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The Core of Historical Buddhist Practice: Meditation of Bliss · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

0:02
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Curious Mind
0:05
podcast. My name is Gabriel Ellis, I'm a
0:07
psychologist, psychotherapist, and I got my doctorate degree in
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Buddhist studies. And today I want to complete the
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small series that I made about original Buddhism.
0:23
The first episode I tried to give you the historical and
0:26
cultural context in which the Buddha came up with his
0:30
teaching. And the second episode I focused
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on what I see as the basis and the fundamental aspect or
0:40
attitude of Buddhism, namely the teaching that nothing has a self
0:45
nature, that everything, every phenomenon comes up as a result
0:51
of conditions that suited this phenomenon to arise.
0:55
And when then when these conditions fall apart and also
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this phenomenon falls apart, and a direct consequence of this is
1:05
that we don't put we, what I mean, we the audience of the
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Buddha, which are the monks and nuns who followed him, that they
1:13
don't put the faith that they have of the spiritual
1:16
aspirations into anything that is conditioned, be it something
1:20
mundane as central pleasure and wealth and money and so on, or
1:25
something that is more spiritual, spiritually elevated.
1:29
Which is when because of certain conditions, I reach a meditation
1:33
state that feels calm and sublime and happy and so on.
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Also in that we don't put our faith, we continue to be
1:39
dispassionate about anything that is conditioned, including
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our deeply rooted identifications with the
1:46
so-called 55 Khandas, those different dimensions of
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attachment or identification that I mentioned last time.
1:55
So regarding all of these, we are dispassionate and order then
2:00
to progress and to elevate the mind so that in the end, the
2:05
goal of complete liberation occurs.
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Today, I want to go more into the details.
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Last time I told you that I focused on the 1st aspect of the
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Noble hateful path, which was Right views.
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And right views is basically a shorthand for the teachings of
2:24
the Buddha about these fundamental things, of how we
2:28
have to regard and how do we have to understand the mind, its
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natural inclination to attachments, and to see the
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phenomena of the mind in a very Contra intuitive way, namely as
2:43
not having their own essence being based on conditions.
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Now let's look at the other aspects of the eightfold path.
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The second one is right thought, the third one right speech, then
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right action, right livelihood, right effort, right meditation,
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and then the right unification of the mind.
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The right meditation as sati, which I will come to talk about
3:11
later, and the unification of the mind is samadhi.
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Now most of those aspects are not really interested to me
3:21
today because they are not originally Buddhist.
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To have a way of thinking, a way of speaking, a way of acting, to
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have a certain kind of livelihood, to put some effort
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into the spiritual training is more or less common to all
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spiritual traditions today and back then as well.
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Just to mention again, the one that we most have most
3:45
information about, the vaginas, the Niigantas, they still exist
3:50
today and they also have a code of ethics focusing much stricter
3:57
in a certain way than Buddhism on non violence.
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What is interesting to us is a little bit right effort and then
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the sati, what I call medication, and then the
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unification of the mind which is samadhi.
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To circle back a little bit to the last topic where I
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highlighted the dependent origination, I want to emphasize
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that this understanding of depending or dependent
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origination or dependent emergence is the dependent
4:34
emergence of suffering. It's not the dependent emergence
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of everything. If that would be it, then there
4:39
would be no liberation possible. So dependent on the origination
4:44
is the origination of suffering. Coming now to the central
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aspect, what I think of the Buddhist practice, it is leading
4:55
aside ethics and so on. It is meditation, and I will
5:00
highlight why that is. Meditation is the place, the
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practice, the setup where the final liberation takes place, or
5:11
as a consequence of which the final liberation takes place.
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And the texts are so clear about that, that we have no reason to
5:22
challenge this understanding of Buddhism.
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Now, why is it that meditation is so difficult?
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And why is that we Westerners, when we think of Buddhism, we
5:34
immediately go to the practice of meditation?
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Why is that a misunderstanding because the ability to meditate
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successfully, and I put this a little bit in quotes
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successfully, but in order to to reach the and achieve the
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absorptions of meditation, the fruit of meditation, we need to
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prepare the mind and here comes in the hubris and the
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overestimation of the typical western mindset.
