field: it is the act of laying the scattered objects on one table and asking how they stand to one another. The labour of this chapter is to honour that achievement as an achievement — one hand on the map's elegance, one hand on the historical seam stitched between map and terrain.

Two measures of restraint must also be kept here in the borrowing of imagery. The Āgama treats the repulsiveness of food, and its "morsel-food" contemplation carries, in the discourse, a singularly harrowing figure — this chapter takes only the sense, "contemplating the repulsiveness of what is eaten so as to cut the craving of the five desires," and never reproduces the figure itself.⁵ On the analysis of the six elements, the Madhyama Āgama has a simile of dismembering — this chapter takes only the sense, "dissecting the body's elements, as one dissects and disjoins, so as to break the view of self," and does not play out the slaughtering narrative word for word.⁶ One thing more must be marked honestly: in the Āgama setting, both the repulsiveness of food and the analysis of the elements lean toward the cultivation of insight (full understanding, breaking the view of self); to file them as objects "of calm" is the arrangement of the later treatises (the Vimuttimagga, the Visuddhimagga) — which is one more instance of the commentators' work of ordering.

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III. The Thirty-Eight Fields-of-Practice — A Map of the Objects

Once the map is drawn, there is a whole picture that can be spread open. This chapter takes the Vimuttimagga's "thirty-eight fields-of-practice" as the spine of that map.⁷ Three reasons recommend it. First, it renders kammaṭṭhāna as 行處 ("the field where practice ranges"), not as the later-standard 業處; the very difference of rendering is a visible fingerprint. Second, it lists thirty-eight items, not the Visuddhimagga's forty, and this 38↔40 gap is just where the seam between two lines of ordering shows itself. Third, it gives the full Chinese vocabulary for access, for absorption, and for the signs, so that this chapter need never touch the license-restricted text of the other system. First the whole list:

"What are the thirty-eight fields-of-practice? They are: the ten kasiṇa — earth, water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, the kasiṇa of space, the kasiṇa of consciousness; the ten [perceptions of] foulness — the bloated, the livid, the festering, the discarded, the devoured-by-birds-and-beasts, the scattered limbs, the hacked-and-sundered, the blood-smeared, the worm-infested, the skeleton; the ten recollections — recollection of the Buddha, of the Dharma, of the Saṅgha, of virtue, of generosity, of the devas, of death, of the body, of the breath, of peace; the four immeasurables — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity; the analysis of the four elements, the perception of the repulsiveness of food, the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. These are called the thirty-eight fields-of-practice."⁸

Count them through: ten kasiṇa, ten foulness, ten recollections, four immeasurables, then the analysis of the elements, the repulsiveness of food, the dimension of nothingness and the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception — four more — making exactly thirty-eight.

The difference between this thirty-eight and the familiar forty is not a copyist's slip but the fingerprint of two lines of ordering. The Vimuttimagga counts the kasiṇa of space and the kasiṇa of consciousness within the ten kasiṇa, so that of the formless dimensions it lists separately only nothingness and neither-perception-nor-non-perception; the Visuddhimagga lists all four formless dimensions on their own, adds a light-kasiṇa and a bounded-space-kasiṇa, and so reaches forty.⁹ The same terrain of objects, passing through two pairs of commentarial hands, is drawn as two slightly different maps — so "forty" is a well-known number, and this chapter keeps "thirty-eight," which can be cited word for word, as its main figure, naming "forty" only as the Visuddhimagga comparandum. This is the first concrete instance of "the map is not the terrain": the terrain of the objects is continuous, and to parcel it into thirty-eight cells or forty is the cartographer's choice.

It is worth noting that this is the first time in the series that the whole field of objects is laid on one table. The earlier paper on the six recollections handled only six cells of this map; here the work is to see the full picture, and then to ask: since the cells are uneven, by what structure are they arranged among themselves? For the question that opened the chapter — which object should one use? — cannot even be posed in its proper form until the whole field is in view; only against the full table does it become clear that the cells are not interchangeable, and that the question is less "which do I prefer" than "what does each reach, and how."

