Wisdom Wide and Deep: Jhana and Insight

Shaila Catherine (imsb.org), Wisdom Quarterly

Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana
Wisdom Wide and Deep is an extended introduction to an in-depth training. It emphasizes the application of concentrated attention to profound and liberating insight.

With calm, tranquility, and composure -- established through a practical experience of deep concentration (jhana) -- meditators are able to halt the seemingly endless battle against meditation hindrances, eliminate distraction, and facilitate a penetrative insight into the subtle nature of matter and mind.

It was for this reason that the Buddha frequently exhorted his students, "Develop concentration, for one who is concentrated understands things as they really are."

Wisdom Wide and Deep follows and amplifies the teachings in Shaila Catherine’s first book, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity.

Readers learn to develop this profound stability, sustain an in-depth examination of the nuances of mind and matter, and ultimately unravel deeply conditioned patterns that perpetuate suffering.

This is a practical guide, a fully detailed manual for dealing with the mind. It is sure to become a trusted companion for inner-explorers.

• Wisdom Quarterly can say without reservation that Shaila Catherine is an extraordinary teacher of the highest order, a consummate practitioner of the Buddha's instructions, and a rare treasure in the world. Her two books set right teachings that had long been upset. She has benefited tremendously by practicing under one of the world's greatest living Buddhist scholar-practitioners, the most venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw. We are not alone in our praise:
  

Praise from Buddhist authors and teachers

This is a handbook that respects both the ancient tradition and the needs of contemporary lay practitioners, without compromising either. Shaila Catherine presents the Buddha's teaching by blending scriptural references, personal examples, and timeless stories with detailed meditation instructions. More

—Pa Auk Sayadaw, author of The Workings of Kamma

In Wisdom Wide and Deep, Shaila Catherine has laid out a path of practice from the simplest beginnings to profound and subtle insights. Her writing is beautifully lucid, making accessible the inner depths of the Buddha's teachings. This book is a powerful inspiration both for those who would like a glimpse of..." More

—Joseph Goldstein, author of A Heart Full of Peace and One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism

Shaila’s new book converts theory to practice, ideas to application, knowledge about meditation to direct experience. She has written a manual in clear, practical language. It is an excellent follow up to her previous book, Focused and Fearless. The strength of Shaila’s new book is... More

—Christopher Titmuss, author of Light on Enlightenment and An Awakened Life

Shaila's book, Wisdom Wide and Deep is far more than just a handbook -- it is an in-depth, piece-by-piece examination of many of the specific teachings of jhana and insight. It is book that you will study, as opposed to sit down and read through. It is reference book that you will... More

—Phillip Moffitt, author of Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering.

Shaila Catherine has managed a difficult feat -- to be simultaneously encyclopedic and charming. Her extraordinary clarity and step-by-step approach will embolden some readers to attain jhanic absorption, while others may simply gain... More

—Kate Lila Wheeler, Dharma teacher and author of When Mountains Walked, editor of In This Very Life and The State of Mind Called Beautiful.

The whole spiritual path concerns attitudes and perspectives that we have on things. From there, actions spring up and life unfolds. Shaila Catherine leads us to a completely different way of seeing things by skillfully guiding us through an array of traditional Suttanta and Abhidhamma methods. The precision with which she... More

—Ven. U Jagara

Wisdom Wide and Deep is a clear and comprehensive account of a path of meditation leading to profound levels of concentration and insight. Based primarily on the teachings of the Burmese master Ven. Pa Auk Sayadaw, it also includes a helpful collection of references from classical Theravadan sources. Shaila Catherine has clearly... More

—Guy Armstrong, insight meditation teacher

All of us in our lives need to find the ways to cultivate a mind which is a friend -- calm, clear, insightful and pervaded with kindness. In this book Shaila Catherine has outlined an ancient way to train the mind in stillness and wise attention. More

—Christina Feldman, author of Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World

Meditating on Inner Light

Wisdom Quarterly
(Sammyundead/Flickr)

The "counterpart sign" (patibagha nimitta) is literally an inner light produced by prolonged attention in meditation. "Where attention goes energy flows" has become a popular slogan of the Law of Attraction movement. Nowhere is it more evident than during sitting practice.

