Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Mindfulness (3): Developing Awareness

The problem of awareness, or lack of awareness, as I see it, is not primarily a psychological problem but is primarily a developmental problem.

So when the Buddha exhorts Nanda to rid the mind of polluting influences bhāvanayā (see 15.5 and 16.5), the meaning of bhāvanayā might be "by means of development" and at the same time "by developmental means."

For the last 40 years all my efforts in the direction of developing awareness have been hampered by, and at the same time motivated by gradually developing awareness of, a very imperfectly integrated Moro reflex (baby panic reflex).

One person who really understands what I am on about, from the inside, is my brother Ian, who shares my genetic inheritance and earns a crust as an Alexander Technique teacher working with nervous and phobic swimmers in the water.


If some desirous idea, a fever of the mind,
Should venture to offend you,
Entertain no scent of it but shake it off
As if pollen had landed on your robe.//15.3//

Even if, through insight,
You have dropped off desires,
You must, as if lighting up darkness,
Abolish them by means of their opposite.//15.4//

What lies behind them sleeps on,
Like a fire covered with ashes;
You are to extinguish it, my friend, by developmental means
As if using water to put out a fire.//15.5//


Thus, by methodically taking possession of the mind,
Getting rid of something and gathering something together,/
The practitioner makes the four dhyānas his own,
And duly acquires the five powers of knowing: //16.1//

The principal transcendent power, taking many forms;
Then being awake to what others are thinking;/
And remembering past lives from long ago;
And divine lucidity of ear; and of eye. //16.2//

From then on, through investigation of what is,
He applies his mind to eradicating the polluting influences,/
For on this basis he fully understands suffering and the rest,
The four true standpoints: //16.3//

This is suffering, which is constant and akin to trouble;
This is the cause of suffering, akin to starting it;/
This is cessation of suffering, akin to walking away.
And this, akin to a refuge, is a peaceable path. //16.4//

Understanding these noble truths, by a process of reasoning
While getting to know the four as one,/
He prevails over all the influences, by developmental means,
And, on finding peace, is no longer subject to becoming.//16.5//

For by failing to wake up and come round
To this four, whose substance is what is,/
Humankind goes from existence to existence without finding peace,
Hoisted in the swing of saṁsāra.//16.6//

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Mindfulness/Awareness (2) : Textual Evidence

The word smṛti appears in Saundara-nanda in the following verses or series of verses -- the most notable series being the Buddha's description of mindful everyday action in canto 14, and Aśvaghoṣa's description of Nanda's experience of four stages of sitting-meditation in canto 17.

Hitherto I have usually translated smṛti as "mindfulness," except in 9.33 where old-age is described as a robber of smṛti ("memory"), and in the description of sitting-meditation in which smṛti-mat seems to express the presence of "full awareness."

In the following verses smṛti has been translated in every case as mindfulness, highlighted in bold.


9.33
Robber of mindfulness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.


13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in mindfulness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.


13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.

They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.

Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of mindfulness.


14.1
And so using the floodgate of mindfulness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.


14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully aware of every action --
You should bring mindfulness to bear.

When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His mindfulness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.

No affliction arises in him
For whom mindfulness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.

But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of mindfulness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.

Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which mindfulness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.

When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Loss of mindfulness is the cause.

When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Mindfulness follows after those virtues.

The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose mindfulness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose mindfulness pervades his body.

Where is the noble principle of him
To whom mindfulness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.

He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.

Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring mindfulness to bear.


15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...

... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.


15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Mindfulness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.


16.33
True mindfulness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.


17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water, 
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root, 
Girded on the intention to come undone, 
And sat with legs fully crossed.

By first directing the whole body up, 
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body, 
And thus integrating in his person all the senses, 
There he threw himself all-out into practice.


17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of mindfulness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.

Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.

With arrows made from the presence of mindfulness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.


17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully mindful,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.

Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.

Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.

In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.

Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full mindfulness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.

Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and mindfulness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.


=========================================================================================


Here is the same series of verses with smṛti translated in every case as "awareness." It would be interesting to know which word, if either, people find more helpful.


9.33
Robber of awareness; destroyer of looks;
Ender of pleasure; seizer of speech, hearing and sight;
Birthplace of fatigue; slayer of strength and manly vigour:
For those with a body, there is no enemy to rival aging.


13.30
On this basis, standing grounded in awareness,
The naturally impetuous senses
From the objects of those senses
You should hold back.


13.35-37
For smeared with the poison of ideas,
Are those arrows, produced from five senses,
Whose tails are anxiety, whose tips are thrills,
And whose range is the vast emptiness of objects.

