Prajñā's Critique of Clinging to Dhyāna-States

I. Introduction: Prajñā Turns Back on Concentration

The Buddha, narrating his own former conduct, once described how he practised the four dhyānas in a single sentence:

Among these dhyānas and their factors he grasped no mark, conceived no thought "this is a dhyāna," received no flavor of dhyāna, obtained no such dhyāna; undefiled, in purity he practised the four dhyānas; and of these dhyānas he received no fruit-and-recompense.¹

What deserves attention is not which absorption he entered but the three things he did not do inside it: he grasped no mark, received no flavor, obtained no dhyāna. A man who had carried dhyāna to its furthest reach, describing how he practised dhyāna, describes it entirely in negations. That is the starting point of this paper.

The three negations are not rhetoric but three interlocking shut-downs. He grasps no mark — he does not congeal the absorption into an object with a fixed appearance that can be apprehended. He receives no flavor — he does not take in, does not stick to, the sweetness within the absorption. He obtains no dhyāna — he does not register, somewhere in the mind, the sense of acquisition that says "I have got this dhyāna." The three lock together: once a mark is grasped, there is something to be flavored; once a flavor is received, there is a fruit to be obtained. By denying all three at once the Buddha is saying, in effect: he practised the very same four dhyānas, yet in the act of practising them he dismantled the apparatus that turns concentration into an object of clinging.

In the lived idiom of the calm-and-insight tradition and the meditation hall, the "state of concentration" is habitually treated as something to be sought, to be settled into, to be used as a yardstick of depth and rank. The longer one sits, the deeper one enters, the more flavorful the absorption, the nearer one seems to the goal. A reader formed in the Chinese tradition is rarely a stranger to one side of this — clinging to the bliss of absorption. Tiantai doxography long ago coined the name the savored dhyāna (味禪) for it, and the Chan masters repeatedly scolded those who stuck to the play of light and shadow in their absorptions. But there is a symmetrical reverse side that is far less often named with equal clarity: it is not only clinging to the bliss of absorption that is a failure of grade, but clinging to the quiescence and emptiness of absorption — taking the cessation of deep concentration as the terminus and seizing it prematurely — that is equally a form of clinging. The first is held fast by sweetness, the second by stillness.

The previous paper (Part IV of this volume) expanded concentration along its whole length: from the own-substance of concentration, through its modeling, through its non-abiding, to the Mahāyāna's naming-expansion of the samādhis, until concentration had become a field of named, office-bearing bodhisattva practice-gates. The prajñā of Part V does exactly the work of turning back. It no longer adds anything to the field; it puts three words to the whole already-named field: Can it be flavored? Can it be dwelt in? Can it be obtained?

That is the thesis of this paper. Clinging to concentration has two symmetrical failures of grade — craving the flavor of dhyāna and sinking into emptiness, stagnating in quiescence — opposite in direction yet dissolved by one and the same move: the marks of concentration are empty. To say the marks of concentration are empty is not to say that concentration does not exist, or should not be practised; it is to say that when you go searching for the object you were clinging to — the samādhi itself, the person who enters it, the dhyāna that is entered, the place of entering — you find there is not one of them you can take hold of. This paper will also show that the critique is no Mahāyāna novelty. Its root was buried long ago in the earliest stratum of the teaching; what Mahāyāna prajñā does is deepen it and press it to the limit, not conjure it out of nothing.

II. The Early Root: Gratification, Danger, Escape

To grasp that prajñā's critique of concentration is "no Mahāyāna invention," one has first to return to the Saṃyukta-Āgama. In its analysis of the aggregate of feeling, the Buddha handles every feeling — the feeling within absorption included — by a three-membered structure:

If a feeling, through conditions, gives rise to pleasure-and-joy, this is called the gratification of the feeling; if the feeling is impermanent and of the nature to change, this is called its danger; if with respect to the feeling one abandons and transcends desire-and-greed, this is called the escape from it.²

The "gratification" here (assāda) is a technical analytic term for the side of a feeling that is "pleasure-and-joy arisen through conditions"; the "danger" (ādīnava) names its side of impermanence and liability to change; the "escape" (nissaraṇa) names the side of its abandonment and transcendence. The point is this: toward any feeling whatever, including the pleasure-and-joy born within absorption, the correct way of seeing is to see all three members together — to see its gratification, to see its danger, and to come home to its escape. In other words, the pleasure-and-joy of absorption is positioned from the very outset as a "gratification" — something to be seen clearly as it is, not something to be gripped. The Āgama states still more directly that knowing as-it-is the gratification, danger, and escape of the five aggregates of clinging is the very ground of the Buddha's awakening to himself.³

A line of demarcation must be drawn here first, to forestall later confusion: gratification in this analytic sense is the verbal "to savor, to stick to," not the "flavor-object" of the sense-bases (the noun-sense of an odor or taste apprehended by the tongue). When this paper later speaks of "the flavor of dhyāna," it means the savored, clinging-inducing sweetness within the absorption, not an object of the tongue-faculty.