We can worry ourselves sick by focusing on stimuli (thoughts, memories, ideas) that produces alarm. We can lull ourselves into fantasy by reflecting on the pleasant aspects of something. But the way of mindfulness is to take things just as they are without evaluating, judging, or resisting them.

Dispassionate observation leads to detachment and liberation, a temporary release of the heart from the burdens it takes as its own the rest of the time.

Gently, non-judgmentally, serenely bringing the mind back to the meditation object again and again as many times as it wanders will eventually produce a meditation sign. Whether using the breath or a candle flame, an image of the Buddha or a photo (perhaps of oneself) to project loving-kindness (metta) towards are all suitable.

Why does the light not come, and what can be done to invite and encourage it?

First, it is necessary to establish oneself in VIRTUE (five or more precepts) so that the mind/heart are free from reproach. One neither has cause to worry about or regret what one has done or left undone.

Second, it is necessary to focus, collect, and CONCENTRATE the mind on a single object. This means purposely excluding all distractions and other concerns. This is when the light comes as a side effect of purification.

Third, the light itself is not important. But with it one is able to cultivate liberating insight called WISDOM. This is done by applying the mind on four "foundations."

• Tibetan approach to Four Foundations
• BOOK: The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
• Mahayana and the Four Foundations
  

The Buddha defines "Right View"

Translation and notes based on Maurice O'Walshe, translator, from The Connected Discourses (Samyutta Nikaya, SN 12:15), Wisdom Quarterly


SAVATTHI, Ancient India - [Ven. Kaccayana asked the Buddha:] "'Right view [Note 1], right view,' it is said, venerable sir. In what way is there right view?"

"Kaccayana, the world in general inclines to two extremes in view -- existence [2] and non-existence [3].

"But for one with highest wisdom [from the perspective of ultimate truth] who sees the arising of the world as it really is [4], 'non-existence of the world' does not occur.

"Likewise, for one who sees with highest wisdom the passing away of the world as it really is, 'existence of the world' does not occur.

"Kaccayana, the world, in general, grasps after systems and is imprisoned by dogmas [5]. But one [6] does not go along with that system-grasping, that mental obstinacy and dogmatic bias, does not grasp at it, does not affirm: 'This is my self.' [7]

"One knows without doubt or hesitation that whatever arises is merely dukkha [8], that what passes away is merely dukkha, and such knowledge is one's own, not depending on anyone else.

"This, Kaccayana, is what constitutes right view.

"'Everything exists [9],' this is one extreme [view]; 'nothing exists,' this is the other extreme. Avoiding both extremes the Tathagata [10] teaches a doctrine of the middle: Conditioned by ignorance are the formations... [as § 13]... So there comes about the arising of this entire mass of suffering.

"But from the complete fading away and cessation of ignorance, there comes the cessation of the formations, from the cessation of the formations comes the cessation of consciousness... So there comes about the complete cessation of this entire mass of suffering." Source

NOTES

1. Samma Ditthi: "Right Seeing," the first step of the Noble Eightfold Path, is also rendered "Right Understanding," but the connotations of this are too intellectual. The rendering "Right Views" (plural) is to be rejected, since it is not a matter of holding "views" (opinions), but of "seeing things as they really are."
2. Atthita: "is-ness," the theory of "Eternalism" (sassatavada), the view that the self/soul/ego survives death.
3. Natthita: "is-not-ness," the theory of "Annihilationism" (ucchedavaada), the view that the self/soul/ego is annihilated at death. All forms of materialism come under this term. See discussion in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of DN 1 in The All-Embracing Net of Views (cf. Note 51, pp. 30-33.)
4. Yathabhutam: cf n. 57.
5. What we might today call "ideologies" or "isms."
6. I take this to mean the person who sees "with the highest wisdom" mentioned above. Mrs. CAF Rhys Davids seems to have gone slightly astray here [in her translation of this text].
7. Cf. n. 32. Feer's edition of SN reads here "this is not myself" (atta na me ti), which would also make sense but is contradicted, not only in SA, but also when the story is repeated at III, 90.
8. The usual translation "suffering," always a makeshift, is inappropriate here. Dukkha in Buddhist usage refers to the inherent unsatisfactoriness and general insecurity of all conditioned existence.
9. Sabbam atthi. From the Sanskrit form of this expression, sarvam asti (though used in a slightly different sense) the Sarvastivadin school got its name. They held that dharmas existed in "three times," past, present, and future. It was mainly to this early school that the label Hinayana ("Lesser Career or Vehicle") was applied and later illegitimately transferred to the Theravada (see n. 77).
10. Lit. probably either "Thus come" tatha-agata or "Thus gone (beyond)" (tatha-gata): the Buddha's usual way of referring to himself. For other meanings see The All-Embracing Net of Views (n. 51), pp. 50-53, pp. 331-344.

