The Four Jhānas and the Formless Attainments

I. The Question — What Actually Happens Inside Deep Concentration?

The previous chapter set calm and insight side by side as two tracks of one vehicle. This chapter unscrews one of those wheels — the track of calm — and turns it over to read its internal calibration: the four jhānas, and above them the four formless attainments.

About deep concentration three pictures circulate in the wider culture, and all three are inaccurate. The first mystifies it, treating it as some unsayable, numinous territory, as though the one who enters concentration has crossed into another world. The second makes it elite, supposing that it is the preserve of monastics born with rare faculties and steeled by years of seclusion, and has nothing to do with the ordinary practitioner. The third empties it out, imagining that "concentration" means feeling almost nothing — a near-comatose blank.

These three pictures share a single error: each treats concentration as a state — a black box one is either inside or outside of. But the texts do not hand us a black box; they hand us a calibrated scale. Deep concentration is not a single point but a process with an internal structure, evolving rung by rung, shedding rung by rung. To go one layer deeper is not to acquire some further mystical experience but to set down something that had been interfering with clarity — as when unnecessary scaffolding is dismantled and the structure, far from collapsing, stands out the more cleanly.

This is the proposition the chapter raises, and the spine of the whole volume on concentration: the four jhānas are not a quantitative accumulation but a structural evolution; what is shed is not consciousness but the interference that obstructs clarity. Each later section of the volume will return to this scale and, from its own angle, re-illuminate one place along it. The task of this chapter is therefore to set the scale itself in order, one rung at a time.

A self-restraint in the manner of reading must be declared at the outset. What this chapter reads is the structural framework the texts give — which mental factors appear at which layer and withdraw at which, and in what order — and not a reconstruction of anyone's inner sensation upon entering concentration. The set descriptions of jhāna are not necessarily transparent first-person field reports of experience; they may at once be a schema of training, a marker of attainment, and a normative statement made within debate.¹ To treat jhāna as a scale is to treat it as a textual scale, not as a hypothesised map of experience held to be common to everyone.

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II. The Four-Jhāna Formula — A Ladder of Factor-Shedding

In the Chinese Āgamas the four jhānas carry a highly fixed formula. The Madhyama Āgama's Discourse on the City-Simile runs:

"Secluded from desires, secluded from unwholesome states, with vitakka and with vicāra, with the rapture and ease born of seclusion, he attains and dwells in the first jhāna … With vitakka and vicāra already stilled, inwardly still and unified in mind, without vitakka, without vicāra, with the rapture and ease born of concentration, the second jhāna … With the fading of rapture, dwelling in equanimity and seeking nothing, mindful and fully aware, experiencing ease with the body … the third jhāna … With pleasure ceased and pain ceased, the rapture and sorrow of before already gone, neither-painful-nor-pleasant, equanimity, mindfulness and purity — he attains and dwells in the fourth jhāna."²

Its Pāli counterpart appears where the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness and other texts define right concentration; the two transmissions describe one and the same ladder.³ Take the formula apart, and at each rung ask only three things: what this rung stills, what it leaves standing, and what verb the text uses.

The first jhāna arises from withdrawing from desire and from unwholesome states. Here there are "vitakka and vicāra" (the old Chinese renders these as 覺 and 觀, the new renderings as 尋 and 伺 — discussed below), together with the rapture and ease born of seclusion. The mind first settles into a single object, yet still carries the activity of vitakka and vicāra.

The second jhāna: "vitakka and vicāra already stilled." The applied-and-sustained pair subsides; the mind turns to "inward stillness, unified"; and rapture and ease are now "born of concentration" — no longer drawn along by vitakka and vicāra but welling up from concentration itself. What this layer sheds is vitakka and vicāra; what it leaves standing is a purer rapture-and-ease and a deeper unification.

The third jhāna: "the fading of rapture." Rapture withdraws; what remains is the lucid attention of "mindfulness and full awareness" and a continuous bodily ease, the practitioner dwelling "in equanimity, seeking nothing." What this layer sheds is rapture; what it leaves standing is ease, together with a now more pronounced mindfulness and clear comprehension.

The fourth jhāna: "pleasure ceased, pain ceased," and with these the rapture and sorrow already gone before, all now come to rest as "neither-painful-nor-pleasant." What remains is only "equanimity, mindfulness, and purity" — an even-handed equanimity and a purified mindfulness. What this layer sheds is ease; even the last flicker of felt tone comes to rest in equanimity.