They strike human fawns in the heart
Fired off by Desire, the hunter;
Unless they are warded away,
Men wounded by them duly fall.

Standing firm in the arena of restraint,
And bearing the bow of resolve,
The mighty man, as they rain down, must fend them away,
Wearing the armour of awareness.


14.1
And so using the floodgate of awareness
To close a dam on the power of the senses,
Be aware, in eating food, of the measure
That conduces to meditation and to health.


14.35-45
And so upon acts like sitting, moving, standing,
Looking, speaking and so on --
Being fully conscious of every action --
You should bring awareness to bear.

When a man is like a gatekeeper at his gate,
His awareness directed,
The faults do not venture to attack him,
Any more than enemies do a guarded city.

No affliction arises in him
For whom awareness pervades the body --
Guarding the mind in all situations,
As a nurse protects a child.

But he is a target for the faults
Who lacks the armour of awareness:
As for enemies is he who stands in battle
With no suit of armour.

Know to be vulnerable that mind
Which awareness does not guard --
Like a blind man without a guide
Groping after objects.

When men attach to meaningless aims
And turn away from their proper aims,
Failing to shudder at the danger,
Lack of awareness is the cause.

When, each standing on its own patch,
The virtues which begin with integrity are engaged,
Then as a herdsman follows his scattered cows,
Awareness follows after those virtues.

The deathless nectar is lost to him
Whose awareness dissipates;
The nectar exists in the hands of him
Whose awareness pervades his body.

Where is the noble principle of him
To whom awareness is alien?
And for whom no noble principle exists,
To him a true path has been lost.

He who has lost the right track
Has lost the deathless step.
Having lost that nectar of deathlessness,
He is not exempt from suffering.

Therefore walking like this: "Walking, I am";
And standing like this: "Standing, I am" --
Upon moments such as these
You should bring awareness to bear.


15.1-15.2
"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,
Aligning the body,
And thus being attended by awareness
that is directed...

... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental.


15.64
So for the giving up,
In short, of all these ideas,
Awareness of inward and outward breathing, my friend,
You should make into your own possession.


16.33
True awareness, properly harnessed
So as to bring one close to the truths; and true balance:
These two, pertaining to practice,
Are for mastery, based on tranquillity, of the mind.


17.3-17.4
Having washed his feet in that water, 
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root, 
Girded on the intention to come undone, 
And sat with legs fully crossed.

By first directing the whole body up, 
And thus keeping awareness turned towards the body, 
And thus integrating in his person all the senses, 
There he threw himself all-out into practice.


17.23-17.25
As a bow of true knowledge, clad in the armour of awareness,
Standing up in a chariot of pure practice of integrity,
While his enemies, the afflictions, stood up in the battlefield of the mind,
He took his stance for victory, ready to engage them in battle.

Then, unsheathing a sword that the limbs of awakening had honed,
Standing in the supreme chariot of true motivation,
With an army containing the elephants of the branches of the path,
He gradually penetrated the ranks of the afflictions.

With arrows made from the presence of awareness,
Instantly he shot those enemies whose substance is upside-down-ness:
He split apart four enemies, four causes of suffering,
With four arrows, each having its own range.


17.50 - 17.55
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones, from non-attachment to joy,
Knowing it totally, with his body,
He remained indifferent, fully aware,
And, having realised the third stage of meditation, steady.

Since the ease here is beyond any ease,
And there is no progression of ease beyond it,
Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness
Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.

Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:
He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,
Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly
Because of ease circulating.

In excitement there is interference,
And where there is interference there is suffering,
Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,
Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.

Then, having already transcended ease and suffering,
And emotional reactivity,
He realised the lucidity in which there is indifference and full awareness:
Thus, beyond suffering and ease, is the fourth stage of meditation.

Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,
And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,
Therefore utter lucidity through indifference and awareness
Is specified in the protocol for the fourth stage of meditation.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

What Is Mindfulness? (1)

I don't know what mindfulness is.

The Sanskrit word that is generally translated (including by me) as "mindfulness" or "awareness" is smṛti.

Smṛti is from the root smṛ, which the dictionary gives as:
to remember , recollect , bear in mind , call to mind , think of , be mindful of.

When Chinese translators looked for a Chinese character to represent that word, they opted for (NEN), whose two component radicals, appropriately enough, are , now, and heart/mind.

In the original version of his rules of sitting-zen for everybody, Dogen writes of true mindfulness being distinct and clear.

