Two Failure Modes

I. The Problem

Picture the meditation cushion as a button: when the mind grows agitated, one sits for a stretch; the feeling settles; one returns to the day's work. This is very nearly the most widely circulated image of "practising concentration" today. It is clean, measurable, available on demand — like a stress-relief instrument that fits in a pocket. There is a second image, quieter but no less common: a person who, after long sitting, meets a grief or an anger or a real conflict with another that ought to be faced, and instead retreats into that interior stillness, taking "I am no longer disturbed by these things" for the matter resolved; or who, seeing within concentration some brightness, some spaciousness, some perception unlike the ordinary, concludes that he has "realized" something.

The first this paper will provisionally call treating concentration as a tool. The second the West has, over the past several decades, given a current name: spiritual bypassing. On the surface the two look opposed — one takes concentration too much to heart and chases the marketable calm it yields (modern commentators often use the term calm-tech for this tendency to instrumentalize and productize the concentrative state), while the other hides inside concentration and will not come out. But the claim of this paper is that they are in fact one and the same fissure opening in two directions — and the name of that fissure is the severance of concentration from wisdom.

The first eight parts carried concentration all the way to the outer limit of its reach. The preceding part pressed it to a summit: the concentration of the practice-gate can be spread across every posture of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down, and the Ocean-Seal samādhi can make the whole dharma-realm appear at once within a single thought-moment. Concentration was driven to the farthest place it could go. Part IX therefore turns back and asks a cool question: when this gate — inward by its nature, by its nature joined to wisdom — has the wisdom that is its matrix drawn out of it, and is then pressed to the extreme alone and in isolation, in which direction does it break?

The answer is two directions. And the tradition — far in advance of "mindfulness" becoming a modern psychological construct — had already seen both directions clearly, named both, and prescribed for both the very same remedy. What this paper does is only to light that ancient diagnosis up again, so that it may illumine today's two failure modes. One thing must be said at the outset: this paper diagnoses only; it prescribes nothing. How concentration returns to prajñā, and how that remedy is taken, is the work of this part's final paper. Should any passage here read like instruction in "how to sit, how to avoid relishing," that is a slip of the pen; the question throughout is always what these two failures are, and how the tradition diagnoses their structure.

II. The Relishing Pole: Concentration as Tool

Take the first failure first. Its ancient prototype is described with great clarity in the prajñā literature. Speaking of the gods of the form realm, the Dà zhìdù lùn (大智度論, Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom) says:

The gods of the form realm, though they first heard the Dharma and gave rise to the aspiration, because they relish concentration so deeply, cannot seek prajñā.¹

The weight of this line lies in its causal structure. It is not that "concentration is bad," but that the very act of relishing concentration, deepened to a certain point, blocks off the mind that would seek prajñā. The form-realm gods are not those who never heard the Dharma or never roused the aspiration; they are those held fast by the long, refined bliss of concentration, a bliss far surpassing that of the desire realm — and once held, they "cannot seek prajñā." Not that they refuse; rather, the impetus to go forward has been worn away by an abiding too comfortable to leave. Elsewhere the treatise says that in the form realm beings "mostly relish the bliss of concentration … and, having no mind of aversion toward it, are hard to convert."² Precisely because they keep no trace of disenchantment with the bliss of concentration, they are hardest of all to bring across.

The key term here is "relish" (味). Concentration of itself gives rise to bliss — this is concentration's true merit, not its defect. The trouble lies in the mind's stance toward that bliss: when the bliss is taken as a flavour to be tasted again and again, drawn upon again and again, concentration turns from a gate that opens onto prajñā into a room one can settle into for a long stay. Once one has moved in, the gate closes.