Read down the four layers and the direction is unmistakable: the deeper the rung, the more is set down, not the more acquired. Vitakka and vicāra, rapture, ease leave the stage in turn, until at the fourth jhāna almost nothing remains but equanimity and mindfulness. But this "almost nothing" is not poverty; it is purification. Attend closely to the verbs of the formula — "stilled," "faded," "ceased": these point to subsiding and withdrawal, not to "extinguishing consciousness." The third jhāna explicitly says "mindfulness and full awareness"; the fourth, "mindfulness and purity." Awareness has not vanished — once the interference withdraws, it grows clearer. This is the first of the lines this volume must hold throughout: shedding is not dullness. When vitakka and vicāra are stilled at the second jhāna, this is not "the head gone blank, drowsy and heavy"; that murky torpor is the hindrance of sloth-and-torpor (middha), which is precisely an obstacle to concentration, not a deepening of it. Every time the text says a factor falls away, one must be able to say in the same breath what remains; otherwise the direction has been read backwards.

So what is it that runs through all four layers and never falls? It is one-pointedness (ekaggatā), the composure of a mind held on a single object. Vitakka and vicāra, rapture, ease each withdraw at some layer; one-pointedness alone persists from the first jhāna to the fourth, and grows purer throughout. This unbroken main line is the thread the next section will fetch from the treatises and calibrate exactly.

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III. How the Factors Fall Away — The Abhidharmakośa System and the Bell-Tone Simile

The Āgamas give the shape of the ladder; the treatises give its calibration. The most finely worked of these comes from the chapter on concentration in the Abhidharmakośa. There Vasubandhu sets down a verse on the factor-counts of the four absorptions:

"The first absorption has five factors: vitakka, vicāra, rapture, ease, concentration. The second has four: inner clarity, rapture, ease, concentration. The third has five: equanimity, mindfulness, clear understanding, ease, concentration. The fourth has four: equanimity, mindfulness, neutral feeling, concentration."⁴

First a fissure in the translation-vocabulary must be cleared, or the reader will think the Āgamas and the treatises are describing two different machines. The Chinese Āgamas (the City-Simile discourse, the Saṃyukta Āgama) uniformly use the old rendering 覺 and 觀; the Abhidharma works Xuanzang translated (this treatise, and the Dharmaskandha below) uniformly use the new rendering 尋 and 伺. 覺 is vitakka, 觀 is vicāra: the same jhāna-factor, wearing two different faces only because two translators chose different characters — and in fact the pair 尋伺 cannot be found even once in the body of the four Āgamas.⁵ Where this chapter quotes the Āgamas it uses 覺觀; where it quotes the Kośa it uses 尋伺; the psychological functions meant are throughout the same pair.

On the Kośa's count: the first jhāna has five factors (vitakka, vicāra, rapture, ease, concentration); the second has four (inner clarity, rapture, ease, concentration); the third has five (equanimity, mindfulness, clear understanding, ease, concentration); the fourth has four (equanimity, mindfulness, neutral feeling, concentration). On the surface the count flips between five and four; underneath there is one very simple thread, which Vasubandhu names in a phrase — "the first has vicāra, rapture and ease; afterward the prior factors are progressively shed":

"By progressively shedding the prior factors the second, third and fourth are established; shedding vicāra gives the [second], shedding the [further] two gives the [layers below], the three shed in full. In just this sequence, then, one-pointedness divides into four kinds."⁶

That is, the second, third and fourth jhānas are all set up by "progressively shedding the prior factors": shedding vitakka and vicāra sets up the second; shedding rapture as well sets up the third; shedding ease as well sets up the fourth. The last clause is the decisive one — "thus one-pointedness divides into four kinds." The four jhānas are not four different things; they are four depths of one and the same one-pointedness.

Put otherwise, the difference between the jhānas does not lie in "concentration" itself — concentration, that is one-pointedness, is throughout the same thing — but in how many other factors are still hung upon it. Vasubandhu says it more bluntly still: "It is taught that only concentration is both dhyāna itself and a factor of dhyāna; the remaining four are factors of dhyāna but not dhyāna."⁷ Only concentration (composure) is at once dhyāna itself and a factor of it; the other four are merely "factors," not dhyāna in itself. This nails down the observation of the previous section as a settled treatise-doctrine: one-pointedness is the body of concentration; the remaining factors are the ornament that attends the body. The ornament is set down layer by layer, and the body of concentration shows the purer for it — this is the inner logic of the whole ladder.