Buddhism on Campus "Wakes Up"

Carlin Green, Wisdom Quarterly, US.wkup.org, Plumvillage.org, UK.wkup.org

I'm quite busy as school starts again. My personal experience with insight-meditation scholar-practitioner Sayalay Susila is brief but has really impacted me. I met her a month before the vipassana retreat she conducted at The Bhavana Society, West Virginia. I was at her public talks around Washington, DC. Somehow I ended up being the youngest person in attendance.

Later, when I was asking Sister Susila a question, she instead asked me my age. She told me it was inspiring to her to see someone so young practicing and wanting to learn about the Dharma.

us.wkup.org (indiegogo.com)

Honestly, I have no groundbreaking insights, no inspiring anecdotes, no moving stories of dazzling lights in absorption. I'm just eager to learn, and I was in the right place at the right time to meet a Buddhist nun who knows so much.

It was beneficial for me to attend Buddhist talks in public libraries staring at Mark Twain and a raft of magazines about dieting and cooking, dating and being happy, economic news and war. It was beneficial because she spoke about things never heard before -- the "Exposition of the Elements" (Dhātuvibhanga Sutta) and the Five Aggregates in her talks.

• The Buddha's Exposition of the Elements
  

These two topics formed the basis of the insight-meditation (vipassana) instructions she gave us during the retreat, so I was glad I had been familiarized with them beforehand. If I could encourage others to hear such thing, what a change it might make in the country. But I'm only in college; what can I do?

Something To Do: Waking Up
What should we do when we feel overwhelmed by despair, despair coming from inside of us and despair about the world's situation? How can we find the energy, the strength to do something about it?

Together, there is a way (True Dedication/Vimeo)

Speaking at Plum Village in 2011, Thay uses the Buddha's own life to encourage us. Youth, let's nourish ourselves with the joyful energy of sisterhood/brotherhood and the strength of a clear aspiration to do something helpful.

• VIDEO: See the full talk at Plum Village Online Monastery

What a Beautiful Tree! Is that Lust?

Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly response to Figleafforum.com
Bodhisattva under a redwood tree, Sequoia Nat'l Park, CA (AllegoryImaging/Flickr.com)

"Lust" (kama- or raga-chanda, sensual-craving) is a strong desire to possess something. (Desire can seem neutral, but in Buddhism it is translating terms with a negative aspect since there are certainly "good" desires like the will and zeal to realize the liberating truth).

Christians and Muslims have a similar word in is covet. Christians learn that lust and covetousness are "sins" often without considering how or why. What about admiration, the wish to understand, the desire to find harmony? Love, compassion, altruism, and impartiality all express a desire but with a free and happy heart: It does not possess the object of our admiration.

Of course, it is impossible to "possess" things. But what is possible are the harmful mental actions of grasping and clinging, obsession and attachment. The heart is unable to let go. It binds itself. It does not have the object of its craving, yet it does have all the worries and costs of possession.

In a conventional sense, a person may be described as being possessed by objects one clings to. But who -- other than the Five Aggregates -- is clinging? Ultimately, "we" cling to the "factors of clinging." Those factors are called the Five Aggregates. But ultimate truth eludes us.

The title of this article may seem absurd; the story behind the article is even stranger. Our nude Christian friends at Fig Leaf Forum first asked the question in a theistic context. It was like an episode of the Daily Show's "This Week in God." It's beautiful the way things are explicable even with different assumptions about this world.