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IV. The Object Determines the Depth — The Distribution of Access and Absorption

The value of the map lies not in the number of its cells but in there being a readable structure between the cells. After the thirty-eight fields-of-practice, the Vimuttimagga sorts them at once through "nine ways" — nine dimensions — of which the first, "first, by jhāna," is itself a complete map of depth:

"These thirty-eight fields-of-practice are best known through nine ways … What is 'by jhāna'? Ten fields-of-practice accomplish the access to jhāna; eleven fields-of-practice accomplish the first jhāna; three fields-of-practice accomplish the third jhāna; one field-of-practice accomplishes the fourth jhāna; nine fields-of-practice accomplish the fourth and fifth jhānas; four fields-of-practice accomplish the formless."¹⁰

Spread these six tiers out, and fit each to its objects, and the depth of the map appears. Ten objects reach only access — "setting aside the breath and the recollection of the body, the remaining eight recollections, together with the analysis of the elements and the repulsiveness of food"¹¹ — that is, eight recollections together with the analysis of the elements and the repulsiveness of food. Eleven objects reach the first jhāna — the ten foulnesses and the recollection of the body. Three reach the third jhāna — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy. One reaches the fourth jhāna — equanimity. Nine reach the fourth and fifth jhānas (the Vimuttimagga reckons jhāna in five) — the eight kasiṇa and mindfulness of breathing. Four reach the formless — the kasiṇa of space and of consciousness, the dimension of nothingness, the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

From this the chapter's central proposition can be set down: "how far one can go" is not for the meditator freely to decide, but is a property of the object, fixed in advance by this map. Why so? Conceptual, many-faceted objects — the recollections, the elements, the repulsiveness of food — stop structurally at access, because their object is too diffuse, too many-edged, to gather into a single image the mind can sink into for absorption; while objects that are single-faceted and homogeneous, like the kasiṇa and the breath, can carry absorption. A recollection of the Buddha's qualities, for instance, is a thinking-through of many distinct virtues, each pulling the mind a different way; the mind can become collected upon it, but the very richness that makes it a recollection keeps it from condensing into one motionless image. An earth-kasiṇa, by contrast, is a single homogeneous expanse; there is nothing in it for the mind to range over, and so it can settle into one image and sink. The object is not an external thing one stares at, but a structure the mind gradually takes up until it becomes that very shape — and the shape of the object settles how deep the mind can finally take it up. This is the same vertical axis the previous chapter calibrated, now seen from below, at its entrances: the depth a door reaches is written into the door.

But here the second seam must be marked at once, lest the commentators' graduation-marks be misread as the Buddha's gates. Access (upacāra) and absorption (appanā) are the commentators' terms, nowhere to be found in the four Āgamas or the Nikāyas. What the discourses give is the material for "gradually approaching concentration": the continuous process by which the mind passes from rapture to ease, from ease to tranquillity, from tranquillity to concentration. The cleanest internal evidence is the chain by which recollection deepens into concentration:

"Because he recollects the Tathāgata, gladness arises in his mind; being glad, he becomes joyful; being joyful, the body grows tranquil; the body being tranquil, he feels ease; feeling ease, the mind becomes concentrated … and likewise it is said of the recollection of the Dharma, of the Saṅgha, and of the noble virtues."¹²

That "tranquil" is tranquillity (passaddhi). This gradation — gladness → joy → tranquillity → ease → concentration — is in the Pāli parallel one and the same process, and it is precisely at the terminus of this continuous process, the moment the mind tilts toward concentration, that the commentators cut their two marks, "access" and "absorption."¹³ So both faces must be held: the gradual process is the discourses' own; but to name the thresholds along that process, to cut it into two gates, is the commentators' achievement. Access and absorption are not two gates inherent in the discourses, but graduation-marks the commentators laid along one continuous gradual process the discourses describe — marks on the map, not the terrain. To read this pair of threshold-names back into the discourses, as though the Buddha himself spoke of "access concentration," is the anachronism.