"True mindfulness" is 正念 (SHO-NEN):
















If ever anybody asked Gudo Nishijima what 正念 (SHO-NEN) actually meant, you wouldn't catch him saying "I don't know." What he would say, one hundred times out of a hundred, whenever he had the chance, was that 正念 (SHO-NEN) is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance.

I do not buy that attempt to reduce mindfulness to the physiology which may underpin it. Saying that mindfulness is the consciousness we have when the autonomic nervous system is in a state of balance is like saying mindfulness is the consciousness we have when our diet is healthy. The truth as the Buddha expresses it is not like that. The Buddha tells Nanda that a balanced diet conduces to mindful practice, not that diet itself is the means whereby mindfulness is cultivated. In much the same way, as I see it, balance of the autonomic nervous system is a condition that conduces to mindful practice, but what is required is practical understanding of the means whereby mindfulness can be cultivated, and a theory about the autonomic nervous system, in my book, does not cut the mustard.

Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not try to tell us what mindfulness is. But he gives us clues as to where mindfulness fits in the natural order of things. I shall consider these clues in more detail in a subsequent post, particularly in light of the description of Nanda's progress in Canto 17, where mindfulness features before, during, and after Nanda's practice of sitting-dhyāna.

Suffice to say, for a start, that in the same way that Dogen first discusses the practice of sitting upright and naturally becoming one piece, and then praises the virtue of true mindfulness, Aśvaghoṣa at the beginning of Canto 15 and then again at the beginning of Canto 17 seems to describe ṛjuṁ, lit. “tending in a straight direction," as a primary or prior cause, which is duly followed by smṛtiṁ, “mindfulness":

"In whatever solitary place you are,
Crossing the legs in the supreme manner,/
Aligning the body,
(ṛjuṃ kāyaṃ samādhāya)
And thus being attended by mindfulness
that is directed...//15.1//

... towards the tip of the nose
or towards the forehead,
Or right in between the eyebrows,/
You may make the inconstant mind
Wholly engaged with the fundamental."//15.2//


Having washed his feet in that water, 
He then, by a clean, auspicious, and splendid tree-root, /
Girded on the intention to come undone, 
And sat with legs fully crossed.//17.3//

By first directing the whole body up, 
(ṛjuṃ samagraṃ praṇidhāya kāyaṃ)
And thus keeping mindfulness turned towards the body, /
And thus integrating in his person all the senses, 
There he threw himself all-out into practice. //17.4//


Again, though Aśvaghoṣa in Saundara-nanda does not tell us what mindfulness is, he does tell us what it is like, and his favourite metaphor is smṛti-varma, "the armour of mindfulness," which appears three times, in 13.37, 14.38, and 17.23.

I started to write this post last night, before being overcome by the desire to watch Match of the Day. After watching the football, I sat for 15 minutes or so in a place where I could see the moon. Then when I sat this morning I looked up to see two sparrows in the branches of a tree in the front garden. So it occured to me to write that true mindfulness being distinct and clear might be a golden half-moon in black night sky, or might be a bird on a branch in a blue winter morning. But aren't these just the thoughts of somebody who is deluding himself that he knows what mindfulness is?

It may be that the mindfulness which thinks about itself is not true mindfulness. It might rather be that when mindfulness is thinking about itself, there is a great big gap in the armour of mindfulness, leaving a practitioner open to all kinds of attacks from manifold faults.

The latter understanding, I think, is more in line with the Buddha's teaching of mindfulness as Aśvaghoṣa presents it to us in Saundara-nanda -- the great thing to aspire to being not so much brilliant poetry and philosophy as a simple life of freedom from faults.

In the next post, I will try to let Aśvaghoṣa speak for himself, by quoting all the verses in Saundara-nanda in which smṛti is mentioned.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

A Seed of Integration?

I write this at 4.15 in the morning, having woken up before 3.00 with a very itchy ear and a bad taste in my mouth. I had a partial metal crown but on a back tooth on Tuesday and I seem to be reacting to it badly, unless I am imagining something. Yesterday (Thursday) I phoned the dentist to inquire where the crown had been made (thinking it might have been made on the cheap in some dodgy Chinese laboratory). The dentist invited me to come and see him at his surgery, so there I duly cycled. He confirmed that, yes, the crown had been made in China, but the laboratory was accredited, and dentistry in the UK is very tightly regulated. The dentist assured me that any symptoms I was experiencing were psycho-somatic. In the course of our discussion, I inquired if there might be any mercury (amalgam) in the crown, and he assured me that no, amalgam was not used in crowns, and that anyway many scientific studies had looked into it and the evidence was incontrovertible that amalgam is safe to use in dental fillings. I left the consultation unconvinced, and naturally enough, the dentist seemed offended that I seemed to think he might have done some harm by giving me a poisonous crown.