A boundary this volume has held throughout must likewise be flagged: the "gratification of feeling" examined here is a matter of the texture of the absorbed state, and lies on a different stratum from mindfulness (sati / smṛti) as a function of clear awareness. What this paper discusses is clinging to the bliss of concentration, not the presence or absence of the power of mindfulness; mindfulness (sati) and concentration (samādhi) are not to be confused, and that is a red line running through this whole series.

From this early root one can see that ruling the bliss of absorption a "gratification to be escaped" is no original act of prajñā's. The Connected Discourses on feeling and on the aggregates in the Pāli transmission already mark the agreeable feeling as something whose gratification and danger are to be contemplated and that is finally to be escaped.⁴ What Mahāyāna prajñā does is not invent this judgement but push the "to be escaped" forward into a more radical metaphysical claim: not only is the bliss of dhyāna to be escaped, but the very mark of dhyāna is empty. That is what the following sections unfold.

Two terms that are easily run together must also be distinguished here. The "gratification" (assāda) of which the early teaching speaks is the neutral analytic slot in the three-membered structure — it merely points out, as it is, that "this feeling has an agreeable side," and carries no pejorative charge in itself. But that faint, lingering attachment to a subtle absorbed state — the reluctance to come out, the clinging one knows one should not indulge — has, in the Pāli transmission, its own term (nikanti), naming an affective residue of attachment. The former is an aspect to be registered when contemplating a dharma; the latter is a habit-tendency to be severed on the path. The "craving the flavor of dhyāna" this paper criticizes lands on the latter: not that there should be no bliss within absorption (the bliss is real, as it is), but that one should not be stuck fast by that bliss, should not arouse the longing that cannot bear to escape. To run the analytic slot of "gratification" together with the habit-position of "lingering longing" would lead one to imagine that prajñā denies the existence of the bliss of absorption; what it denies is the grip on it.

III. The First Clinging: Craving the Flavor of Dhyāna

The first kind of clinging is sticking to the pleasure-and-joy within absorption. The Larger Prajñāpāramitā, in its "Chapter on Rebirth," describes directly how the bodhisattva handles this sweetness:

Toward dhyāna he does not savor, does not cling … in all dharmas he takes no support, nor is he reborn through dhyāna. This bodhisattva, by the power of skillful means, is not reborn through dhyāna, not reborn through the measureless states, not reborn through the four formless attainments.⁵

Read together, the two lines make three points.

First, toward dhyāna he does not savor, does not cling. The bodhisattva enters dhyāna, yet does not "savor" within the dhyāna, does not "cling" within it. This picks up precisely the Buddha's earlier self-narration, he received no flavor of dhyāna — to be able to enter and yet not be stuck fast by the bliss of absorption is the first signature of prajñā's operating upon concentration.

Second, not reborn through dhyāna. Here there is a reading that goes wrong with great ease and must be corrected at once: "not reborn through dhyāna" does not mean "does not arouse dhyāna," does not mean refraining from the practice of dhyāna. The "born" here carries the sense of rebirth; "not reborn through dhyāna" means not being reborn, through the karmic power of the absorption, into the form and formless realms. The text glosses itself — "not reborn through the measureless states, not reborn through the four formless attainments" — saying exactly that one is not dragged by the fruit-and-recompense of the four dhyānas, the four measureless states, and the four formless attainments into rebirth among their corresponding heavens. In other words, the concrete harm of craving the bliss of absorption is to treat the absorption as a place to be enjoyed and settled in, and so to revolve, by its karmic power, through the form and formless realms — running counter to the direction of liberation.

Third, by the power of skillful means. The text marks specifically that the reason the bodhisattva can "enter and yet not be reborn through it" rests on the power of skillful means (upāya). This matters greatly, because it forecloses a misreading in advance: to criticize "craving the flavor of dhyāna" is not to oppose the practice of dhyāna, nor to say that what the bodhisattva enters is some inferior, barely-tasted absorption. On the contrary — the bodhisattva enters the very same deep four dhyānas and four formless attainments; the only difference is that, by the power of skillful means, he "holds himself up" within the absorption, able to enter and to leave without being stuck fast by the absorbed state. Deep absorption has no fault in itself; the fault is in the clinging.

A plain-language image may catch the distinction. The bliss of absorption is like honey. Honey is itself sweet, itself real; there is no fault in tasting it. The fault is in sticking your hand to the honey-jar and being unable to pull it free. Prajñā does not teach a person not to touch the honey; it teaches one to taste the honey without the hand sticking. When the Buddha narrates that he "received no flavor of dhyāna," he does not mean that he could not taste the sweetness, but that he tasted it and was not stuck by it.