Aim this ancient diagnosis at the present, and the image of "concentration as tool" shows its true face. The person who treats the cushion as a stress-relief button wants exactly this flavour — when agitated, sit a while, obtain a moment's calm, then return. Calm itself has been made the product, the deliverable. This is no degeneration that modernity invented; it is the contemporary terminal display of the old error of "relishing concentration." Where the ancients relished the long bliss of form-realm dhyāna, the moderns relish a stretch of quiet that can be measured and slotted into a schedule. The form of the bliss has changed; the structure of the clinging is identical. The prajñā critique that craving-and-abiding-in-the-flavour-of-concentration draws upon itself is treated in a dedicated paper of this series; here only its one face — as an ancient instance of the "concentration as tool" failure — is taken.³

How, then, does the tradition keep from condemning the bliss of concentration wholesale as poison? It has a built-in test, of extreme economy. The Madhyama-āgama (中阿含, Middle-Length Discourses) repeatedly deploys a triad of questions:

What is the gratification of desires? What is the danger of desires? What is the escape from desires? What is the gratification of form? What is its danger? What is its escape? What is the gratification of feeling? What is its danger? What is its escape?⁴

Gratification, danger, escape (assāda–ādīnava–nissaraṇa) — every felt object the tradition subjects to this threefold examination. "Gratification" is the genuine flavour it does have, not denied; "danger" is the harm it brings if one is held fast by it; "escape" is the path that sees through it and departs from it. Set this threefold test upon the bliss of concentration, and the conclusion is plain: the bliss of concentration does have its flavour — this the limb of "gratification" concedes; but the bliss of concentration, once relished, blocks off prajñā — this is the "danger"; and "escape" points to the path that is not held fast by the bliss of concentration but goes on walking toward wisdom. The failure of "concentration as tool" is exactly the taking-up of the first limb alone — making "gratification" the whole of the matter, halting at the flavour, never asking after danger or escape. The tradition set this threefold test over every felt object from the start, precisely so that no bliss could be mistaken for the terminus.

III. Both Poles at Once: Discerning Wisdom as Shared Remedy

The second failure looks, on its surface, like the opposite of the first. But before entering it, this paper must set in place the pivot of the whole — a single line that holds both poles at once and names the remedy common to both. Speaking of the classification of dhyāna methods, the Móhē zhǐguān (摩訶止觀) says:

The four dhyānas are root, blind-attainment, and relished dhyāna; common to ordinary and sage alike, gained by slight cultivation. The Distinctive Dharmas alone retain some discerning wisdom — neither relished nor blindly attained.⁵

The whole skeleton of this paper is hidden in this line. Zhiyi points out, in a single stroke, the two directions of danger in such root dhyāna methods as the four dhyānas: one is "relished dhyāna" (味禪), the other "blind attainment" (闇證). Relished dhyāna is precisely the relishing pole of the preceding section — sunk in the bliss of concentration, taking concentration for a room to settle into. Blind attainment is the other pole — groping in the dark without the clear awareness of contemplation, unwittingly mistaking what appears within concentration for the fruit of attainment. And the latter half of the line gives the shared cure of both poles: "the Distinctive Dharmas alone retain some discerning wisdom — neither relished nor blindly attained." The Distinctive Dharmas (特勝, one strand of the gates of refined practice) can avoid falling into relished dhyāna and avoid falling into blind attainment precisely because they "retain some discerning wisdom": with the wisdom of contemplation present within, the bliss of concentration is not relished (breaking the relishing pole), and the state of concentration is not mistaken (breaking the blind-attainment pole).

This line thus lifts the whole thesis of the paper into view: relished dhyāna and blind attainment are concentration breaking, after its severance from wisdom, in two opposite directions; and discerning wisdom is the one remedy that treats both poles at once. Concentration as tool is the contemporary display of the relished-dhyāna pole; spiritual bypassing is the contemporary display of the blind-attainment pole; and what the tradition prescribes for both is, and has always been, the one medicine — wisdom.