So as I sat just now, mindful of Dogen's words that the secret of sitting-dhyāna is JI-JO-IPPEN, "naturally/spontaneously to become one piece," and mindful also of how the presence of this metal crown a few inches from my brainstem makes my health and integrity dependent on the honesty and integrity of some person running a dental laboratory somewhere in China, I am more than usually aware of the fact that more than ever before human beings really are in the same big boat, so that we will all sink or we will float.

Who the hell I am, what role there is for me to play in preventing the ship sinking, I do not know. As I cycled back from the dentist, I reflected on the series of famous experiments in which Matthieu Ricard showed himself to be such an extraordinarily excellent person. In one of these experiments a grouchy professor was supposed to antagonize MR in a philosophical discussion, but found it impossible, as MR's metta-soaked brain continued to pump out gamma waves in massive profusion. MR, doubtless, would have handled the consultation with his dentist more skillfully than I had done. Before that, indeed, MR might have had the wisdom not to agree to having a metal crown put in, especially one made in China. An enlightened person might have had the wisdom to leave alone a tooth that was only a bit broken, and not bother going to the dentist at all.

As I cycled back from the dentist, pondering that my life has possibly been shortened by having some alloy of mercury, lead and god knows what else implanted into my head, I felt a surge of desire to do something useful with whatever is left of it.

The business of not really knowing what the Buddha is on about when Aśvaghoṣa quotes him talking about using different nimitta, apparently in the context of extinguishing the faults that start with thirsting by means of the water of bhāvanā, has sharpened my sense of being far behind a monk like Mathieu Ricard, trained in the Tibetan tradition and evidently highly skilled in the use of specific antidotes to specific faults, e.g. compassion as an antidote to hatred, as described in Saundara-nanda.

In one of the experiments Mathieu Ricard was subjected to, he astonished Prof. Paul Ekman by not showing even a slight facial flicker when subjected to a stimulus that triggered a startle response in everybody else that had ever done the experiment. MR rather demonstrated what FM Alexander called "constructive conscious control," and "inhibition of unduly excited fear reflexes and emotions." This is the kind of thing I aspire to. But in so aspiring, I reflected yesterday, as I cycled back from the dentist, I am like one of the guys in wheelchairs that take part in the London marathon, whereas MR is akin to one of the so-called "elite" athletes.

Thinking somewhat positively, I may never be a champion in the field of demonstrating what "constructive conscious control" is, but out of the failure which my life has been so far, I may at least have gleaned some insight into what disables, or shackles, a non-elite athlete, in the marathon whose finishing line is full realization of the buddha-nature. I am thinking primarily here of faults in the vestibular system, centred on an immature Moro reflex. Those of us who have grown up with such faults -- and we may be in the majority -- may forever in this life be up against it.

With this in mind, it occured to me as I cycled back yesterday, that I might at some point post on the internet my voluminous record of years of questions and answers with Gudo Nishijima, in case somebody could find my record useful -- as well, inevitably, as ridiculous. As ridiculous as a guy in a wheelchair dreaming of becoming a champion elite athlete.

So it seems that I did a lot of reflecting in a few hundred yards yesterday. And further to that, as I sat earlier on (it is now 5.05), I reflected that Aśvaghoṣa's writing is truly seminal. For practitioners like me whose starting point was Dogen's teaching, Aśvaghoṣa is a founding Zen patriarch. The same goes for any practitioner in China who reveres Bodhidharma; that is to say, any Chinese dental laboratory entrepreneur who reveres Bodhidharma as a grandfather also has to recognise Aśvaghoṣa as a great grandfather. Again, if any extraordinarily excellent Tibetan monk wishes to highlight the simplistic ignorance of his faulty Zen brother who knows nothing about the Buddha's teaching of using specific antidotes to specific faults, Aśvaghoṣa's writing provides a basis for so doing. And finally, it did not escape my notice that when a few months ago I googled "Aśvaghoṣa, Buddhacarita," I arrived at the website of a certain Ānandajoti Bhikkhu, a monk in the Theravada tradition who described himself to me as a fellow fan of Aśvaghoṣa.

At Ānandajoti's behest I have been dutifully preparing a transcription of the text of Saundara-nanda, painstakingly noting the variants, of which there are more than a hundred in most chapters. At time of writing, I am half-way through Canto 16, so should be finished noting the variants by next week. Then I intend to have several runs through the text and translation.