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We think that as soon as we have intellectually grasped a
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concept, when someone has described to us how meditation
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practice, for example, works, then we can just sit down and
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start a practice. And then eventually we should
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come to the conclusion a little bit like in philosophy.
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But just as in philosophy, we cannot sit down and, you know,
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without any preparation. Read texts like of Plato or of
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Cunt or of Hegel or whoever you like.
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It needs prerequisites. We need to establish a certain
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way of thinking, a resoluteness of logical rigor, for example,
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for many philosophical texts. So for someone who is not
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prepared for it, they will open up the book, read something and
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it will make no sense for them, and then they will think that
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it's stupid, overcomplicated or something.
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In this of this sort, and similarly and even much, much,
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much more so, the practice of meditation depends on a certain
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set up, on conditions. There are several terms for that
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in the Buddhist Pali language. One concept is that of a gradual
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path, a gradual development of the spiritual practitioner.
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It starts with ethics. So ethics something.
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Ethics is something that might not be unique to Buddhism, but
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nonetheless, it is something that ascetics or aspiring
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ascetics have to go through in order to prepare the mind to,
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for example, rid itself of the most crude violent impulses that
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it has the emotional impulses to misdirect our thoughts, to
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hijack our our intentions, for example.
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For all of that, proper ethics is important, The Buddhist
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variation of what proper ethic means.
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And here they disagreed a little bit with the other spiritual
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directions of the time. For the Buddha, proper ethics is
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that when thinking, when acting, when communicating, I make sure
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that I do it in a way that doesn't harm me and doesn't harm
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others. So this is basically how the
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texts describe the approach to ethics.
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And next, preparation is moderation and lifestyle
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restraint when it comes to central pleasures and to
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establish an awareness in daily life with a strong emphasis on
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my body awareness to understand at any given moment.
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And of course, this is a strong high ideal to understand in
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every given moment what my body is doing, how it moves, how I
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direct my attention, when I direct the attention into the
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body, how I'm looking back and forth, how I swallow, how I
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defecate, all of those bodily functions to see them as they
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are in a very sober way and recognizing what is happening
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with my body and the way that I utilize it.
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This is already a pretty good setup for what then comes later,
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the meditation practice. There is a step that is
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somewhere in between kind of the basic awareness, the practice of
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basic awareness, and the very specific meditation techniques,
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and these are called the Brahma viharas.
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This is the divine abodes as they are translated in English.
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Brahma is basically, to put it simply, the highest Indian
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divinity. And the Bihar is a location and
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abode a place. So this is a practice that is
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supposed to bring to the spiritual practitioner to a
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place that is usually reserved for divine beings, the highest
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divine beings. What the what these do
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basically, let me just tell you the four major practices.
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One is meta loving kindness. The next one is compassion.
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The third one is sympathetic joy, to be joyful with others.
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And the 4th one is equanimity. I will come to this equanimity
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later, but basically this is the establishment, the cultivation
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of qualities of heart, and as it is described in the texts they
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provide, when they're fully established, a cheto vimutti,
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which is a liberation of consciousness.
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This we have to understand as temporary.
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This is not the final liberation of what is then termed Nirvana
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or Nirvana, but it is so powerful that it liberates the
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heart, it liberates consciousness and is often
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described in such a way that it seems to be an ideal setup for
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the higher meditations and for liberation in general.
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It is sometimes not clear if this is entirely Buddhist, but
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it seems to me from the tech studies that it's actually quite
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a Buddhist approach to aid to support the practitioner in the
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quest. And we know from Thai Buddhism,
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for example, they have a forest tradition there where a certain
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group or tradition of monastics tried to emulate the life of the
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Buddha by leaving the monasteries and basically living
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in the forests and very simple ways, harsh conditions.
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And some of those teachers in this forest tradition, they
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taught meta loving kindness, those hard qualities to the
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monastics so that under the harsh conditions they have a
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protection. So we can imagine that there are
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wild animals in the forest and monastics are not allowed to
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defend themselves physically. But what they can do is that
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they can develop a heart of loving kindness that radiates so
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much. So they say that wild animals
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would not attack them because they would basically sense that
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there is no danger coming from this person or being otherwise
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pacified by their radiance. So it has this double function
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of liberating the mind and of serving as a protector of body
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and mind. By the way, the way that is this
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meditations are described is that the heart quality of, for
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example, loving kindness is so established that the heart
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starts to radiate to all directions equally.