Zhiyi puts the matter still more directly in another place of the same work. Discoursing on the depth of the tenfold contemplation, he says this method is

not what the blind-attainment dhyāna-master or the text-reciting Dharma-master can know.⁶

This is a symmetrical pair of failures. On one side stands the "blind-attainment dhyāna-master" — one who only sits, lacks discerning wisdom, gropes in the dark; on the other the "text-reciting Dharma-master" — one who only recites the words, lacks concentrative power, whose mind moves along with the text. The one has concentration without wisdom; the other has wisdom (or letters) without concentration; neither reaches the real contemplation. The two failures this paper treats may be seen as the contemporary refinement of the "blind-attainment dhyāna-master" pole: the person who treats concentration as a tool and the person who bypasses are both, in some sense, "blindly attaining" — both use concentration in the absence of discerning wisdom, differing only in the direction of the break. One draws the bliss of concentration outward and turns it into a commodity; the other guards the state of concentration inward and turns it into attainment.

It is worth noting that this tension of "lean to concentration and one sinks, lean to wisdom and one is stirred" receives a finely distilled treatment from Yongjia Xuanjue: "Cultivate concentration alone, and concentration grown long sinks; study wisdom alone, and wisdom in excess stirs the mind."⁷ Concentration grown long sinks — this is exactly the sinking aspect of the blind-attainment pole. This series treats elsewhere, in a dedicated paper, the full mechanism by which Yongjia reconciles concentration and wisdom through "upekṣā" (equipoise) so that neither is one-sided; here only the line "concentration grown long sinks" is taken, as a diagnostic anchor for the blind-attainment pole.⁸

IV. The Over-Claiming Pole: Spiritual Bypassing

Now the second failure may be entered head-on. Its scriptural prototype is described with equal precision in the prajñā literature. Treating the faults of the practitioner, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (大般若波羅蜜多經) says:

Seeing other beings, they give rise to the conceit of over-attainment — claiming as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized.⁹

"Claiming as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized" — these words are the most precise classical naming of the failure of spiritual bypassing. The essence of the conceit of over-attainment (增上慢) is just this: taking what has not in truth been gained for the gained, taking what has not in truth been realized for the realized. Aimed at the state of concentration, this is exactly the core mechanism of blind attainment: seeing within concentration some perception unlike the ordinary — brightness, spaciousness, pliancy, all manner of mental signs — one concludes that one has "realized" something. To mistake a concentrative state for an attainment in the sense of a fruit of the path — this is the concrete landing-point of "claiming as attained what is unattained" upon the field of concentration.

Why this pole is the opposite of "concentration as tool" and yet shares its root may be seen clearly from just here. The relishing pole takes the bliss of concentration too much to heart and draws it outward for use; the over-attainment pole takes the state of concentration too much to heart and guards it inward as attainment. The one covets the flavour, the other lays false claim. But the root of the illness is wholly the same in both: both, in the absence of discerning wisdom, over-value what appears within concentration — only that one over-values its "bliss," the other its "sign." Where discerning wisdom is present, the bliss of concentration is seen through as "flavour" (and so not relished), and the state of concentration is seen through as non-attainment (and so not blindly attained); where discerning wisdom is lost, the former becomes relished dhyāna and the latter the conceit of over-attainment.

Aim this ancient diagnosis at today's spiritual bypassing, and its structure shows itself. The person who uses the cushion to evade a grief or a conflict that ought to be faced relies precisely on the sense of "I am no longer disturbed" that concentration can produce — and this sense is often just a misrecognized state within concentration: taking a temporary non-reactivity for real liberation, taking the suppression of an emotion for the severance of an affliction. This is, in structure, not a hair's breadth different from "claiming as attained what is unattained" — taking what is not truly resolved for the resolved.

As for the danger of construing the many anomalous signs within concentration as sagehood (作聖解, mistaking them for sagely realization), the tradition has elsewhere set out an exhaustive enumeration and analysis, and this series treats it in a dedicated paper; the signs are not catalogued here one by one.¹⁰ This paper need only point out: the illness that the modern naming "spiritual bypassing" indicates, the tradition long ago saw with perfect clarity under the two categories of "the conceit of over-attainment" and "construing as sagehood" — and what it prescribes is still that same one medicine, discerning wisdom. Without the clear light of discerning wisdom, the states within concentration cannot be examined and found to be non-attainment; the conceit of over-attainment can arise precisely because that examining wisdom — "not claiming the unattained as attained, not claiming the unrealized as realized" — is missing.