Do beautiful objects in our perceptual field -- like trees, sunsets, newly nubile gals/guys/ponies -- come about as acts of heavenly Creation or evolve along Evolutionary lines? There's truth in both views, except the polarities won't budge a whit. They thereby turn a blind eye to what is real and what is not. Taking sides is easy, reconciling why the sides exist is less easy but more beneficial. "It's a trap!" we can Admiral Ackbar and Cherry say. Both views are a trap.

No peace is coming between camps, just a few conversions, mostly of sciencey types turning churchy. The truth stands apart, and there would be much more peace if we could see what is right about each pole rather than dismissing one side as kooks and lauding ourselves as the great non-kooks. It's kooky. Keep your view, but keep all eyes open and investigating. Any bias, even a well intended one, causes us to look for confirmation not information. It's our confirmation seeking tendency.

If a particularly stunning tree or model or mountain or magazine cover comes into view, there is great pleasure in taking it in and enjoying its proportions, symmetry, interactive bits, and pleasing fullness (abstract concepts explaining why something strikes us as beautiful that, for less abstract thinkers might just be termed, oh who knows, "God's" handiwork).

Musicians appreciate well performed works and composing skills, jewelers are impressed by well set gems, nature buffs love natural (fractal, Fibonacci, golden mean) beauty. And the wise derive joy from truth, however counterintuitive the Truth may be.

As human beings we find other human beings most beautiful of all -- attractive, creative, evolved, faithful, or intelligent, it hardly matters.

When the mind/heart first hits upon the idea of possessing, we're in line for disappointment and dissatisfaction (dukkha). What if we could be mindful instead, mindfulness being fully aware without thinking, judging, evaluating, planning, or measuring. "It is what it is," people foolishly say, but there's great wisdom in this foolishness. Of course, it itself doesn't say anything, yet something is being said.

Bare awareness means not becoming attached or enmeshed but just seeing, just knowing, just accepting, just allowing. It's very peaceful. It allows the right brain (our silent co-consciousness) to have a say. Of course, it won't speak, but it will communicate with feelings and a bodily sense we react to. ("We" being the left brain thinking portion that thinks, judges, and tries to possess). "Let it be, let it be," the Beatle said.

Will lust help or harm? We can have all that is, but we can possess none of it. What will we choose to try to do?

To carry this analogy further, beauty appears in all sorts of ways. Beauty is not to blame when lust arises. It's not even the reason for admiration. If it were, how would Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats ever be freed from lust (craving, thirst, bondage, disappointment)?

Objects there, responses here. The world is the world; the heart/mind looking out on it can choose to notice this about it or that (the beautiful or the disappointment inherent in it), and then choose to either attempt to possess it or not.

Buddhism is very pleasing because it syncs up with psychology. And we modern Americans love all things psychology. It's no coincidence so many psychologists, therapists, neuroscientists, and the like are Buddhists. The Buddha focused on our internal experience of the external world far more than he spent talking about physics. As interesting and elegant as physics is, it can hardly hold an atomic candle to cognition, perception, emotion, motivation...


The Buddha gave physics its due ("form" means materiality, fine and gross, basic and derivative, four interdependent qualities or characteristics of material bodies). But he elaborated on our experience of the physical by giving psychology the lions share: sensations, perceptions, volitions, and consciousness are what beings cling to and what they can be freed from clinging to.

That freedom comes with enlightenment, is brought on by enlightenment, so much so that many well intentioned teachers and even monastics think nirvana and bodhi are synonyms. But bodhi is enlightenment, insight, awakening, whereas nirvana is complete freedom, peace, the end of suffering.

Oh to be free! Sex is sex. But clinging, attachment, obsession, possession, being consumed instead of consuming, that's just sad. Naturally, in the Sense Sphere (kama-loka) we like sense objects. That's normal. Is it normal to imagine we can "possess" or "keep" or "own" the composed and decaying object of person, be it tree or person, wealth or self?

All are falling away every moment. And in the meantime, we miss what is available -- enlightenment and freedom.

We can't live without trees. Maybe some people can. But we can't. The trees, the trees, rooted in earth, reaching for the sky. Casting shade, dropping figs (and fig leaves), holding my back while I meditate. What meditation? I'm mindful. There is no straining in my striving. I'm just watching. Eventually I'm seeing things as they truly are. Ahhh. No words for it. The right brain knows. It's the left brain that conceives and tries to capture just the right wording.