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So this is a high accomplishment.
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This is by no means an easy feat.
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This is just as demanding as the other meditation techniques.
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OK, so we had ethics, which is not particularly Buddhist but is
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necessary for an aesthetic. There is moderation, sense,
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restraint and awareness during daily life activities,
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especially with a focus on the body.
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Also that might not be originally Buddhist but is
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necessary for an aesthetic lifestyle that is geared towards
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a final liberation on the Buddhist path.
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Then we have this quite specific Buddhist meditation practice of
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the Divine Abodes Rama Vihara, and the most prominent of them
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is loving kindness. And now we come to the realm of
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meditation, which includes 2 terms, mostly the giant Janaz.
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These are the levels of absorption and samadhi is the
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general term for the mind that is unified.
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And after that, according to the text, there is the full
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liberation or cessation or Nirvana.
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Now, what is the thing that stands out in Buddhist
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meditation? Because the other traditions
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were meditating in a way as well, We have to assume, and we
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have some hints, that they were doing spiritual practices.
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They did, of course, they did something with the mind, for
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example, the harsh ascetics, of which the Jinas were basically
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part of this camp. In order to endure all this
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pain, all the fasting, of course you have to do something with
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the mind. It needs resoluteness, it needs
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a harshness, it needs a strength and also mental qualities that
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enable the people to do these harsh things.
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So we can call that meditation. What was unique about the Buddha
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and his approach to meditation, what is unique about him is that
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he understood that harshness and self, self punishment and this
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extreme pharmaceuticism is not conducive to the spiritual path.
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Quite the opposite. He discovered that joy is a
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necessary motor, a necessary catalyst for the development in
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spiritual meditation. This has a term in the Buddhist
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language, it's called the middle path and it describes that the
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Buddha understands that there is something else, a third thing
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besides the extremes of central pleasure which which basically
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characterizes lay life like fame, money, central
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gratifications, sexuality, food and all the other joys.
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So this is seen as an extreme. The other extreme is the self
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mortification that the ascetics at the Buddhist time practiced
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and you understood. There is a third element.
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Ascetics are afraid of pleasure probably because it reminds them
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of the the worldly pleasure, the mundane pleasures of laypeople,
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and they're afraid to slip away from their ascetic ascetic
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practices if they give in to their sensual pleasures.
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So they have a tendency to be quite afraid of those and to
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shun those and to criticize those.
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Here's a quote from the Buddha that shows basically the shift
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in his attitude. Now, we don't have to assume
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that he literally said this, but something like this must have
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occurred. The quote goes like this.
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Why am I afraid of that pleasure?
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For it has nothing to do with sensual pleasures or unskillful
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qualities. This is the description of the
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Buddha describing the meditation that goes along joy, the
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experience of joy. And then he reflects and asks
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himself, why am I afraid of this, implying that he and other
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ascetics are or were afraid of this.
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And so he questions this implicit dogma, this fear of any
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kind of pleasure, rejects it, follows it, and thus develops
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the higher meditations that then lay the foundation for his
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liberation. He then further, he further
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reflects once he discovers that this is good for him, that he
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wants to develop this quote. I can't achieve that pleasure
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with a body so excessively emaciated.
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So this is basically putting him in into a practice of extreme
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fasting and asceticism. And then the understanding, I
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cannot even sustain the energy of such pleasure.
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I cannot keep it, I cannot achieve it if my body is so
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weakened. And so according to the mini
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biography and those suitors, they started to eat a little bit
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more and thus to deviate from the other ascetics and their
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practices. We get so many hints in the
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Buddhist text about how important joy was for him, so
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that it is basically the most important characteristic of the
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first John, the first clear stage of absorption in the
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Buddhist meditation. And I read you the quote for
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that. It's repeated so many times in
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the Buddhist suttas. We assume that it is quite old,
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and something like that must have been part of original
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Buddhism as well, be it in another wording.