V. Dialogue with the West

To read the severance of concentration from wisdom as the shared root of both failures is a diagnosis that intersects with several Western critiques of modern meditation over recent decades — but on a different axis. This section takes up three interlocutors in brief and states where this paper's distinct contribution lies.

The one who named spiritual bypassing. The psychotherapist John Welwood coined the phrase "spiritual bypassing" in the 1980s, later gathering it into his published work,¹¹ to designate the use of spiritual states and spiritual concepts to sidestep unprocessed emotional and developmental material. The naming is accurate: it does identify a real lesion — the quiet that concentration produces can indeed be conscripted to evade grief, evade anger, evade the relational matter that ought to be faced. On this much this paper sees with Welwood. But the two run on different axes. Welwood's is the axis of psychotherapy; his concern is the evaded "emotional material" and the stages of growth in the sense of Western developmental psychology. This paper's is the doctrinal axis; the tradition had already named this illness in its own language — it is the conceit of over-attainment at the "construing as sagehood" pole,¹⁰ it is the boundary the Buddha drew when, having tasted the formless attainments himself, he judged that they "do not lead to nirvāṇa" and let them go.¹² The subject this paper keeps in view throughout is "the practitioner's own valuation of, and intention toward, the state of concentration," not an imported model of developmental stages. Welwood gave the second pole of failure a vivid Western name; this paper reconnects that name to the doctrinal coordinates it has always had within the tradition.

The one who historicized the rhetoric of experience. The scholar Robert Sharf has observed that the emphasis on "bare awareness" in modern meditation discourse is often the result of lifting meditative experience out of the integrated matrix of the threefold training to which it belonged, and then reconstructing it.¹³ This observation is of great use in holding one of this paper's lines: concentration (samādhi) is not equal to the "mindfulness" construct fashioned in the sense of modern psychology. What is called "modern mindfulness" is a certain something that concentration becomes once it has been lifted out and reduced, not concentration itself. Sharf's insight helps this paper pin down the distinction — he historicized the formation of modern experiential rhetoric. But what Sharf does is a historical and rhetorical inquiry; he does not give the test this paper is concerned with, namely that concentration, once severed from wisdom, breaks open in two opposite directions (relishing and construing-as-sagehood). That the unhooking of experiential rhetoric is a real doctrinal erosion — on this this paper sees with Sharf; what this paper adds is how that unhooking shows up, on the axis of concentration, as two opposed vectors.

The one who criticized instrumentalization. Another commentator has sharply criticized the trend by which contemporary meditation is instrumentalized and co-opted as a means of raising productivity.¹⁴ The critique is itself accurate — to take the calm of concentration as a measurable output that can be slotted into an efficiency schedule is indeed a kind of instrumentalization. This paper agrees with this critique on the point that "instrumentalization is a real distortion." But this paper does not take this commentator's lever: his analytic lever is political economy (tracing the trend to some socio-economic structure), and this paper deliberately does not travel that road, and deliberately names no particular movement, product, or organization — what this paper does is a structural doctrinal diagnosis, not cultural criticism. This paper reconnects the phenomenon of "instrumentalization" to its root within concentration: that is, relishing (the "flavour" established in §II), the contemporary version of "because they relish concentration so deeply, they cannot seek prajñā."

Statement of distinct contribution. So far as this paper is aware, Welwood named one pole of failure and stood on the axis of psychotherapy, Sharf historicized experiential rhetoric, and the critic of instrumentalization stood on the axis of political economy; but no Western monograph has yet read "concentration as tool" and "spiritual bypassing" — these two seemingly opposed modern failures — as the two opposed vectors of the one ancient error of "concentration severed from wisdom," nor pointed out that the tradition prescribes for both the same one medicine: the return to prajñā. This synthesis is where this paper's contribution lies.