Set this distinction down on the rebirth-sense of "not reborn through dhyāna," and the harm of craving the flavor becomes concretely visible. A practitioner stuck fast by the bliss of absorption does not thereby fall into the lower destinies — quite the reverse. Through the wholesome karma of deep absorption he ascends to the heavens of the form and formless realms, to enjoy the extremely long and extremely subtle pleasure of absorption that corresponds to his absorbed state. The problem lies just here: what looks like an attainment is in fact a fork off the road. Birth in the heavens is not liberation; however long the life-span of the form and formless realms, it comes to an end, and at its end one is still within saṃsāra. To take absorption as a place to settle and to be reborn through it is to bind oneself back into the three realms with a more refined cord. What prajñā exposes is precisely this byway, so easily mistaken for "progress": the deeper the absorption, the more delicious the flavor, the more — absent the power of skillful means to hold it up — the consequence of clinging is only a transmigration grown subtler, and harder to notice in oneself.

IV. The Second Clinging: Sinking into Emptiness, Stagnating in Quiescence

If the first clinging is to be held fast by the "bliss" within absorption, then the second is to be held fast by its "emptiness and quiescence." This side is often overlooked in the popular Chinese understanding, yet it is the half of prajñā's critique perfectly symmetrical with craving the flavor of dhyāna.

In the chapter "Studying Emptiness Without Realizing It," the Larger Prajñāpāramitā has the bodhisattva distinguish clearly between "studying" and "realizing":

I should not now realize the dharma of emptiness; my time now is the time of studying, not the time of realizing … he does not turn back, nor does he seize the realization of the destruction of the taints.⁶

A term must be corrected first. The object of this "realizing," this "seizing realization," is the reality-limit (bhūtakoṭi, the edge of cessation). The phrase "reality-limit" deserves care, especially from a reader meeting it for the first time: it names the rim of cessation, the point of entry into nirvāṇa — not "ultimate truth" in the abstract sense, and still less the colloquial "actually, in reality." "He does not seize the realization of the destruction of the taints" thus means: though the bodhisattva is able to realize entry into cessation, at the stage of studying he chooses not to plunge headlong into it prematurely. Why not? Because to seize the realization of cessation prematurely is to fall to the ground of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha — to have escaped the three realms, but to have cut off the bodhisattva's road behind him. The "failure of grade" in sinking into emptiness lies exactly here: to take the emptiness-and-quiescence of deep absorption as a terminus and to seize realization upon it is, conversely, a subtler form of clinging.

The text then gives one of this paper's most important load-bearing images — the archer:

As when a strong man … shoots an arrow up into the air, and with a following arrow strikes the first arrow, arrow propping arrow so that none is let fall, sovereign at will … by the power of skillful means … his roots of good not yet complete, he does not realize upon the reality-limit.⁷

A strong archer shoots an arrow into the sky, then with the next arrow props up the one before, arrow propping arrow, letting none fall to the ground, until the moment he himself chooses to let them drop. The image catches with precision the bodhisattva's posture before the seduction of "sinking into emptiness": he plainly could let the arrow fall to earth (could seize the realization of cessation), yet by the power of skillful means he holds each one up, arrow by arrow, not letting it plummet. In the preceding chapter the power of skillful means was used to "hold up the bliss of absorption, letting it not stick"; here it is used to "hold up the absorbed state, letting it not plunge into sinking-emptiness." One and the same power of skillful means dissolves two opposite clingings.

One phrase in the archer image is worth pausing on: sovereign at will. What makes the archer remarkable is not how high he can shoot but his complete self-command over whether the arrows stay aloft or come down — they stay up when he wills it, and fall when he wills them to fall. This is the crux of why "sinking into emptiness" is a failure of grade: the one who plunges into cessation is not without the power to come out, but has been robbed of his "at-will" by the suction of that stillness — he can no longer, of his own sovereignty, decline to seize realization, but is dragged headlong into the emptiness-and-quiescence. What the power of skillful means guards is, less a particular attainment, than this very sovereignty over staying and leaving. Once that sovereignty is breached, even the deepest absorption is just one more prison.

This also explains why sinking into emptiness is harder to detect, and subtler, than craving the flavor. The mark of craving the flavor is "sweetness," and an experienced practitioner can more or less catch himself coveting some pleasure. But the marks of sinking into emptiness are "stillness," "emptiness," "nothing attained" — and these very words sound exactly like attainments of the path, like having already laid everything down. One stagnating in emptiness-and-quiescence is the most likely of all to imagine that he clings to nothing whatever, never suspecting that he is clinging to the very thing called "not-clinging," guarding the very place called "emptiness." This is why prajñā has to bring out the sharper blade of "the ungraspable emptiness": it is not enough to break "existence" into "emptiness"; one must loosen, along with it, that "emptiness" which is being guarded as a terminus. Mere emptiness treats emptiness as a place one can stand fixed upon — and so there is still something abided in, still a fall to the two vehicles; the ungraspable emptiness withdraws even this foothold — emptiness too is empty, and with not one thing to abide in, there is no place to fall. The disease of sinking into emptiness is not that one has seen emptiness, but that one has made of emptiness a thing to abide in; its cure is not a retreat back into existence, but a refusal to take a stand even on emptiness.

The Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra, diagnosing this failure, supplies a sharper line of discrimination — the distinction between two emptinesses:

Practising mere emptiness, one falls to the ground of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha; practising the ungraspable emptiness, in which emptiness too cannot be obtained, there is then no place to fall. There are again two kinds of emptiness: the first, emptiness without skillful means, which falls to the two grounds; the second, emptiness with skillful means, which has no place to fall.⁸

The discrimination here must be kept strictly, lest the two emptinesses be confused. Mere emptiness clings to "emptiness" as an object one can settle and stand guard upon — and since there is an "emptiness" to abide in, this is still a kind of abiding, and so one falls to the two-vehicle ground. The ungraspable emptiness goes one step further: even "emptiness" itself cannot be obtained (emptiness too is empty), and with not one thing to abide in, there is no place to fall. The root of sinking into emptiness, stagnating in quiescence, is precisely to have made of emptiness a "mere emptiness" — to suppose one has realized some ultimate place called "emptiness." Prajñā's antidote is not a deeper absorption, not a more thoroughgoing cessation, but the loosening, along with all else, of that "emptiness" being stood guard over.

By now the symmetrical structure of the two clingings is complete:

	Object clung to	Mode of clinging	Where it flows
Craving the flavor of dhyāna	the pleasure-and-joy within absorption	held fast by sweetness	reborn through karma into the form and formless realms
Sinking into emptiness	the emptiness-and-quiescence within absorption	held fast by stillness	premature realization, falling to the two-vehicle ground

A word on the division of labor with the previous paper must be added. The earlier work of this volume (P14) established, on its positive side, the bodhisattva's capacity to "enter and leave at will, to use without abiding" — argued there as a positive use. What the archer image diagnoses here is the negative failure of that same capacity: when the power of skillful means of "non-abiding" once slackens, one falls into sinking-emptiness. P14 establishes the capacity, this paper diagnoses its lapse; the two stand in the same neighborhood without repeating the exposition of "entering and leaving freely" itself.

V. One Move Dissolves Both: The Marks of Concentration Are Empty

Two symmetrical clingings are dissolved by one and the same move. The canonical locus of that move is a passage in the "Chapter of the Six Similes" — this paper's keystone:

Neither does he receive the flavor of the samādhi, nor does he receive its fruit. Why? Because this bodhisattva knows the samādhi to be markless, of the nature of nothing-whatsoever … this bodhisattva does not see the two realms, does not see the dhyāna, does not see one who enters the dhyāna, does not see one who enters by means of any dharma, does not see a place of entering, nor does he obtain any such dharma.⁹

The force of this passage is that it negates a whole string of things in one breath. The reason the bodhisattva can "not receive the flavor of the samādhi" is not that he grits his teeth and holds back from tasting by force of will, but that — when he turns back to search for the object he was clinging to — there is not one of them he can find:

• he cannot find the dhyāna (the entered absorption itself);
• he cannot find the one who enters the dhyāna (the "I" who enters);
• he cannot find the place of entering (the locus where the absorption resides);
• and even the dharma by which one might be made to enter cannot be obtained ("nor does he obtain any such dharma").

The image can be held thus: you wish to take hold of "concentration," so you turn back to look — for the person who enters the absorption, and there is none; for the absorption that is entered, and there is none; for the dharma the act of entering relies upon, and there is none. You search everywhere and obtain nothing. The clinging loosens, not because you decide not to cling, but because in the very instant you reach out to grasp, you find that your palm held nothing all along. This is "the marks of concentration are empty" — not that concentration does not exist, but that concentration has no graspable, self-established "mark" that can be seized.

These four "does-not-see"s, taken together, are a complete dismantling, not one blanket negation. When an ordinary person says "clinging to concentration," he has in fact presupposed a ready-made set of things: there is an "I," who enters a "concentration," in some "place," by means of some "dharma." The clinging is built upon this set of presuppositions — because all are taken to be really existent, there is something to crave, to abide in, to obtain. The way the "Chapter of the Six Similes" takes it apart is to empty the set out one piece at a time: the one who enters cannot be obtained (no subject on whose basis to say "I have got the concentration"); the entered dhyāna cannot be obtained (no state to be made a trophy); the place of entering cannot be obtained (no locus to abide in); down to the very dharma of entering, which cannot be obtained either. When these four pillars are pulled out one by one, "clinging" loses the whole structure on which it stood — not suppressed, but with no ground from which to arise. This is exactly where the mechanism of "one move dissolves two clingings" resides: the "fruit of the bliss of absorption" that craving the flavor would stick to, and the "place of cessation" that sinking into emptiness would guard, both fall away alike under this dismantling.