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Here comes the quote. Quite secluded from central
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pleasures, the dangers of what lay people live, Secluded from
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unskillful qualities. The meditator enters and remains
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in the first absorption, which has rapture and bliss.
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Born of seclusion as a quality rapture and bliss, strong joyful
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terms here while placing the mind and keeping it connected.
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So there's an interpretation of that, that it refers to a
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meditation technique. So it's secluded from sensual
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pleasures. It's secluded from other
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unskillful qualities. Then the mind after those
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preparations that I laid out before the ethical, the sense
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restraint, the. Awareness on the body and so on.
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After all that, the meditator goes into this joyful state of
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mind. Now how to navigate this finding
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of the joy within the meditation?
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Here the Buddhist texts are interestingly specific and they
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say the meditator drenches, steeps, fills and spreads his
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body with rapture and bliss borne of seclusion.
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There is no part of the body that is not spread with rapture
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and bliss borne of seclusion. And here the text provide also a
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simile. It's like when a deft bathroom
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attendant or The Apprentice pours bath powder into a bronze
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dish, sprinkling it little by little with water.
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They need it until kneading like dough.
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They knead it until the ball of bath powder is soaked and
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saturated with moisture spread through, inside and out.
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Yet no moisture oozes out. And exactly that way the
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meditators drench, steep, fill and spread their body with
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rupture and bliss. So it's not about to recognize
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that bliss. No.
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We maximize the awareness, the feeling of the bliss and spread
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it all through the perception of our body.
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This is the instruction which shows how important, how
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essential the development and the mastery of this quality of
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joyful meditation is in original Buddhism.
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It establishes the first absorption in meditation, and
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then it goes on. The joy develops in meditation
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in different levels. There are different lists in the
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Buddhist texts that describe this.
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I put two lists together to give you an idealized version of how
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the progress in meditation happens.
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The beginning is there must be a teaching, a Dharma, and like I
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pointed out last time in Right View, to convey to the thirsting
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ears and mind of the one who wants to know, who wants to
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practice, to convey to them, at least in the beginning, the
22:30
intellectual concepts of what truth is intellectually but yet
22:36
convincing in a resonating way so that they understand.
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Yes, this must be true. It does not realized yet, but it
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has been confirmed through their own understanding, through their
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own resonance as something that seems so much, makes so much
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sense, so that I want to dedicate my life to realize this
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in actuality. So this is the Buddha Dharma,
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the Dharma, the teaching. Then after those preparatory
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steps that I mentioned, when I actually sit down in meditation,
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I employ sati, which is usually translated as as mindfulness,
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but literally sati from Sanskrit smriti is memory, and I take it
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not in the sense of mindfulness. I think this is a
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mistranslation. I take it literally.
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It's the memory. The memory of what?
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It's the memory of the Buddha's teaching.
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So when I sit down, I allow to come up an aspect of the
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teaching that I want to practice.
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The next step is Dhamma Pichaiya, which is the
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investigation of the teaching. So I heard the teaching from the
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Buddha or one of his students, my meditation teacher.
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In the medication I bring it up into my memory and then I start
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to investigate it. I chew on it, or in other words,
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I relate to the teaching. For example of impermanence.
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I related to what is happening in my own mind.
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I can see and watch how my mind is constantly composed and
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decomposed, how impermanence is a founding principle of how my
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mind works all the time. And so chewing on it,
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investigating it, I see the truth of it.
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The next aspect that is pointed out is video.
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It means strength, and here I can assume that it needs the
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bigger, it needs the courage, it needs the strength to apply
24:40
again and again those aspects that I want to basically
24:45
practice and discover to apply it again and again.
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To my mind, out of that there comes the first gladness, the
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first joy. It's called an Nepali.
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It's Pamuja, which is not yet a formal establishment of the
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first absorption, but it's a preparatory step.
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So even before I reach the first absorption in the Buddhist
25:13
meditation, there is already joy.
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And here it is again, the characteristic of Buddhist
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meditation, pleasure, joy that is not coming from sensual
25:24
gratification, as laypeople would usually handle the life
25:29
approach to life. It's born out of the distance
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from it. It's born out of dealing,
25:35
applying, and realizing The first aspect of the Buddhist
25:39
teachings within my mind. This is that gladness.