VI. Conclusion

The core finding of this paper may be restated in a sentence: the moderns' treating concentration as a tool of emotional regulation and productivity, and their using concentration for spiritual bypassing, these two seemingly opposed failures, are in truth the contemporary terminal displays of the one ancient error of "concentration severed from wisdom" breaking open in two opposite directions — the former over-valuing the "bliss" of the state of concentration and so relishing it, the latter over-valuing the "sign" of the state and so construing it as sagehood and giving rise to the conceit of over-attainment. And the tradition, far before these two modern names appeared, had already double-diagnosed this illness under "relished dhyāna" and "blind attainment," and prescribed the one medicine that treats both poles at once: discerning wisdom. The Móhē zhǐguān's line "the Distinctive Dharmas alone retain some discerning wisdom — neither relished nor blindly attained" holds both poles and points to the one medicine, the most distilled statement of this whole diagnosis.

What this medicine points toward is a boundary this series planted from its very opening. The Buddha cultivated, by his own effort, the deepest concentrations of the formless realm, yet judged that "this Dharma does not lead to knowledge, does not lead to awakening, does not lead to nirvāṇa," and let them go.¹² Pure, isolated concentration, however deep, is not the ultimate. The two failures this paper diagnoses come, in the end, of forgetting this boundary: taking concentration itself for a place to settle into for a long stay (relishing), or for a destination already reached (over-attainment). Concentration is not the terminus; concentration must return to prajñā. How this road of "concentration → wisdom" is walked to its end is the work of this part's closing paper; here the matter is only pointed at, not unfolded.

What, then, does this paper leave for today's field of practice? Not a set of techniques for "how to sit so as not to relish" — that is not the work of a diagnostic paper, nor what this paper has to give. What it leaves is a mirror: when you find that you have made the cushion a stress-relief button to be picked up and put down at will, or find that you are using that interior quiet to dodge some matter that ought to be faced, this mirror reminds you — these are not two ailments but two faces of one fissure, and the name of that fissure is "concentration parted from wisdom."

A question is left for the reader, and for the next paper: if discerning wisdom is the shared remedy of both poles, then in what sense must concentration "return" to prajñā such that it neither loses the deep stillness of concentration nor falls to either end of relishing and blind attainment? The road the tradition gives is gathered up precisely in five characters of the Móhē zhǐguān —

neither relished nor blindly attained.

To be parted from both poles is exactly the effect of discerning wisdom.

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Primary Source Index

Short	Full Title	Number	Translator / Author
Dà zhìdù lùn	Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom	T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗	Nāgārjuna (attrib.), trans. Kumārajīva (Later Qin)
Madhyama-āgama	Middle-Length Discourses	T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Gautama Saṃghadeva (Eastern Jin)
Móhē zhǐguān	The Great Calming and Contemplation	T1911《摩訶止觀》T46, No. 1911Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 594 CE)Tiantai 四種三昧 — frame for the 常行三昧 buddha-circumambulation practice.View on CBETA online reader ↗	Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding (Sui)
Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra	Great Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra	T0220《大般若波羅蜜多經(第1卷-第200卷)》T5, No. 220View on CBETA online reader ↗	trans. Xuanzang (Tang)
Yǒngjiā jí	Collected Works of Yongjia	T2013	Xuanjue (Tang)

The Yogācārabhūmi (fourfold formula of over-attainment, by reference), the prajñā critique of craving-and-abiding-in-the-flavour-of-concentration (P16), the full catalogue of construing-as-sagehood (P21), the Buddha's relinquishing of the formless attainments (P02 / P31), and Yongjia's upekṣā-equipoise (P26) are all carried by reference; their numbers are not re-entered in this index.

References

• Sharf, Robert H. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." Numen 42, no. 3 (1995): 228–283.
• Sharf, Robert H. "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)." Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2015): 470–484.
• Welwood, John. Toward a Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Psychotherapy, and the Path of Personal and Spiritual Transformation. Boston: Shambhala, 2000.