The chapter "Practising by Marks" puts the same sense more transparently:

This bodhisattva does not see these samādhis, nor conceive of the samādhi, nor conceive: "I shall enter this samādhi, I am now entering this samādhi, I have already entered this samādhi." … Because all samādhis are nothing-whatsoever, this bodhisattva neither knows nor conceives.¹⁰

"I shall enter, I am now entering, I have already entered" — these are precisely the three thoughts most familiar to a meditator: about to enter the absorption, entering it now, having entered it already. The text says the bodhisattva does not even arouse these three thoughts, "because all samādhis are nothing-whatsoever." This is not a demand that the practitioner deliberately suppress the three thoughts and treat them as distractions to be countered; it is that, when the samādhi itself is illumined as nothing-whatsoever, the three thoughts lose their object and naturally do not arise. The same chapter sets down a sentence of the gravest weight: prajñāpāramitā is itself samādhi, and samādhi is itself prajñāpāramitā. This sentence draws the whole thesis of the paper to its furthest point — concentration cultivated to the ultimate is not other than prajñā, no two and no different; and the concentration that prajñā sees is, from the first, markless. "The marks of concentration are empty," by this point, is no longer a verdict prajñā passes on concentration from outside, but concentration's own native face at the ultimate. The chapter "The Three Wholesome" sets an anchor-line for this: "He knows the dhyānas and concentrations to be empty of own-mark, unborn, without a fixed mark of concentration, with nothing that turns" — the dhyānas and concentrations are empty of own-mark, with no fixed "mark of concentration" that can be turned or grasped.¹¹

Middle-Way Corrections. Three lines of defense must be set here, lest "the marks of concentration are empty" be read awry:

❌ "The marks of concentration are empty" is not the blanket claim that "all dharmas are empty." This is the paper's most vital line of demarcation. Prajñā functions here as a tool of contemplation operating upon concentration, not as a general treatise on the meaning of emptiness. "The marks of concentration are empty" speaks throughout of "the samādhi, the one who enters, the entered, and the place of entering being unobtainable" — its object is concentration, dhyāna, samādhi, not dharmas at large. To swell it into a catalogue of the eighteen emptinesses or the emptiness of all dharmas is to cross the border into the subject-matter of prajñā-wisdom (the work of later papers in this series), and to lose this paper's focus on "how prajñā dissolves clinging to concentration." Prajñā is here the antidote to concentration, not a textbook of emptiness.

⚠️ "The marks of concentration are empty" is not a denial of the practice of dhyāna. As already stated: the bodhisattva enters the very same deep absorptions, the difference being only that he is not stuck fast by the mark of concentration. To say the marks of concentration are empty is not to say one should not practise concentration, or that concentration is without value; it is precisely because concentration has its real function that prajñā is needed, to prevent clinging to it from hardening into a fresh bondage.

⚠️ "Unobtainable" is not "nonexistent" or "annihilation." That the one who enters cannot be found, searched for everywhere, says that there is no own-nature, no graspable mark — not that the absorption is void of all content, or that practice collapses into annihilationism. The ungraspable emptiness, in which even "emptiness" cannot be obtained, exists exactly so that one does not make of "emptiness" or "nothing" a fresh thing to abide in.

VI. Conclusion: The Non-Abiding Samādhi

Since the mark of concentration cannot be obtained, there is no place to abide or to cling. The prajñā tradition did not stop at pure negation — within its own genealogy of samādhis it had long ago set a positive name on this conclusion:

Dwelling in this samādhi, one does not see any resting-place of the samādhis: this is called the samādhi of not delighting in any dwelling-place. … Dwelling in this samādhi, one does not see any mark of the samādhis: this is called the mark-breaking samādhi.¹²

This is an exquisite turn. Dwelling in this samādhi — it is still a dwelling in a kind of samādhi; but the very content of the samādhi dwelt in is "not seeing any resting-place of the samādhis," "not seeing any mark of the samādhis." In other words, the way out prajñā gives is not the abandonment of concentration, not the absence of concentration, but a concentration whose own mark is "not seeing the mark of concentration" — the non-abiding samādhi. Since the mark cannot be obtained, abiding has nothing to fasten on, and so the two clingings — craving the flavor of dhyāna and sinking into emptiness — lose their foothold here at once: there is no sweetness to savor, because the object of savoring cannot be obtained; there is no quiescence to stagnate in, because the ground of quiescence cannot be obtained either. Arrow propping arrow, never falling; searching everywhere for the one who enters, and obtaining nothing — the two images here flow together.