If Aśvaghoṣa's writing truly is as seminal as it seems to me to be, then planting this seed skillfully might be the most useful thing I could possibly do, notwithstanding my own multifarious faults.

Trying to be skillful, of course, is the very end-gaining that triggers a faulty individual's multifarious faults. So saying, at 5.26, I shall go back to bed.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Dogen's Teaching in Light of Aśvaghoṣa's

What is there in Dogen's teaching, I asked myself this morning, while lying in bed, and then again while sitting, that corresponds to the use of what Aśvaghoṣa called bhāvanā, bringing into being, i.e. mental development or cultivation?

Paṭhavīsamaṁ Rāhula bhāvanaṁ bhāvehi,
the Buddha advizes Rāhula
in the The Long Discourse Giving Advice to Rāhula:

"Develop/cultivate the development/cultivation that is to be as even as the earth."


ZEN-AKU O OMAWAZU,
wrote Dogen.
"Don't think of good and bad."

ZE-HI KAN SURU KOTO NAKARE
"Don't care about right and wrong."

These are part of Dogen's instructions for sitting-dhyāna, but they can't be understood as the kind of instruction one can follow by doing something physically, like obeying the rule not to slouch or hyper-extend, not to lean left or right. They are rather pointing to something to be mentally cultivated, a mental attitude to be cultivated.


A hundred years ago in my country, Britain, in the days of the Great British Empire, racism was not only tolerated, it was pretty much an essential part of how colonial rule worked. But nowadays, racism is seen as the great evil. If a footballer smashes an opponent in the face with his elbow, he stands to get maybe a 3-match ban. Alleged racist taunting got Liverpool's Luis Suarez an 8-match ban. Evidently Uruguay is not so advanced as England is in the matter of not being racist -- or at least putting on a good show of not tolerating racism.

Dianne Abbot, a black woman MP, stupidly makes a sweeping generalization about white people in a late night internet posting (been there myself), and earns a "severe dressing down" from her leader, Ed Milliband, a Jew.

From where I sit, there is something about Dianne Abbot that is typical of black British women, which my wife for one admires, but which gets on my nerves. And there is equally something about Ed Milliband's response which is typically Jewish, and which I also find annoying, via the mirror principle. Pompous self-righteousness, and intellectual acuity without the coolness of the naturally talented sportsman -- those are tendencies that I don't want to see in myself, so I project them onto ones who are obviously other than me, a black woman and a Jewish man, and feel irritated by them.

Now that I recognize this tendency in myself, what is Dogen's teaching in light of Aśvaghoṣa's teaching? To abandon a wrong idea, and thereby show myself to be right? Yes, to abandon a wrong idea. But hell No, the teaching is never to try to be right.

Dianne Abbot issues a statement to show her non-racist credentials, but I don't believe her. I think she's as racist as I am. The difference is that her role in public life allows her to be racist only as long as she keeps that terrible evil hidden from public view. Whereas the teaching of Dogen and Aśvaghoṣa, as I see it, requires me, if I am harbouring a racist idea, not just to hide it but to abandon it. Before that, however, the teaching requires me to cultivate an attitude of not worrying about good and evil, right and wrong. Or else how can I look that bugger Māra squarely in the eye?

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Going More & More Mental

When I first got my hands on a copy of Linda Colvill's translation of Saundara-nanda, just over three years ago, in the autumn of 2008, the first thing I sought out was Aśvaghośa's description of the four dhyānas, or stages of sitting-meditation.

I was particularly keen to see if there was any evidence to support my understanding of what Dogen meant by sitting with body, sitting with mind, and sitting as body and mind dropping off --- this understanding having been informed on the one hand by the teaching of a Zen teacher who described Zazen as "a kind of physical gymanstics" and on the other hand by the teaching of Alexander teachers who describe learning to use oneself well in an activity like sitting as "the most mental thing there is."

My Zen teacher in Japan, Gudo Nishijima, taught me that the most important thing in sitting was effort to keep the spine straight vertically as a physical act ("a kind of physical gymnastics"). When the sympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, we feel tense, self-conscious, aware of our own minds -- this, Gudo taught, is sitting with mind. Conversely, when the para-sympathetic nervous system is in the ascendancy, we feel sleepy or sensual, aware of the body and of physical desires -- this is sitting with the body. But if we just devote ourselves to the action of keeping the spine straight vertically, the sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems balance each other out, which is a state of zero, or a state of emptiness, that buddha-ancestors described as "dropping off body and mind."

This as I see it is, at best, a very crude approximation of the truth.