Cross-Reference

• SAMĀDHI P16, The Prajñā Critique of Craving-and-Abiding in the Samādhi of Flavour: the prajñā critique of relishing-and-abiding-in-concentration is its home ground — the present paper takes it as a classical precursor of the first failure (relishing / concentration as tool), by reference, without restating.
• SAMĀDHI P21 (the fifty skandha-māras): the full enumeration of the states within concentration "construed as sagehood" and mistaken for sagely realization is its home ground — the present paper takes "the conceit of over-attainment / construing as sagehood" as the doctrinal coordinate of the second failure (spiritual bypassing), without cataloguing the signs.
• SAMĀDHI P02, The Rose-Apple Tree and the Two Teachers / P31 (the closing paper), The Inward Gate Reopened: the boundary of the Buddha's relinquishing of the formless attainments as "not leading to nirvāṇa" (P02 establishes the archetype) and the making-good of "concentration's return to prajñā" (P31, the volume's close) — the present paper cites only the line "not leading to nirvāṇa" as a boundary anchor; the road of return awaits the final paper.
• SAMĀDHI P26, Concentration and Wisdom Not-Two: the full mechanism by which Yongjia reconciles concentration and wisdom through "upekṣā" (equipoise), keeping concentration from one-sided sinking, is its home ground — the present paper takes only the line "concentration grown long sinks" as a diagnostic anchor for the blind-attainment pole.

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Paper: SAMĀDHI-P29 · Two Failure Modes: The Calm-Tech Chase and the Spiritual Bypass · SAMĀDHI · Part IX · Modern Diagnosis and the Return to Prajñā Author: 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · Project: 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · Series: The Six Practice Gates (六行門) License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 CBETA collation: Citations are verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka — the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom (Nāgārjuna attrib., trans. Kumārajīva of the Later Qin, T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗: fascicle 56, "because they relish concentration so deeply, they cannot seek prajñā," p. 0459b; fascicle 91, "mostly relish the bliss of concentration … hard to convert," p. 0704c); the Madhyama-āgama (trans. Gautama Saṃghadeva of the Eastern Jin, T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗: fascicle 25, the gratification–danger–escape triad "What is the gratification of desires? …," p. 0584c; fascicle 56, "Discourse on Rāma," "this Dharma does not lead to knowledge, to awakening, to nirvāṇa," p. 0776c); the Móhē zhǐguān (Zhiyi, recorded by Guanding of the Sui, T1911《摩訶止觀》T46, No. 1911Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 594 CE)Tiantai 四種三昧 — frame for the 常行三昧 buddha-circumambulation practice.View on CBETA online reader ↗: fascicle 1, "the four dhyānas are root, blind-attainment, and relished dhyāna … neither relished nor blindly attained," p. 0118a; "not what the blind-attainment dhyāna-master or the text-reciting Dharma-master can know," p. 0052b); the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (trans. Xuanzang of the Tang, T0220《大般若波羅蜜多經(第1卷-第200卷)》T5, No. 220View on CBETA online reader ↗: fascicle 451, "the conceit of over-attainment — claiming as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized," p. 0278a); and the Collected Works of Yongjia (Xuanjue of the Tang, T2013: "cultivate concentration alone, and concentration grown long sinks," p. 0388a). Volume and page follow the Taishō. Welwood and Sharf are cited by paraphrase only; the critic of instrumentalization remains un-named. Repository: https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates

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Concentration is a gate, not a room: where its bliss is relished it becomes a room one settles into, and where its signs are taken for the path it becomes a destination falsely reached — and against both, one and the same lamp: neither relished nor blindly attained.

Footnotes

1. Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom (Dà zhìdù lùn), fascicle 56: "because they relish concentration so deeply, they cannot seek prajñā," treating how the form-realm gods, though they had heard the Dharma and roused the aspiration, are held fast by the bliss of concentration. T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0459b11. ↩

2. Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, fascicle 91: in the form realm beings "mostly relish the bliss of concentration … and, having no mind of aversion, are hard to convert." T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0704c06. ↩

3. The prajñā critique drawn upon by craving-and-abiding-in-the-flavour-of-concentration is treated in a separate paper of this series (P16); here only its one face, as an ancient instance of the "concentration as tool" failure, is taken, not unfolded. ↩