Set this inner-soteriological conclusion back against the contemporary field of discussion and its position comes clearer. Modern scholarship on the theme of the "state of concentration" has, broadly, three mutually disjoint treatments. The first, from a historical and rhetorical angle, points out that modern Buddhism stakes too much of its authority on private, publicly unverifiable states of concentration, and that this very discourse of "meditative experience" is a construction.¹³ The second, from a soteriological angle, treats the conception that takes a "mindless" attainment of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti) as the terminus as a near-aporia at the heart of the system — if the terminus is mindlessness, how can mindlessness be the wisdom of liberation?¹⁴ The third, from the angle of practice-revival, takes the texture of dhyāna seriously and argues for the rehabilitation of dhyāna as a legitimate part of the path.¹⁵

These three each hold a corner, and the position this paper occupies falls exactly in the seat they leave empty. With the first one may agree: to absolutize authority by staking it on private states of concentration is precisely the cultural soil of "craving the flavor of dhyāna" — when "I have personally realized some ineffable state" becomes an unquestionable source of authority, the state of concentration turns from a link in the path into an acquisition one leans on, which is exactly what prajñā would loosen. But one must add that their critique is an external, historical-rhetorical dismantling, standing on the claim that "this discourse of experience is constructed"; whereas the thread this paper follows is an internal, soteriological one — the tradition itself had long used prajñā to disown the absolutized state of concentration (the marks of concentration are empty), needing not to expose experience as rhetoric from outside, but to relativize it from within the path. The former doubts the reality of the state; the latter grants its reality yet forbids the clinging — two different roads. With the second one may grant the truth of its diagnosis: to take a mindless attainment of cessation as the terminus does indeed constitute a soteriological aporia — if the summit of liberation is the total extinction of mind-and-consciousness, then "mindlessness as the wisdom of liberation" is very nearly self-contradictory; but prajñā is just the missing resolution — deep absorption was never the terminus, but the object on which prajñā must turn back and shine, and the "sinking-emptiness as terminus" the diagnosis names is exactly the failure that "the marks of concentration are empty" is meant to forestall. The aporia is an aporia precisely because a link that ought to be passed beyond has been mistaken for the finale. With the third one may agree that rehabilitating dhyāna has done good service, that the state of concentration should not be dismissed wholesale as illusory, that the texture of concentration deserves to be taken seriously; but one must supply the turn their idiom, tilted toward "enter — deepen — stabilize," lacks: of an absorption already well-attained, genuine in its texture, prajñā still turns back to ask one thing — is its mark, too, being clung to? A rehabilitation that stops at "cultivate concentration well, deep, and stable" may still, unawares, turn a "well-attained concentration" into a fresh acquisition; what prajñā supplies is exactly the backward illumination that keeps the attainment from congealing into clinging.

It should be stated plainly: to date there is no Western monograph whose central question is "prajñā's critique of clinging to dhyāna as such." The three landmarks each work one corner — one dismantles the historical rhetoric, one diagnoses the aporia of the attainment of cessation, one rehabilitates dhyāna — and what this paper does is the synthesis: to take the state of concentration as real (against the first's pure deflation), not to take it as the terminus (with the second's concern), and to supply the internal corrective missing between the first two and the third. This paper's contribution lies in that synthetic position, not in any freshly unearthed material.

A concise restatement may now be made. Clinging to concentration has two symmetrical failures of grade — craving its bliss and being reborn through karma, stagnating in its quiescence and seizing realization prematurely — and both are dissolved by the single move "the marks of concentration are empty," the way out being the non-abiding samādhi, in which, the mark being unobtainable, there is nothing to abide in. In terms of practice this means one concrete thing: whenever, within absorption, any flavor of "I have attained something" or any settled sense of "this is the terminus" arises, that very thought is the moment to turn back and seek "the one who enters, the entered, the place of entering," and to confirm them unobtainable — not to make you leave the absorption, but to keep you, within it, from being stuck fast by the mark of concentration. To put it another way: prajñā does not set up some higher state outside the absorption for you to chase; it does, in the very absorption you are entering, the work of subtraction — loosening, ever so gently, that "concentration" you supposed you had grasped, and letting it return to its native marklessness. Whether one sits deep or shallow, whether the flavor is rich, whether the quiescence is empty — none of these is the measure. Whether one can keep, within it, that "sovereign at will" of non-clinging and non-stagnation — that is.

What this paper cuts away is the coarse clinging to concentration — craving the flavor of dhyāna and abiding in the samādhi, the two more obvious forms of stickiness. But there remains a subtler stratum of clinging: the subtle clinging, within absorption, to "dharmas" themselves. That stratum is left for a later paper of this volume to handle with Mañjuśrī's sword of prajñā. And since concentration must be turned back upon by prajñā, the volume's final term will, in the end, be concentration's return into prajñā — here set down in a single stroke, not unfolded.

Savor not the bliss of dhyāna; seize not upon emptiness.