Two points must be cleared in passing, lest one school's scheme be mistaken for the whole. First, "five-four-five-four" is the formulation of the Sarvāstivāda; it is not the only way of counting. The southern Abhidharma counts "five-three-two-two," the second jhāna retaining, after vitakka and vicāra are set down, only rapture, ease and one-pointedness — three factors. The two schools agree completely on the items and the order of what is shed (vitakka-and-vicāra → rapture → ease); they diverge only in the count and in degree. The detailed north-south collation of the factor-counts is reserved for the part of this volume that treats the Visuddhimagga.⁸ Second, the tidy "five jhāna-factors" is in fact a synthesis of the treatises, not an enumeration in the discourses — the Āgama formula for the first jhāna names only vitakka-and-vicāra, rapture and ease, and the word for one-pointedness ("unified in mind") makes its first formal appearance only in the second-jhāna clause. So "five jhāna-factors" should be read as the commentators' systematisation built on seed-terms in the discourses, not as a list the discourses themselves supply.⁸

As for how the second jhāna can set down vitakka and vicāra in a single move, the Dharmaskandha leaves the most vivid simile in the whole tradition. It first marks off the coarse from the subtle: "what makes the mind coarse is vitakka; what makes the mind subtle is vicāra" — vitakka the function that makes the mind move coarsely, vicāra the function that makes it turn finely; and then it gives the figure of a bell: "as when a bell is struck, the coarse sound bursts out at once and the subtle sound follows after; the coarse sound is the image of vitakka, the subtle sound the image of vicāra."⁹ In the instant the bell is struck, the heavy, coarse boom breaks out first — that is vitakka; then the thin, lingering hum that trails on — that is vicāra. The two are by nature a coarse-and-subtle pair, arising linked together; what the second jhāna does is to let this whole coarse-moving pair of mental activities settle, so that there is "neither vitakka nor vicāra," inwardly still and unified.

(As for the finer semantics of vitakka and vicāra taken singly — how vitakka first strikes, how vicāra keeps watch; how many kinds of rapture there are, to which class of feeling ease belongs — that is the microscopic anatomy of the jhāna-factors as mental concomitants, treated in a dedicated later paper and not unfolded here.)

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IV. From the Four Jhānas to the Formless — The Same Track's Extended Calibration

The ladder does not end when the four jhānas are walked through. Above the fourth jhāna the texts list four still more refined states of concentration, together called the four formless attainments: the dimension of boundless space, the dimension of boundless consciousness, the dimension of nothingness, and the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Their formula, in the Madhyama Āgama's Great Discourse on Causation, runs:

"Going completely beyond perceptions of form, with the ending of perceptions of impingement, not attending to perceptions of diversity, [aware that] space is boundless, he attains and dwells in the dimension of space … going completely beyond the dimension of boundless space, [aware that] consciousness is boundless … going completely beyond the dimension of boundless consciousness, the dimension of nothingness … going completely beyond the dimension of nothingness, [the dimension of] neither-perception-nor-non-perception."¹⁰

Set this beside the four-jhāna formula and one sees a fine symmetry — and one crucial turn. The four jhānas advance by shedding factors: stilling vitakka-and-vicāra, rapture and ease upon the mind. The four formless advance by transcending perceptions: passing beyond the object faced. First one goes beyond all "perception of form" (the perception of material shape) and rests in boundless space; then beyond the "perception of space" and rests in boundless consciousness; then beyond the "perception of consciousness" and rests in nothingness; and finally even the perception of "nothingness" is gone beyond, arriving at neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Each step "goes beyond" the object of the prior attainment and climbs toward a finer one. The verb here, "going beyond," is transcending (samatikkama) — not "delivering" or "saving," which the same Chinese character can mean; the senses must be kept apart.¹¹

So the whole track of calm shows two distinct movements: the four jhānas are a layer-by-layer shedding of mental activity; the four formless are a layer-by-layer transcending of the object. One unloads interference inward, the other changes the object upward — but they belong to one and the same track. Both are the deepening of calm (samatha) along its single road, not the opening of some separate path. The four jhānas plus the four formless make eight levels, traditionally gathered under the name the eight attainments (八等至, aṭṭha samāpatti).