But completely "detached from sensual objects, O meditators, detached from unwholesome states of mind/heart, a meditator enters into the first absorption, which is accompanied by applied attention and sustained attention, is born of detachment [withdrawal of the senses, samadhi, intensified-concentration opposing workaday dissolute-distraction] and filled with rapture and happiness" [the Buddha defining the first "absorption" or in Pali jhana, Sanskrit dhyana, Japanese zen, Chinese ch'an, Tibetan samten].

Turning this mind to objects of insight -- vipassana practices -- is suddenly fruitful. Loving-kindness! The breath having become a nimitta takes me to equanimity. The factors-of-absorption (jhana-anga) become my best friends. As such where have "my"

• sensual desire (lust)
• ill will
• sleepiness and laziness
• restlessness and worries
• doubts

gone? Hindrances fall and opposing states come in peace:

• applied attention (on my object of meditation)
  
• sustained attention
• rapture
• happiness
• concentration.

Turning the wheel (cycle) of "Dependent Origination" in mind, it becomes clear that this is the way to enlightenment. One persisting in this practice, strengthening absorption then applying that laser focus to insight practices, can see freedom in the distance.

Going, going, going beyond, going altogether beyond, O what an awakening, so it is!

It's a nice mantra not learned rote and repeated with bell and drum but uttered spontaneously -- as words fail and contentment overtakes me.

• Thanks to the editors at Wisdom Quarterly for helping me putting into words.

Lust is discussed in Fig Leaf Forum revisited by Mark Roberts in a debate published in Issue 55/56 of their newsletter. This article is responding to Issue 59.

Fig Leaf Forum realizes that "Lust is a problem of the heart, not of the mind." But in Buddhism heart is mind (citta). Lust is a problem of both. If we were speaking the same technical English, we would agree. Lust does not help perception; it twists (kinks, perverts, distorts) it. "Love others as ourselves," yes! Love everyone! Choose lust at your peril. For what is possible here and what impossible is often found out too late. What is possible? Freedom from the bonds of craving.What is impossible? Actually possessing and controlling what we crave.

How to Know? (MP3)

Wisdom Quarterly, Wikipedia, Bhante G

There is a word most of us never hear but that occupies us almost every waking minute -- epistemology. It is the investigation of, in brief, "how we know what we know." How do we come to conclusions about what is true and what is not? We have implicit theories of knowledge whether we like it or not. By bringing them to the surface and making them explicit, we can see if it is a sensible process likely to lead us to truth.

Epistemology comes from the Greek epistēmē, meaning "knowledge or science," and logos or -logy, meaning "the study of").

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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and limitations of knowledge. It addresses the questions:

• What is knowledge?
• How is knowledge acquired?
• How do we know what we know?

In short, it is the search for truth. Much of the debate in this field of study has focused on analyzing (taking apart, breaking down, or deconstruction) the nature of knowledge and how it relates to notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. How does the Buddha and Buddhism approach this search or quest. The highest good is finding truth, and the highest truth is nirvana. But nirvana is not a thing (noun) so much as a process (verb). It is not to be found by thought but to be experienced. How do we find the way to nirvana or a teacher?

The Canki Sutta
Bhante Gunaratana (BhavanaSociety.org)

In this discourse, the Buddha gives the student Canki (pronounced "chunky") instructions on investigating the truth and anyone who claims to be a teacher of the Dharma: looking for states such as greed, hatred, and delusion in them. This path of training is explained as leading from placing verifiable-confidence in a teacher -- by visiting and paying respect, to listening and hearing the Dharma, to memorizing it and examining its meaning -- which leads to gaining reflective acceptance of the teaching. Then comes the arising of zeal, the application of will, scrutinizing, striving, and finally, realizing and seeing the ultimate Truth by penetrating it with wisdom.

"I do not perceive even one other thing, O recluses, that when undeveloped and uncultivated entails as much suffering as the mind. The mind when undeveloped and uncultivated entails great suffering”
- The Buddha (AN 1:9).

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Recorded: 9-28-07