It should be stated here, in one breath, that how access and absorption stand up "as a concept" — how the single- or many-facedness of an object settles the ceiling that can be reached — was each argued once already, in the volume on recollection and again in the volume on virtue; this chapter does not derive it a third time, but only lays that established criterion across the full field of objects, to see how it distributes over the thirty-eight cells. This whole-field distribution, together with the pipeline of internalization in the next section, is the one stroke this chapter genuinely adds.

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V. How the Object Is Internalized — Sign, Learning-Sign, Counterpart-Sign

If the last section answered "how far the object can go," this section answers "how the object becomes, step by step, concentration." Here the Vimuttimagga gives a pipeline that can be cited end to end. First, the "sign" in its two stages:

"The sign is of two kinds: the learning-sign and the counterpart-sign. … not by looking at the disk with the eye, but by taking up the sign through the device of attention — this is called the learning-sign. From practising this again and again, the counterpart-sign arises. … such that, on directing attention, it appears at once to the mind — not a thought arising after the disk is seen, but, the eyes closed, [appearing] as it was first observed …"¹⁴

These two stages describe the object's being made over, from outside to inside, gradually "mind-wrought." The learning-sign (uggaha-nimitta) is the image taken up through the device of attention, still tied to the disk (maṇḍala) once seen with the eye; the counterpart-sign (paṭibhāga-nimitta) is the image arisen from repeated practice, appearing to the mind the moment the eyes are closed, no longer dependent on the external thing — it is wrought by the mind. The object, by this point, is no longer "an external thing" but has become the mind's own shape.

Now see how this pipeline joins onto the thresholds of depth:

"If the five hindrances are suppressed, this is the access; by suppressing these five, absorption is accomplished. … From the first mastery of the sign up to change-of-lineage, this is called the access. Immediately after change-of-lineage, this is called absorption. … Why 'access'? Because it is near the jhāna — as a road near a village is called the village-road … 'Absorption' has the sense of union, as of arriving at the disk."¹⁵

So the whole pipeline runs through: the external disk → (by attention) the learning-sign → (by repeated practice) the mind-wrought counterpart-sign → (by suppressing the five hindrances) access → change-of-lineage (gotrabhū, the instant the mind crosses from a sense-sphere mind into a form-sphere mind) → absorption. The treatise-master likens access to "a road near the village" — still outside the village, near but not arrived — and likens absorption to "arriving at the disk" — now in union, entered within. This is how an object is taken up by the mind step by step, until it becomes the shape the mind comes to rest within.

Here is the third seam, and the one most easily misread. The three signs are the commentators' staging, and their seeds in the discourses are two. One is the bare canonical word "the sign of concentration" (samādhinimitta).¹⁶ The other is the Saṃyukta Āgama's "three signs" —

"He should apply himself attentively, and from time to time give attention to three signs. What are the three? From time to time the sign of calming, from time to time the sign of rousing, from time to time the sign of equanimity. … Then the mind becomes rightly concentrated, and all the taints are exhausted."¹⁷

⚠ But one must distinguish with all care: the Āgama's "sign of calming, sign of rousing, sign of equanimity" are three attitudes for managing the mind (gathering in, stirring up, evening out, used to balance the faculties); they are not what the commentators call "learning-sign, counterpart-sign," the three stages of the object-image. The same word "sign" (nimitta), and the referent has shifted. To trace the development of nimitta without distinguishing these two "signs" is to misread the Āgama's "managing the mind" as "the object-image," splicing one passage onto a different process. One thing more: where the Āgama speaks of "attainment" (正受) — as in "the attainment of the first jhāna" — this is samāpatti, the state of being in concentration, not the "right concentration" (sammā-samādhi) of the eightfold path; the two must not be read over one another.