Here lies a distinction in vocabulary that popular phrasing slides over and that matters greatly. The texts call the four form-sphere states "jhāna" (jhāna); they call the four formless states "dimensions" (āyatana) or "the formless" (āruppa), and do not call them jhāna. So the loose talk of "eight jhānas" or "four jhānas and eight concentrations" is not exactly wrong, but it is not precise: strictly, it is four jhānas plus four formless equalling eight attainments, not eight "jhānas." This very difference of wording is itself the cleanest internal evidence that the formless attainments and the core of right concentration sit at different registers — the next section will show that the definition of right concentration in fact takes in only the four jhānas.

For this reason the chapter handles the four formless in the posture of "stating their structure, not enthroning them as the goal." The previous chapter told the story of the Buddha's two teachers: the highest reaches they attained are precisely the dimension of nothingness and the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception named here.¹² Set the conclusion of that narrative back into the ladder, and one sees that the two teachers did not take a wrong track — they merely stopped at the seventh and eighth rungs. A deeper calibration, not another road; and deeper is not the same as nearer to liberation. This thread is gathered up after this section, and again at the end of the volume.

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V. The Top of the Ladder and the Edge of the Track — The Nine Progressive Abidings and Cessation

In the Chinese canon the text that lays out this scale most completely, from bottom to top, is discourse 474 of the Saṃyukta Āgama, the Discourse on Progressive Cessation. The Buddha tells Ānanda what is stilled at each rung of the attainments:

"When one is in the attainment of the first jhāna, speech is stilled. When in the attainment of the second jhāna, vitakka and vicāra are stilled. In the third jhāna, the heart's rapture is stilled. In the fourth jhāna, the in-and-out breath is stilled. In the attainment of the dimension of space, perception of form is stilled … When in the attainment of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, the perception of the dimension of nothingness is stilled; when in the attainment of the cessation of perception-and-feeling, perception and feeling are stilled. This is called the progressive cessation of the formations."¹³

This discourse adds one further rung above the eight attainments, arraying them as nine levels of progressive cessation. Each rung stills one thing: the first jhāna stills speech, the second stills vitakka-and-vicāra, the third stills rapture, the fourth stills the in-and-out breath; each formless attainment stills the perception of the attainment below it; until the last rung, "the cessation of perception-and-feeling," where perception and feeling themselves are stilled. The eight attainments plus this ninth rung, the cessation of perception-and-feeling, are together called the nine progressive abidings (九次第定, anupubbavihāra).

Note the term that recurs throughout the discourse, 正受. This is a technical word, meaning the state of attainment one enters in concentration (samāpatti); it is not the "right concentration" (sammā-samādhi) of the eightfold path. "When in the attainment of the first jhāna" means "while within the attainment that is the first jhāna" — it must never be read as "the first jhāna is right concentration."¹⁴ Further, this ninth rung carries three names across the translations: the Saṃyukta Āgama calls it "the cessation of perception-and-feeling," the Madhyama Āgama "the cessation of perception-and-knowing," and later treatises mostly "the attainment of cessation"; all three name one thing, here called the attainment of cessation.

And it is exactly at this ninth rung that the track of calm reaches its own boundary. The first eight attainments, however deep, remain within the range of calm (samatha); but the attainment of cessation cannot be reached by pure calm acting alone. The Great Discourse on Causation, treating the eight liberations, says of the highest: "Going beyond all neither-perception-nor-non-perception, realising with the body and dwelling in the cessation of perception-and-knowing, and knowing through the wisdom that sees the cankers exhausted — this is called the eighth liberation."¹⁵ Mark that clause, "and knowing through the wisdom that sees the cankers exhausted": the cessation of perception-and-feeling is here bound together with "liberation-by-wisdom." At the top of the ladder, in other words, concentration can no longer walk alone; it must be capped by wisdom. The attainment of cessation as an independent topic — its conditions of entry and exit, its relation to nibbāna and to the life-faculty, the dispute between the Sarvāstivāda and the Sautrāntika over whether it is "with mind or without mind" — is not unfolded here; this chapter marks only its place on the scale, and points out one thing: this peak is where calm hands the baton to wisdom.