To use Alexander jargon, Gudo's approach to sitting in the right posture was extremely "doing." There was, in Marjory Barlow's words, "no freedom in it."

The Alexander approach to sitting well, based on the principle of "non-doing," requires much less physical and much more mental effort, in order to bring about not only a lengthening direction up the spine but also a widening direction across the two sides of the body. This lengthening and widening direction is associated with release, or "undoing," and it is axiomatic in Alexander work that one cannot do an undoing. Undoing is rather something (or a bit of nothing) that, when the conditions are right, tends to do itself.

Alexander described working like this as "the most mental thing there is."

So, as a follower of Dogen and a teacher of the FM Alexander Technique, I expected to find in Aśvaghoṣa's writing a description of the four dhyānas which tallied with my understanding that sitting well is primarily a mental challenge, not a physical one. The wrong inner patterns are the doing that has to be stopped, and unconscious doing cannot be the means of stopping them. A more mindful approach must be necessary, in which habitual unconscious doing is opposed by conscious means, in the way that dark is opposed by light. Unconsciously end-gaining, vs consciously working to the means-whereby principle, Alexander wrote are different -- nay opposite -- conceptions and opposite procedures.

In Aśvaghoṣa's description of Nanda's successive passage through four stages of sitting-meditation, which involved the practice of saying "no, not that" on deeper and deeper levels, to unconscious tendencies, I found -- as a bad scientist is wont to find -- exactly what I expected to find.

What I have been slow to find is what I never expected to find, even though it has been staring me in the face.

Translating nimitta as "subject [for cultivation]", I certainly wasn't expecting to find anything as mental as this:


16.52
Having given due consideration to the time and place

As well as to the extent and method of one's practice,

One should, reflecting on one's own strength and weakness,

Persist in an effort that is not inconsistent with them.

16.53
A subject [for cultivation] that is said to be "garnering"

Does not serve when the emotions are inflamed,

For thus the mind does not come to quiet

Like a fire being fanned by the wind.

16.54
A subject one has ascertained to be calming

Has its time when one's mind is excited;

For thus the mind subsides into quietness,

Like a blazing fire doused with water.

16.55
A subject ascertained to bring calm

Does not serve when one's mind is dormant;

For thus the mind sinks further into lifelessness,

Like a feeble fire left unfanned.

16.56
A subject ascertained to be garnering,

Has its time when one's mind is lifeless,

For thus the mind becomes fit for work,

Like a feebly-burning fire plied with fuel.

16.57
Nor is not interfering valid as a subject [for cultivation]

When one's mind is either lifeless or excited.

For that might engender severe adversity,

Like the neglected illness of a sick man.

16.58
A subject ascertained to lead to non-interference,

Has its time when one's mind is in its normal state;

For thus one can set about the work to be done,

Like a wagon setting off with well-trained horses.

16.59
Again, when the mind is filled with the red joys of passion,

Direction towards oneself of loving-kindness is not to be practised;

For a passionate type is stupefied by love,

Like a sufferer from phlegm taking oil.

16.60
Steadiness lies, when the mind is excited by ardour,

In resorting to a disagreeable subject;

For thus a passionate type obtains relief,

Like a phlegmatic type taking an astringent.

16.61
When the mind is wound up, however, with the fault of malice,

One should not resort to a disagreeable subject;

For unpleasantness is destructive to a hating type,

As acid treatment is to a man of bilious nature.

16.62
When the mind is agitated by the fault of malice,

Loving-kindness should be practised, towards oneself;

For loving-kindness is calming to a hate-afflicted soul,

As cooling treatment is to the man of bilious nature.

16.63
Where there is wandering of the mind, tied to delusion,

Both loving-kindness and unpleasantness are unsuitable,

For a deluded man is further deluded by these two,

Like a windy type given an astringent.

16.64
When working of the mind is delusory,

One should appreciate the causality therein;

For this is a path to peace when the mind is bewildered,

Like treating a wind condition with oil.

16.65
Holding gold in the mouth of a furnace,

A goldsmith in this world blows it at the proper time,

Douses it with water at the proper time,

And gradually, at the proper time, he leaves it be.

16.66
For he might burn the gold by blowing at the wrong time,

He might make it unworkable by plunging it into water at the wrong time,

And he would not bring it to full perfection

If at the wrong time he were just to leave it be.

16.67
Likewise, for garnering as also for calming,

As also when appropriate for leaving well alone,

One should readily attend to the proper subject [for cultivation];

Because even diligence is destructive when accompanied by a wrong approach."