Last, one sentence and the section closes. The "nine ways" also include the dimension "by person" — the object is assigned, too, according to the practitioner's temperament (carita): roughly, the greedy temperament toward foulness, the hating temperament toward loving-kindness and compassion, the discursive temperament toward the breath. This antidote-axis does exist; but the full systematization of object–temperament–stage on its three axes belongs to the territory of the next stage, the system of the Visuddhimagga. This chapter marks only that the axis exists, in one sentence, and builds no antidote-grid, nor lays out the full item-by-item table — that is another paper's ground.

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VI. Modern Dialogue and Conclusion

Set this map back on the desk of modern scholarship, and three readings are worth a conversation. (What follows gives the gist of each position; exact titles and page numbers should be checked against the originals.)

First, as the cartography that names an existing process. L. S. Cousins, in his classic study of Pāli concentration, holds that the distinction between access and absorption is no free-floating invention of the commentators, but a systematization of a gradient already present in the discourses' jhāna-formulae and sign-material; the commentators' model of the development of the signs, and the access-to-absorption transition, gave a precise articulation to the discourses' "gradual approach to concentration."¹⁸ The position is broadly right — the commentators did not conjure from nothing, and the internal evidence of the gradual process above bears this out; the cheap verdict that "the treatises are sheer accretion" is unfair. Yet one line must be added: to grant that the gradient is the discourses' own is not to grant that the two-term taxonomy is the discourses'; the gradient was sown by the discourses, but to name its thresholds and stage its three signs is the commentators' achievement.

Second, as the training of a quality of awareness. Bhikkhu Anālayo, working by the comparison of the Pāli with the Chinese Āgamas, points out that the early canon's handling of the objects of meditation is less a fixed inventory of "things to be stared at" than a training in the quality of awareness brought to the object; the early repertoire of objects is more fluid, less systematized, than the later rubric of "forty" makes it appear.¹⁹ This is a healthy corrective — it accords exactly with the second section's finding that kammaṭṭhāna is the commentators' word and the Āgamas give only ārammaṇa and the names of the practices. Yet the chapter still holds a positive proposition no account of awareness can dissolve: the objects are not interchangeable — different objects reach different depths and suit different temperaments. Push the corrective all the way to "it is all awareness, the object hardly matters," and one loses the very object-structure this chapter means to establish. The six-tier distribution of the previous section is the plain check on any such over-correction: if the object were a matter of indifference, an earth-kasiṇa and a recollection of death would carry the mind equally far, and the map shows they do not. So the chapter holds both: the quality of awareness comes first, and the field of objects has a real internal structure.

Third, as a mature systematization. Rupert Gethin notes that the forty kammaṭṭhāna are the fruit of the commentarial tradition (the Visuddhimagga above all) gathering the practices scattered through the Nikāyas into one coherent architecture of the path — complete with temperament-assignment and graded attainment — and that this is a real intellectual achievement, not a distortion.²⁰ This is the frame the chapter should adopt entire: the discourses supply the objects; the treatises supply the category-word, the number forty, and the filing-by-temperament. And yet — a gentle codicil, structural and aimed at no one: systematization is also an interpretation, and interpretation both gains and loses. The very coherence that makes this map so usable is exactly what most tempts one to mistake the map for the terrain — to suppose the Buddha taught forty objects in just this order, at just these thresholds. The chapter's work is to honour the systematization as systematization: one hand on the map's elegance, one hand on the historical seam between discourse and treatise. This is just where the methodological self-restraint of the opening quietly does its work.³

Having come this far, two red lines must be drawn back in. First, recollection is not concentration. The first paper of this volume established this at the level of awareness; here it must be set again at the level of the practice-gate: the six recollections reappear in this chapter in the role of objects of calm (kammaṭṭhāna), occupying the cell marked "conceptual, many-faceted, stopping at access." Volume One, Mindful of the Buddha, entered by way of the six recollections as "objects of recollection"; those six objects reappear here in the role of kammaṭṭhāna — the object the gate of recollection enters by turns out to be one of the forty objects of the gate of concentration.²¹ But recollection as an object of calm is not the same thing as the dense, all-pervading awareness of the foundations of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna); recollection is the object, the machinery of absorption is the door, and the two must not be run together. Second, this chapter is not an operating manual: it describes throughout why an object becomes, structurally, an entrance, and does not instruct anyone how to choose or work an object. Everything that belongs to "how one enters" lies outside it.