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This is that joy. Out of that comes the first
25:46
formal establishment of meditative joy.
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The probably term is PT, which is a strong happiness.
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It's strong joy that comes with fuller realization or the
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harvesting, basically the fruits of my investigations of the
26:02
Buddhist teaching, applying the method, meditation method.
26:06
This is this strong happiness. And now as you heard before, as
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the simile went or the description went, I take this
26:17
joy, this strong happiness, and I fill up my whole body with
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that. And the result of that is the
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next step, which is the calmness of the body.
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Calmness. Why?
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Because the body and the mind and the heart, finally they have
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achieved what they set out to do.
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This is what we're usually striving for when we are
26:39
following our desires in daily life, made for food,
26:43
acknowledgement, career, money. We actually hope to get this
26:48
full satisfaction, to have the full bodily satisfaction as
26:52
well. And here we have achieved it
26:54
with meditation at this stage, and because we finally came
26:59
home, because we finally got what we wanted, the body is
27:02
pacified, body is calm, the polyterm is pasaji.
27:09
As a result of that, the next step is called suka, which is a
27:13
more profound pleasure. And continuing to apply the
27:17
Buddhist teaching also to that state of mind, to the strong
27:21
happiness, to the calmness of the body, I'm applying my
27:24
meditation to that. I understand it.
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And a result of that is a refinement of the pleasure,
27:32
which is a more profound level. And this is suka.
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Suka, by the way, sometimes is the opposite of Luka of
27:39
suffering. So it is a counterweight.
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It is a deep satisfaction that comes from that.
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And suka is already goes into the direction and intersects
27:50
with the even more fundamental term of meditation, samadhi,
27:54
which is a profound unification of the mind.
27:58
Meditation teachers have described it as a solid rock
28:02
solidity of the mind, of this pleasure, something that is very
28:07
stable. This is what samadhi is,
28:09
according to our descriptions. And the next step of that is to
28:14
continue to apply the Buddhist teachings, for example, on
28:18
conditionality, also to the samadhi.
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And we have descriptions where the next step is to see the
28:25
samadhi and to understand the samadhi.
28:28
And this level is in partly called upeka.
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The root of the word is UPA iksh, which means a close
28:38
observation, closely seen, closely observing, observing
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what? I'm observing the samadhi, the
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state of samadhi. So I'm taking the distance from
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it. I observe it.
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This is what the concept is. And through that I achieve the
28:56
conditions according to the texts.
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Then that lead more or less automatically.
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This is how the descriptions go to the full liberation of the
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mind. OK, so today I hope to clarify
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and to show you to convey to you what the fundamental
29:16
characteristic of Buddhist meditation is.
29:19
Namely it is based on the preparatory steps of developing
29:26
the mind so that it is withdrawn, it's self-contained,
29:30
it's content because of the ethical habits that it has went
29:36
through. It has made first steps into the
29:39
skills that are then needed in meditation, namely in awareness,
29:45
practice of awareness, withdrawing the senses from the
29:48
outside world, keeping them inside, and then establishing,
29:53
based on the Buddhist concepts, the Buddhist teachings that I
29:56
investigate. Establishing a joy that then is
30:00
filled throughout the whole body and then more and more refined
30:04
while I'm not clinging, of course, not attaching myself to
30:08
those joys as an achievement because I understand that these
30:13
are just conditionally emerged. So I let them go.
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I continue to apply the Buddhist teaching often permanence off
30:21
conditionality. The mind becomes more and more
30:24
subtle. Also the joy becomes more and
30:26
more subtle. And then in the last steps, the
30:29
samadhi, which is an incredibly refined, stable state of the
30:34
mind is then also observed with equanimity with Upeka.
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OK, I hope you enjoyed this episode, this three-part roundup
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of what seems to be the most fundamental aspects of original
30:50
Buddhism. I hope you understand more how
30:53
it's embedded in the ascetic culture of India, North East
30:57
India of that time. Let me know if you have
31:00
questions and comments. Subscribe if you're interested
31:02
in more content like this and I hope to see you next time.