This answers, too, the anchoring of right concentration from the previous chapter. The Pāli Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, in defining right concentration, lists precisely the four jhānas, and the four formless are not among them.¹⁶ Right concentration is anchored in the four jhānas, not in the deeper formless; and on the night of his awakening it was likewise at the fourth jhāna, with "the mind concentrated, purified and bright," that the Buddha poured himself into the three knowledges and realised the path¹⁷ — not by climbing further into the formless. The fourth jhāna — not the summit of the formless — is the platform from which liberating insight is launched. So this section sets down the volume's third line: deeper concentration does not mean nearer to liberation. The eight attainments fall into a beautiful sequence, and nothing tempts more easily than the thought that "deeper means closer to the end"; but the anchor pulls one back again and again — to state the structure of the four formless is not to enthrone them as the goal. How far the deepest concentration can reach, and what it cannot reach, is left for the closing chapter of the volume to settle.

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VI. Modern Dialogue and Conclusion

Over recent decades Western scholarship has discussed at length the "layer-by-layer shedding of jhāna-factors." Here three representative scholars are chosen, to see how each reads this structure — the focus falling on the shedding itself, not on the priority-of-calm-or-insight dispute already handled in the previous chapter. (What follows gives the gist of each position; exact titles and page numbers should be checked against the originals.)

The first is Richard Shankman (The Experience of Samādhi). He observes that reading jhāna by way of the discourses (the Nikāyas) and reading it by way of the Visuddhimagga draw the line differently on "how completely the shedding must go before it counts": the commentarial reading requires that vitakka and vicāra stop entirely and the five sense-doors close before the second jhāna is reached, whereas the discourse reading allows a lighter "diminishing," compatible with a kind of awareness. This dispute over the threshold does have textual footing — the Nikāya formula for the four jhānas does not state to what degree vitakka and vicāra must disappear, and the commentarial refinement is filling a gap the discourses left, not inventing from nothing. Yet wherever the line is drawn, the items and order of the shedding (vitakka-and-vicāra → rapture → ease) are the text's own native shape, not the creation of either side. This chapter argues at the level of that shedding-structure; the threshold dispute does not interfere at that level.

The second is Keren Arbel (Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhānas …). She argues forcefully against reading the shedding as "the senses shutting off, a trance sinking ever deeper." For her, the four jhānas are cognitively rich, ethically saturated states; the shedding is a structural purification — the coarser factors that obstruct clarity are unloaded, and a finer awareness is left standing; equanimity and mindfulness remain present through the third and fourth jhānas, and do not vanish. This correction matters greatly, because "deeper means more entranced" is a real and common misreading, and the equanimity and mindfulness written plainly into the four-jhāna formula are her strong counter-evidence. This chapter gladly takes up her anti-trance side. One point only must be gently narrowed: if her thesis that "insight is already operating within jhāna" were read as "jhāna is itself wisdom, with no need to set up a separate practice of insight," that would step past this volume's scope. The volume holds throughout to one boundary — concentration (calm) provides the platform for wisdom, but concentration is not itself wisdom (the system of wisdom belongs to a separate series of work). Concentration is not a trance, but concentration is not yet wisdom either. This is a friendly narrowing, not an opposition.

The third is Rupert Gethin's functional reading of the jhāna-factors. He holds that the jhāna-factors are functional indicators describing a state of mind, not a checklist threshold for adjudicating "whether one has entered jhāna": the first jhāna's "vitakka and vicāra" describes the mind's initial application to its object (vitakka) and its sustained contact with it (vicāra); at the second jhāna these two functions recede because one-pointedness has deepened to the point of no longer needing active effort — each layer's shedding is a natural result of the mind's integration deepening, not a deliberate "switching off" of something. This reading captures the verbal sense of the texts exactly: the texts use "stilled" and "faded" (settling, withdrawal), not "is not" (absence), pointing to a process rather than a binary on-off switch. It is well taken. One line need only be added: if the functional frame is used too loosely, it can blur the order-structure — which factor sheds first, which after, which is necessarily present at a given jhāna — and these are exactly what the texts fix. This chapter's position is: accept the shedding as the fruit of deepening integration, and at the same time insist that the order-structure be set out clearly, rung by rung; the two are not in conflict, but order takes priority.

Each of the three holds one face of the matter, and through them the three lines may be restated: shedding is not dullness (what is unloaded is interference, not clarity); the mindfulness within concentration is not the mindfulness of the foundations (the fourth jhāna's "purity of mindfulness" is the mindfulness of a concentration-state, not the pervasive, all-illuminating awareness of the four foundations of mindfulness); deeper concentration does not mean nearer to liberation (a deeper calibration is not a nearer terminus). Hold these three lines and the scale stands firm.