The forty doors have now been spread open one by one — what serves as each object, and which mark on the vertical axis each opens onto, has become clear. But to set up the entrances is not yet to say where this track of calm stands within the whole of the Buddha's teaching. The next paper turns to the Āgama's doctrine of concentration: when "concentration" is listed as the eighth factor of the eightfold path — right concentration — how does it stand to these forty doors, and to that vertical axis?

One question is left, at the last, pointing toward the volume's close. Each of these forty doors is a door set up "in dependence on an object"; the mind must first take up an object before there is any speaking of going deep. Yet if, at the deepest point, even that object itself — like all dharmas — cannot be grasped, how then do the forty doors stand? That question is left for the volume's final chapter to redeem.²²

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References

Buddhist Canon (Taishō originals)

• Saṃyukta Āgama (《雜阿含經》), translated by Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. (Fascicle 27, "each is its own discourse, as above" — the internal evidence of an absence of systematic classification; fascicle 30, the standard six recollections; fascicle 33, the recollection-to-concentration chain; fascicle 47, discourse 1247, the three signs for managing the mind; fascicle 15, the morsel-food contemplation.)
• Madhyama Āgama (《中阿含經》), translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗. (Fascicle 24, the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness — the analysis of the six elements and the simile of dismembering, taken meaning-only.)
• Vimuttimagga (《解脫道論》), composed by Upatissa, translated by Saṅghapāla, Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗. (Fascicle 3, the Chapter Distinguishing the Fields-of-Practice — the enumeration of the thirty-eight, and the "nine ways / by jhāna" distribution of depth; fascicle 4, the Chapter on the Practice-Gates — the learning-sign and counterpart-sign, and access / absorption with change-of-lineage.)

Pāli Canon (SuttaCentral, Bhikkhu Sujato's translation, CC0)

• Mahānāma-sutta, AN 6.10 (the affective cascade — gladness, rapture, tranquillity, ease, and the mind's becoming concentrated; "leading to concentration").
• Saṁvara-sutta, AN 4.14 (the canonical "sign of concentration," samādhinimitta).

Modern Scholarship

Publication details for the Western works below await final verification; the body takes only the gist of each position and quotes none of them verbatim.

• Cousins, L. S. "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment according to the Pāli Sources." Religion 3(2): 115–131, 1973.
• Anālayo, Bhikkhu. Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization. Windhorse, 2003. (And his comparative work on mindfulness of breathing; exact titles to be verified.)
• Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford University Press, 1998. (And The Buddhist Path to Awakening, 1992; pages and editions to be verified.)
• Sharf, Robert. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." Numen 42(3): 228–283, 1995.

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Cross-References

• Inherits from: P04, The Four Jhānas and the Formless Attainments (which set the vertical axis — the graded ladder of depth — and named this chapter's task: to set up the entrances onto that axis, asking what object, how cultivated, how far); P03, Samatha and Vipassanā: Two Tracks, One Vehicle (which separated the tracks; this chapter keeps to the side of calm). The concept of access and absorption is taken as established from the volumes on recollection (NIAN) and virtue (SĪLA), and applied here rather than re-derived.
• Points toward: P06 / Part II (the Āgama's doctrine of concentration — where right concentration, the eighth factor of the path, stands in relation to the forty doors and the ladder).
• Reserved for a later stage: the full systematization of the forty kammaṭṭhāna on three axes (object–temperament–stage), with the antidote-grid of the temperaments — the territory of the Visuddhimagga treatment (P09); this chapter develops only the depth-axis and the sign / internalization-axis, and names the temperament-axis in a single sentence.
• Long-range lock: the volume's closing chapter redeems the question that even the deepest concentration is a concentration in dependence on an object, and that the object, like all dharmas, is ungraspable.