16.68
Thus, on retreat from muddling through

And on the principle to come back to, the One Who Went Well spoke to him;

And knowing the varieties of behaviour,

He detailed further the directions for abandoning ideas.

16.69
Just as a physician, for a disorder of bile, phlegm, or wind,

-- For whatever disorder of the humours has manifested the symptoms of disease --

Prescribes a course of treatment to cure that very disorder,

So did the Buddha prescribe for the faults:

16.70
“It may not be possible, following a single method, to kill off

Bad ideas that habit has so deeply entrenched;

In that case, one should commit to a second course

But never give up the good work.

16.71
Because of the instinct-led accumulation, from time without beginning,

Of the powerful mass of afflictions,

And because true practice is so difficult to do,

The faults cannot be cut off all at once.

16.72
Just as a deep splinter, by means of the point of another sharp object,

Is removed by a man skilled in that task,

Likewise an unpromising subject [for cultivation] may be dispensed with

By turning to a different subject.




And again, when Aśvaghoṣa describes Nanda sitting alone by a stream in the forest, his legs fully crossed, readying his consciousness prior to entering the first dhyāna, and at that stage changing his nimitta, or subject [for cultivation], the kind of practice Aśvaghoṣa seems to be describing is news to me:


17.9
He re-directed his energy so as to still his mind,

But in his doing so an unhelpful thought reasserted itself,

As when, in a man intent on curing an illness,

An acute symptom suddenly reappears.

17.10
In order to fend against that he turned skillfully to a different subject,

One favourable to his practice,

Like an enfeebled prince who seeks out a powerful protector

When being overthrown by a mighty rival.


So it as if for the past 3 years I have been diligently piecing together a big jig-saw, and now that I come to look at the whole picture, a lot of the picture makes sense to me on the basis of experience gleaned in Zen and Alexander practice hitherto. The part that makes sense contains: repeated descriptions of sitting with the body tending in a straight direction, and being thereby attended by mindfulness; a totally lucid description of the four dhyānas; and the Buddha's exhortation to Nanda
- to believe in better (canto 12),
- not to be a slave to faulty sensory appreciation (canto 13)
- to find some solitary spot at which to dive headlong into mindful action (canto 14)
- to abandon ideas (canto 15)
- to understand the four noble truths, exactly and comprehensively (canto 16).

But one chunk of the jigsaw has been as if blocked out by a big blind spot; namely, the description of how to prevail over the mental pollutants, not only by the general means of just sitting, but also on a specific, targeted basis, as part of the field of endeavour that the Buddha evidently called bhāvanā, or cultivation of the mind.

I was looking for something mental but not that mental!

The more I reflect on it, however, the more it starts to make sense, especially in light of my journey so far in pursuit of the Buddha's truth, aided and abetted by Alexander work and his discovery of the fundamental principle that he called "antagonistic action."

Observing a universal human tendency to stiffen the neck and pull the head back and down, Alexander advocated thinking (not trying to do) the opposite -- freeing the neck and letting the head go forward and up.

Is this so very different from mentally cultivating the diametric opposite tendency to whatever pernicious influence is polluting one's mind? Or is this kind of "cultivation" in fact a particular application of the general principle of antagonistic action?

If where my thoughts are leading now is on the right lines, then how is it possible that something so overtly mental as Aśvaghoṣa seems to be describing, could get turned into its opposite, so that Dogen invariably wrote of the body-mind, and never the mind-body, and so that my Japanese teacher could describe sitting-meditation as "a kind of physical gymnastics"?

How could such a thing happen? The answer, over many generations, might be: very easily.

Looking at what was happening to Alexander's work in only two or three generations, Marjory Barlow saw with horror that a lot of bodywork was going on in the name of the FM Alexander Technique. People were qualifying as Alexander teachers without getting to grips with why FM described the work as "the most mental thing there is."

Gudo once said in a lecture in English, "I believe Master Dogen is the most excellent Buddhist master in Japan. Therefore, I believe Master Dogen is the most excellent Buddhist master in the world."

I thought at the time that this logic was stupid and absurd.

But maybe it is only now, 25 years later, that I am beginning to realize how truly stupid and absurd that statement was.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Cultivating Mindfulness

Ānāpānasatiṁ Rāhula bhāvanaṁ bhāvehi.

"Cultivate the cultivation, Rāhula,"
the Buddha advises Rahula,
"that is mindfulness while breathing."


How does one cultivate this mindfulness?

Not by trying, not by striving, not by going for it directly, not by end-gaining -- but rather by the opposite process of attending to a process.