With this, the spine of the volume is set up: from the first jhāna to the fourth, vitakka-and-vicāra, rapture and ease shed layer by layer, clearer layer by layer; then from the fourth jhāna up into the four formless, the perceptions of form, of space, of consciousness, of nothingness transcended layer by layer; until the ninth rung, the attainment of cessation, where the track of calm hands the baton to wisdom. This is a vertical axis running from the scattered mind to pure equanimity — and every later section of the volume will return to this axis and, from its own angle, re-illuminate one place along it.

Yet this vertical axis is not entered through a single door. The practice of calm has forty different objects, traditionally called meditation-subjects (kammaṭṭhāna). Different subjects lead to different depths along this scale; different temperaments suit different subjects. What the next chapter sets up is precisely the structure of these entrances: what serves as the object, how it is cultivated, and how far it can reach.

As for where this vertical axis ends — even when one has climbed to neither-perception-nor-non-perception, even when one has reached the cessation of perception-and-feeling — what "the deepest concentration" finally means, and whether it can be grasped at all, must wait for the volume's final chapter to settle.

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References

Buddhist Canon (Taishō originals)

• 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 3, the Discourse on the City-Simile — the standard four-jhāna formula; fascicles 24 and 42, the Great Discourse on Causation — the four-formless "going-beyond" formula and the eighth liberation.)
• 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 17, discourse 474, the Discourse on Progressive Cessation — the full picture of the nine progressive abidings.)
• Abhidharmakośa (《阿毘達磨俱舍論》), composed by Vasubandhu, translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. T1558《阿毘達磨俱舍論》Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣyaT29, No. 1558View on CBETA online reader ↗. (Fascicle 28, the chapter on the analysis of concentration — the five-four-five-four factor-count verse, "progressively shedding the prior factors," and "only concentration is the body of dhyāna.")
• Dharmaskandha (《阿毘達磨法蘊足論》), translated by Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 26, No. T1537《阿毘達磨法蘊足論》T26, No. 1537View on CBETA online reader ↗. (Fascicle 6, the chapter on the absorptions — the coarse-and-subtle of vitakka and vicāra, and the bell-tone simile.)

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

• Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, DN 22 (right concentration defined as the four jhānas only).
• Rahogata-sutta, SN 36.11 (the Pāli parallel to the nine progressive abidings of Saṃyukta Āgama 474).
• The Verañjā preamble to the Pārājika, Vinaya (the bodhi-night sequence: the fourth jhāna into the three knowledges).

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.

• Arbel, Keren. Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhānas as the Actualization of the Path. Routledge, 2017. (Subtitle to be verified.)- Gethin, Rupert. On the functional reading of the jhāna-factors; and The Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 1998). (Specific essay title to be verified.)- Shankman, Richard. The Experience of Samādhi.- Sharf, Robert. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." (Venue to be verified; 1990s.)- (Corroborating cross-references, not unfolded: Polak, Grzegorz, Reexamining Jhāna; on the pre-Buddhist provenance of the formless attainments, see the previous chapter of this volume.)

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Cross-References

• Inherits from: P02, The Rose-Apple Tree and the Two Teachers (the two teachers' highest reaches placed back at the seventh and eighth rungs; the wall that the deepest concentration is not, of itself, liberation); P03, Samatha and Vipassanā: Two Tracks, One Vehicle (which unscrewed the calm wheel and announced this chapter's task — to raise the scale of graded depth, one rung at a time).
• Points toward: P05, Kammaṭṭhāna and the Object-Structure of Absorption (the forty meditation-objects — the entrances onto this same vertical axis: what object, how cultivated, how far it reaches).
• Further on: the micro-anatomy of the jhāna-factors as mental concomitants (a dedicated later paper); the north-south collation of the factor-counts and the systematisation of concentration in the Visuddhimagga (Part III); the attainment of cessation as an independent topic (reserved).
• Long-range lock: the volume's closing chapter redeems the asymmetry that concentration must turn back toward wisdom, and that even the deepest concentration is ungraspable.