Footnotes

1. "Access" (upacāra) and "absorption" (appanā), as a fixed technical pair, are found only in the treatises and the Visuddhimagga system; neither appears in the four Āgamas or the Nikāyas. See the discussion of the second seam in section IV. Methodologically this carries forward the self-restraint of the previous chapter (see ³). ↩

2. This takes up the closing question of the previous chapter, The Four Jhānas and the Formless Attainments: the practice of calm has forty different objects, traditionally called kammaṭṭhāna; different objects lead to different depths along the axis, and different temperaments suit different objects. The previous chapter named the deliverable — what serves as the object, how it is cultivated, how far it reaches — and this chapter takes up that question, without re-narrating the ladder of the four jhānas. See SAMADHI-P04 in this volume. ↩

3. Robert Sharf, "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience," Numen 42(3): 228–283, 1995. His caution: do not read the inventory of objects, or the gradient of access and absorption, as transparent first-person reports of experience; the scheme of the forty kammaṭṭhāna, the progression of signs, and the thresholds of access and absorption may equally be the structure of a text, a teaching, or a normative dispute, rather than a description of an inner state. The chapter positions itself accordingly: it reads the structural map of the objects, not anyone's inventory of experiences upon entering concentration. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle 27, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (0198a20–24); translated by Guṇabhadra. ↩

5. The morsel-food contemplation, cf. Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle 15, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. This chapter takes only the sense — "contemplating the repulsiveness of what is eaten so as to cut craving" — and does not reproduce the figure. ↩

6. The analysis of the six elements and the simile of "dissecting the body's elements," cf. Madhyama Āgama, fascicle 24, the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗; translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva. This chapter takes only the sense — "dissecting the body's elements so as to break the view of self." Note also: the Āgama's "analysis of the elements" treats six elements (earth, water, fire, air, space, consciousness, including the element of consciousness); the later systematization narrows this to four elements (earth, water, fire, air), drawing off the elements of space and of consciousness to the formless and to the aggregate of consciousness respectively. This 6→4 narrowing should be marked when the contemplation is cited. ↩

7. Vimuttimagga (《解脫道論》), composed by Upatissa, translated by Saṅghapāla (Liang), Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗. This treatise renders kammaṭṭhāna as 行處; the body of this chapter uses the now-standard 業處 in its own prose, but where it quotes the treatise it follows the treatise's 行處 and marks the coexistence of the two renderings rather than silently normalizing. ↩

8. Vimuttimagga, the Chapter Distinguishing the Fields-of-Practice, the seventh, fascicle 3, Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗ (~p0405c–0406a). The count by category: ten kasiṇa, ten foulnesses, ten recollections, four immeasurables, the analysis of the four elements (1), the repulsiveness of food (1), the dimension of nothingness (1), the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception (1) — thirty-eight in all. ↩

9. The 38↔40 difference: the Vimuttimagga folds the two formless dimensions of space and of consciousness into the ten kasiṇa (as the kasiṇa of space and the kasiṇa of consciousness), and so lists only nothingness and neither-perception-nor-non-perception separately; the Visuddhimagga lists all four formless dimensions on their own, and adds a light-kasiṇa and a bounded-space-kasiṇa, reaching forty. This chapter keeps "thirty-eight" (the Vimuttimagga), which can be cited word for word, as its main figure, naming "forty" only as a comparandum, and quotes no Pāli of the other system. ↩

10. Vimuttimagga, fascicle 3 (~p0407a), Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗. The "nine ways" sort the thirty-eight fields-of-practice through nine dimensions — by jhāna, by transcending, by increase, by condition, by basis, by excellence, by ground, by grasping, by person; this chapter takes the first, "by jhāna," the six tiers of depth. ↩