---

---

References

I. Primary Buddhist Sources

• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra / the Larger Prajñāpāramitā (Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā, 摩訶般若波羅蜜經), trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗.
• Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (大智度論), attrib. Nāgārjuna, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 25, no. T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗.
• Saṃyukta-Āgama (雜阿含經), trans. Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, no. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗.
• Smaller Prajñāpāramitā (Aṣṭasāhasrikā, 小品般若波羅蜜經), trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0227《小品般若波羅蜜經》T8, No. 227View on CBETA online reader ↗. (The "abiding in non-abiding" idiom, corroborating only.)
• Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā (金剛般若波羅蜜經), trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0235《金剛般若波羅蜜經》Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitāT8, No. 235Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 402 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. ("Abide nowhere, and so give rise to the mind" belongs to the context of adorning a buddha-field — a general principle the author extends to concentration by argument, not by the sūtra's literal context; corroborating only.)
• Pāli: Saṃyutta Nikāya 36 (Vedanā-saṃyutta), SN 22.26–28 (Khandha-saṃyutta), AN 9.x (on the serial attainments), PTS / SuttaCentral (Sujato, CC0).

II. Modern Scholarship

• Griffiths, Paul J. On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem. Open Court, 1986.
• Shankman, Richard. The Experience of Samādhi. Shambhala, 2008.
• Brasington, Leigh. Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhānas. Shambhala, 2015.
• Sharf, Robert H. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." Numen 42 (1995).

III. Sūtra & Śāstra Index

Short title	Full title	Taishō no.	Author / Translator
Larger Prajñāpāramitā	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra / Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經)	T08, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Kumārajīva
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra	Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (大智度論)	T25, no. T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	attrib. Nāgārjuna / trans. Kumārajīva
Saṃyukta-Āgama	Saṃyukta-Āgama (雜阿含經)	T02, no. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Guṇabhadra
Smaller Prajñāpāramitā	Aṣṭasāhasrikā (小品般若波羅蜜經)	T08, no. T0227《小品般若波羅蜜經》T8, No. 227View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Kumārajīva
Vajracchedikā	Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā (金剛般若波羅蜜經)	T08, no. T0235《金剛般若波羅蜜經》Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitāT8, No. 235Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 402 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Kumārajīva

---

Cross-Reference

• P12　The perfection of dhyāna as comprehended by the perfection of prajñā → the sense of "not savoring / the three kinds of dhyāna / the single confused-and-settled mark" is carried by P12 from the treatise's twenty-eighth and seventeenth fascicles; this paper takes the sūtra side directly (T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗) and is kept distinct from the treatise's chapter on the perfection of dhyāna.
• P14　The bodhisattva's non-abiding concentration → P14 establishes, on its positive side, the capacity of "entering and leaving freely, using without abiding"; Section IV here diagnoses, with the archer simile, its negative failure (sinking into emptiness, stagnating in quiescence) — the two stand as establishment and diagnosis, without re-arguing the principle.
• P15　Samādhi as Mahāyāna expansion → P15 expanded concentration into a named field of bodhisattva practice-gates and closed by handing that field over to the prajñā of Part V to be turned back and questioned; this paper is that redemption — prajñā turns back, and the first cut it makes asks exactly: can it be flavored, dwelt in, obtained?
• P17　Mañjuśrī's sword of prajñā and the subtle clinging to dharmas within concentration → this paper cuts away the coarse clinging to concentration (craving the flavor, abiding in the samādhi); the subtler clinging to dharmas within absorption is reserved for P17.
• P18　Vimalakīrti's seated meditation and the one-practice samādhi → this paper's "non-abiding samādhi" stays on the ground of prajñā-doctrine (the mark being unobtainable, there is nothing to abide in) and does not enter the unfolding of Vimalakīrti's seated meditation, reserved for P18.
• P31　Concentration's return into prajñā → since concentration must be turned back upon by prajñā, the volume's final term will, in the end, be concentration's return into prajñā.

Footnotes

1. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the "Chapter of the Three Approaches" (三次品), fasc. 23, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Among these dhyānas and their factors he grasped no mark, conceived no thought 'this is a dhyāna,' received no flavor of dhyāna, obtained no such dhyāna; undefiled, in purity he practised the four dhyānas; of these dhyānas he received no fruit-and-recompense" — the Buddha's self-narration of his former conduct in practising the four dhyānas, the three negations of mark, flavor, and acquisition. ↩

2. Saṃyukta-Āgama (雜阿含經), fasc. 17, sūtra no. 476, trans. Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, no. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. "If a feeling, through conditions, gives rise to pleasure-and-joy, this is the gratification of the feeling; if the feeling is impermanent and of the nature to change, this is its danger; if with respect to the feeling one abandons and transcends desire-and-greed, this is the escape from it" — the three-membered structure of gratification, danger, escape applied to feeling. ↩

3. Saṃyukta-Āgama, fasc. 1, sūtra no. 13, trans. Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, no. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. Knowing as-it-is the gratification, danger, and escape of the five aggregates of clinging is stated as the ground of the Buddha's awakening to himself. ↩

4. Pāli dual-track reference: the Vedanā-saṃyutta (Connected Discourses on Feeling, SN 36) contemplates all feeling by the triad gratification (assāda), danger (ādīnava), escape (nissaraṇa); the Khandha-saṃyutta (SN 22.26–28) applies the same triad to the five aggregates of clinging. Given here by paraphrase; verbatim citation, where shipped, follows a public-domain edition (Sujato, CC0); PTS reference to be supplied. A distinction must be kept: assāda (gratification) is the neutral analytic slot of "gratification" in the three-membered structure, whereas nikanti (the lingering longing for a subtle absorbed state) is an affective residue of attachment; the two are not to be merged. ↩

5. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the "Chapter on Rebirth" (往生品), fasc. 4 and fasc. 2, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Toward dhyāna he does not savor, does not cling … in all dharmas he takes no support, nor is he reborn through dhyāna"; "this bodhisattva, by the power of skillful means, is not reborn through dhyāna, not reborn through the measureless states, not reborn through the four formless attainments." Note: the "born" of "not reborn through dhyāna" carries the sense of rebirth — not being reborn, through the karmic power of the absorption, into the form and formless realms — not "does not arouse dhyāna." ↩

6. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the chapter "Studying Emptiness Without Realizing It" (學空不證品), fasc. 18, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "I should not now realize the dharma of emptiness; my time now is the time of studying, not the time of realizing … he does not turn back, nor does he seize the realization of the destruction of the taints." Note: the object of "realizing / seizing realization" is the reality-limit (bhūtakoṭi, the edge of cessation); to seize realization prematurely is to fall to the ground of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha. ↩

7. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the chapter "Studying Emptiness Without Realizing It" (學空不證品), fasc. 18, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "As when a strong man … shoots an arrow up into the air, and with a following arrow strikes the first arrow, arrow propping arrow so that none is let fall, sovereign at will … by the power of skillful means … his roots of good not yet complete, he does not realize upon the reality-limit" — the archer simile of the power of skillful means holding the absorption up, letting none fall. ↩

8. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (大智度論), the "Exposition of the Chapter on Conformity in Practice" (釋習相應品), fasc. 37, attrib. Nāgārjuna, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 25, no. T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Practising mere emptiness, one falls to the ground of the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha; practising the ungraspable emptiness, in which emptiness too cannot be obtained, there is then no place to fall. There are again two kinds of emptiness: the first, emptiness without skillful means, which falls to the two grounds; the second, emptiness with skillful means, which has no place to fall." The diagnostic line dividing mere emptiness from the ungraspable emptiness. ↩

9. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the "Chapter of the Six Similes" (六喻品), fasc. 23, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Neither does he receive the flavor of the samādhi, nor its fruit. Why? Because this bodhisattva knows the samādhi to be markless, of the nature of nothing-whatsoever … he does not see the two realms, does not see the dhyāna, does not see one who enters the dhyāna, does not see one who enters by means of any dharma, does not see a place of entering, nor obtains any such dharma" — the keystone of "the marks of concentration are empty," dissolving both clingings at once. ↩

10. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the chapter "Practising by Marks" (相行品), fasc. 3, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "This bodhisattva does not see these samādhis, nor conceive of the samādhi, nor conceive: 'I shall enter this samādhi, I am now entering this samādhi, I have already entered this samādhi.' … Because all samādhis are nothing-whatsoever, this bodhisattva neither knows nor conceives." The same chapter states that prajñāpāramitā is itself samādhi, and samādhi is itself prajñāpāramitā. ↩

11. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), the chapter "The Three Wholesome" (三善品), fasc. 22, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "He knows the dhyānas and concentrations to be empty of own-mark, unborn, without a fixed mark of concentration, with nothing that turns" — the anchor-line for own-mark emptiness and the absence of any fixed mark of concentration. ↩

12. Larger Prajñāpāramitā (摩訶般若波羅蜜經), fasc. 6, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 8, no. T0223《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtraT8, No. 223View on CBETA online reader ↗. "Dwelling in this samādhi, one does not see any resting-place of the samādhis: this is the samādhi of not delighting in any dwelling-place. … Dwelling in this samādhi, one does not see any mark of the samādhis: this is the mark-breaking samādhi" — two of the hundred-and-eight samādhis, the positive name for the non-abiding samādhi. ↩

13. Sharf, Robert H. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." Numen 42 (1995). On the historical-rhetorical construction by which modern Buddhism stakes its authority on private "meditative experience." Engaged here as an interlocutor; paraphrase only. The critique is external (historical-rhetorical), where this paper's is internal (soteriological). ↩

14. Griffiths, Paul J. On Being Mindless: Buddhist Meditation and the Mind-Body Problem. Open Court, 1986. A systematic analysis of the soteriological aporia generated by taking the mindless attainment of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti) as the terminus. Engaged here as an interlocutor; paraphrase only. Prajñā is offered as the resolution the aporia leaves missing. ↩

15. Shankman, Richard. The Experience of Samādhi. Shambhala, 2008; cf. Brasington, Leigh. Right Concentration. Shambhala, 2015. Both represent the practice-revival orientation that rehabilitates dhyāna as a legitimate part of the path. Engaged here as interlocutors; the books are cited, not any community; paraphrase only. ↩