Footnotes

1. This methodological self-restraint echoes Robert Sharf's caution regarding "Buddhist modernism and the rhetoric of meditative experience": the set descriptions of jhāna should not be read off as transparent first-person reports of experience; they may at once be a schema of training, a marker of attainment, or a normative statement within debate. (Sharf's relevant essays were published in the 1990s; the exact venue is to be verified against the original.) ↩

2. Madhyama Āgama, the Discourse on the City-Simile, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 3; translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin). ↩

3. The Pāli counterpart is found in the passage defining right concentration in the Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness (the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, DN 22) and elsewhere. The "with / without vitakka-and-vicāra" of the formula renders 覺 and 觀; these equal the new renderings 尋 and 伺, on which see the next section. Vitakka and vicāra should not be flattened into "thought" and "examination," which would import the later sutta-versus-Visuddhimagga debate this chapter deliberately brackets. ↩

4. Abhidharmakośa, chapter on the analysis of concentration, Taishō vol. 29, No. T1558《阿毘達磨俱舍論》Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣyaT29, No. 1558View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 28; composed by Vasubandhu, translated by Xuanzang. ↩

5. 覺 and 觀 are the old rendering, 尋 and 伺 Xuanzang's new rendering; both denote vitakka / vicāra. The pair 尋伺 appears nowhere in the body of the four Āgamas — a measure of how deep the translation-fissure runs. This is of a piece with the earlier observation in this series that the transliterations śamatha / vipaśyanā likewise appear nowhere across the Chinese Āgamas. ↩

6. Same as ⁴, the passage on "progressively shedding the prior factors." ↩

7. Same as ⁴, the passage "only concentration is both dhyāna and a factor of dhyāna." ↩

8. The southern Abhidharma counts the jhāna-factors as "five-three-two-two," diverging from the Sarvāstivāda "five-four-five-four"; and the demonstration that "five jhāna-factors" is a synthesis of the treatises rather than an enumeration in the discourses (the first-jhāna formula names only vitakka-and-vicāra, rapture and ease, while one-pointedness surfaces in the second-jhāna clause) — both belong to the part of this volume that treats the Visuddhimagga. The two schools agree on the items and order of what is shed; they differ only in count and degree. ↩ ↩²

9. Dharmaskandha, chapter on the absorptions, Taishō vol. 26, No. T1537《阿毘達磨法蘊足論》T26, No. 1537View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 6; translated by Xuanzang. ↩

10. Madhyama Āgama, the Great Discourse on Causation, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 42; translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva. This discourse also carries the "stations of consciousness" framework, with a cosmological cast; this chapter takes its purely meditative sense, so the complete formula for the four formless is drawn from it, while the full picture of progressive cessation follows the Saṃyukta Āgama, discourse 474, below. ↩

11. "Going beyond" renders samatikkama, transcending. Further, the "dimension" (āyatana) in "dimension of space," "dimension of consciousness" and the rest carries three senses at once — the attainment-state, the object, and the heavenly fruit of rebirth; citation must distinguish the context, and not confuse "the realm of boundless space" (a rebirth-fruit) with "the attainment of boundless space" (a cultivation). ↩

12. The highest reaches of the two teachers — the dimension of nothingness and the dimension of neither-perception-nor-non-perception — and the question of the formless attainments' pre-Buddhist provenance, are treated in the previous chapter of this volume and not repeated here. ↩

13. Saṃyukta Āgama, discourse 474, Taishō vol. 2, No. T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 17; translated by Guṇabhadra (Liu Song). The Pāli parallel is the Rahogata-sutta, SN 36.11. ↩

14. 正受 is the attainment-state (samāpatti), the condition of being in concentration; it is not the "right concentration" (sammā-samādhi) of the eightfold path. This carries forward the same distinction marked in the previous chapters of the volume. ↩

15. Madhyama Āgama, the Great Discourse on Causation, the passage on the eighth liberation, Taishō vol. 1, No. T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, fascicle 24; translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva. ↩

16. The Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness (DN 22), in defining right concentration, lists only the four jhānas, the four formless being absent — internal structural evidence that the formless are an extension rather than the core. ↩

17. The Vinaya (the Verañjā preamble to the Pārājika) records that on the night of his awakening the Buddha, at the fourth jhāna with "the mind concentrated, purified and bright," poured himself into the knowledge of past lives and the rest; so the fourth jhāna — not the formless — is the platform from which liberating insight is launched. This carries forward the previous chapter's argument that concentration is the support of wisdom. ↩