11. Same, the "ten access" line: "Setting aside the breath and the recollection of the body, the remaining eight recollections, together with the analysis of the elements and the repulsiveness of food — these are called the ten [objects] of access." The "eight recollections" are the eight of the ten recollections other than the breath and the body (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Saṅgha, virtue, generosity, the devas, death, peace). ↩

12. Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle 33, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (0216c20–29). The word rendered "tranquil" is tranquillity (passaddhi). ↩

13. The Pāli parallel of the gradation is found at AN 6.10, the Discourse to Mahānāma (Aṅguttara Nikāya): the mind passes from gladness connected with the teaching (pāmojja) → rapture (pīti) → tranquillity of the body (passaddhi) → ease (sukha) → the mind becomes concentrated (samādhiyati). It is upon the terminal word of this gradation — "the mind becomes concentrated" (samādhiyati) — that the commentators cut the distinction of access and absorption. The discourses also carry the bare phrase "leading to concentration" (samādhisaṁvattanika), which the commentators then technicalized into "leading to access-concentration or absorption-concentration." ↩

14. Vimuttimagga, the Chapter on the Practice-Gates, the eighth, fascicle 4 (~p0413c), Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗. The learning-sign is uggaha-nimitta, the counterpart-sign paṭibhāga-nimitta (the later Visuddhimagga system renders the latter as 似相 — the same referent, paṭibhāga, under a different rendering). ↩

15. Vimuttimagga, the Chapter on the Practice-Gates, the eighth, fascicle 4 (~p0414a–b), Taishō vol. 32, No. T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Change-of-lineage" is gotrabhū (the lineage-shift, the uninterrupted instant in which a sense-sphere mind passes into a form-sphere mind); "access" is upacāra, "absorption" is appanā. ↩

16. The canonical use of "the sign of concentration" (samādhinimitta), cf. AN 4.14, the Saṁvara-sutta, PTS Aṅguttara Nikāya ii 16: one preserves an arisen, excellent sign of concentration (such as the perception of the skeleton and the other perceptions of foulness). This is one of the discourses' seeds for the commentators' staging of the signs. ↩

17. Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle 47 (SA 1247), Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (0342a04–11). ⚠ These "three signs" (of calming, of rousing, of equanimity) are three attitudes for managing the mind, used to balance the faculties; they share the word "sign" (nimitta) with the treatises' "learning-sign / counterpart-sign," but the referent is different — the three stages of the object-image — and the two must not be run together. ↩

18. L. S. Cousins, "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment according to the Pāli Sources," Religion 3(2): 115–131, 1973. ↩

19. Bhikkhu Anālayo, Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization, Windhorse, 2003, and his comparative work on mindfulness of breathing. Exact pages and titles to be verified against the originals. As a living scholar, he is engaged here only on his published scholarship, not on his teaching. ↩

20. Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 1998; see also The Buddhist Path to Awakening, 1992. Exact pages and editions to be verified against the originals. ↩

21. The standard formulation of the six recollections (the six bases of recollection), cf. Saṃyukta Āgama, fascicle 30, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ (0145c02–04): "Relying on the four unshakeable confidences, he increases the six bases of recollection … recollection of the Buddha's qualities, recollection of the Dharma, of the Saṅgha, of virtue, of generosity, of the devas." The six recollections reappear in this volume in the role of objects of calm; cross-reference the recollection papers of Volume One, Mindful of the Buddha (NIAN), Part I. The line of recollection-is-not-concentration: recollection is the object, not the dense awareness of the foundations of mindfulness. ↩

22. This question — "the deepest concentration is still a concentration in dependence on an object, and the object, like all dharmas, cannot be grasped" — is left for the volume's final chapter, The Inward Door Opens Again: Concentration's Return to Wisdom, to redeem. This chapter keeps to the description of "what is," and does not unfold "this is empty" here. ↩