4. Madhyama-āgama (Zhōng āhán jīng), fascicle 25, the threefold test of gratification–danger–escape: "What is the gratification of desires? What is the danger of desires? What is the escape from desires? …" T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0584c22. The Saṃyukta-āgama's group on the five aggregates of clinging carries a corresponding triad of "gratification, danger, departure"; the page here follows the Madhyama-āgama, the Saṃyukta-āgama parallel being referenced by its group. ↩

5. Móhē zhǐguān, fascicle 1: "The four dhyānas are root, blind-attainment, and relished dhyāna; common to ordinary and sage alike, gained by slight cultivation. The Distinctive Dharmas alone retain some discerning wisdom — neither relished nor blindly attained." T1911《摩訶止觀》T46, No. 1911Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 594 CE)Tiantai 四種三昧 — frame for the 常行三昧 buddha-circumambulation practice.View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0118a17. ↩

6. Móhē zhǐguān, fascicle 1, on the depth of the tenfold contemplation: "not what the blind-attainment dhyāna-master or the text-reciting Dharma-master can know." T1911《摩訶止觀》T46, No. 1911Zhiyi (Sui, ca. 594 CE)Tiantai 四種三昧 — frame for the 常行三昧 buddha-circumambulation practice.View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0052b16. ↩

7. Collected Works of Yongjia (Yǒngjiā jí): "Cultivate concentration alone, and concentration grown long sinks; study wisdom alone, and wisdom in excess stirs the mind." T2013, p. 0388a04. ↩

8. The full mechanism by which Yongjia reconciles concentration and wisdom through "upekṣā" (equipoise, 優畢叉) so that neither is one-sided is treated in a separate paper of this series (P26); here only the line "concentration grown long sinks" is taken as a diagnostic anchor for the blind-attainment pole. ↩

9. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (Dà bōrě bōluómìduō jīng), fascicle 451: "Seeing other beings, they give rise to the conceit of over-attainment — claiming as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized." T0220《大般若波羅蜜多經(第1卷-第200卷)》T5, No. 220View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0278a19. The Yogācārabhūmi (fascicle 38) fourfold formula of over-attainment — "claiming as done what is undone, as attained what is unattained, as touched what is untouched, as realized what is unrealized" — may be compared; the page here follows the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra. ↩

10. The danger of "construing as sagehood" (mistaking the states within concentration for sagely realization) the tradition has elsewhere set out in exhaustive enumeration and analysis; this series treats the full catalogue in a dedicated paper (P21), and the signs are not enumerated here one by one — only "the conceit of over-attainment / construing as sagehood" is taken as the doctrinal coordinate of the spiritual-bypassing pole. ↩ ↩²

11. John Welwood, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Boston: Shambhala, 2000. (The phrase "spiritual bypassing" was coined by Welwood in the 1980s.) ↩

12. The Buddha, having himself tasted the formless attainments, judged that "this Dharma does not lead to knowledge, does not lead to awakening, does not lead to nirvāṇa," and so let them go, establishing the boundary that "pure concentration is not the ultimate"; see the Madhyama-āgama, "Discourse on Rāma" (羅摩經), T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, p. 0776c. This episode and the complete synthesis of the "concentration → wisdom" return are treated in dedicated papers of this series (P02 establishes the archetype, P31 makes its resolution good); this paper cites only this one line as a boundary anchor, and does not unfold it. ↩ ↩²

13. Robert H. Sharf, "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience," Numen 42, no. 3 (1995); see also his "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)," Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2015). ↩

14. The critique of instrumentalization stands on the axis of political economy; this paper does not take its lever, nor name any particular movement or product, but engages it only on the single point that "instrumentalization is a real distortion," and reconnects it to relishing as something internal to concentration (P16). The historical formation of modern mindfulness and the full critical apparatus surrounding it (its formation-history, the modern translation of wrong livelihood, the joy-to-pliancy mechanism, and so on) are treated as an integrated whole in a paper on another axis of this project; this paper engages them lightly, by way of angular separation (the two-vector reading on the axis of concentration), and does not restate those theses. ↩