Mindfulness is cultivated, in my limited experience, primarily by giving up the idea of gaining some end while directing the body to be "tending in a straight direction" (Sanskrit ṛjum; Pali: ujum), in such a way that this straightening direction does not bring with it a narrowing direction.

Expressed positively, the direction is that the body both lengthens and widens.

Such cultivation of mindfulness evidently belongs to what the Buddha, as quoted in ancient Pali texts, and also as quoted by Aśvaghoṣa, called bhāvanā.

Hence:

"If some desirous idea, a fever of the mind,
Should venture to offend you,
Entertain no scent of it but shake it off
As if pollen had landed on your robe.//15.3//

Even if, through insight,
You have dropped off desires,
You must, as if lighting up darkness,
Abolish them by means of their opposite.//15.4//

What lies behind them sleeps on,
Like a fire covered with ashes;
You are to extinguish it, my friend, by means of cultivation (bhāvanā),
As if using water to put out a fire."//15.5//


"Understanding these noble truths, by a process of reasoning
While getting to know the four as one,
He prevails over all the influences, by means of cultivation (bhāvanā),
And, on finding peace, is no longer subject to becoming."//16.5//



So far so good. Translating bhāvanā as "cultivation" and understanding it along these lines, seems to work for me, seems to tally with what little experience I have got of cultivating mindfulness.

The word whose translation into English I am continuing to struggle with is nimitta, whose meanings include both "target" and "cause."

In the above description of cultivating that mindfulness which is the very opposite of end-gaining desires, and which is the means-whereby a practitioner prevails over the influences that pollute the mind, one could say that "to lengthen and widen" is a target; and one could say that mindfulness itself is the target for cultivation. One could also say that the whole procedure, including finding some empty time and space in which to sit or to lie down in order to cultivate mindfulness, is the cause of cultivating mindfulness.

Aśvaghoṣa uses nimitta in the sense of a "cause" in several places in Saundara-nanda, viz. in the words of the grieving Nanda in Canto 7, in the words of the striver who rails against women in Canto 8, and, maybe most tellingly in the words of the Buddha in Cantos 12 and 16:

"When the minds of the Sun's son Vaivasvata and the fire god Agni turned to enmity, When their grip on themselves was shaken, /
There was war between them for many years, over a woman
(strī-nimittaṃ; lit. with a woman as the cause).
What lesser being, here on earth, would not be shaken off course by a woman?" //7.27//


"When men of good families fall on hard times,
When they rashly do unfitting deeds, /
When they recklessly enter the vanguard of an army,
Women in those instances are the cause (nimittam)." //8.34//


"Again, I call it the Seed
Since it is the cause (nimittam) of betterment; /
And for its cleansing action, in the washing away of wrong,
Again, I call it the River. //12.39//

Since in the emerging of dharma
Confidence is the primary cause (kāraṇamuttamam), /
Therefore I have named it after its effects
In this case like this, in that case like that." //12.40//


Thus in 12.39-12.40 the Buddha seems pointedly to identify his usage of the more ambiguous word nimitta (target/sign/cause) and his usage of the less ambiguous word kāraṇa (cause). The Buddha does exactly the same thing again in 16.17-18, highlighting the identity of nimitta and kāraṇa:

"And this, the suffering of doing, in the world,
Has its cause (nimittam) in clusters of faults which start with thirsting -- /
Certainly not in God, nor in primordial matter, nor in time;
Nor even in one’s inherent constitution, and not in predestination or self-will. //16.17//

Again, you must understand how, due to this cause (etena kāraṇena),
Because of men's faults, the cycle of doing goes on, /
So that they succumb to death
who are afflicted by the dust of the passions and by darkness;
He is not reborn who is free of dust and darkness."//16.18//



Ānandajoti Bhikkhu, however, is evidently of the view that, in the context of discussion of cultivating
(a) the mindfulness which is the general antidote to end-gaining, along with
(b) specific antidotes to mental pollutants such as liking and disliking, ill-will, violence, discontent, passion, and "I am" conceit,
the meaning of nimitta is not "cause" but is more towards "target."
In developing the specific antidote to ill-will, for example, friendliness may be said to be the target.

Especially in view of 16.69, this seems eminently reasonable.

Just as a physician, for a disorder of bile, phlegm, or wind, 
-- For whatever disorder of the humours has manifested the symptoms of disease --
Prescribes a course of treatment to cure that very disorder, 
So did the Buddha prescribe for the faults. //16.69//


So the writing of today's post is part of the process whereby I am considering whether translating nimitta as "target" tallies with reason, tallies with the judgements of people who might know better than me, tallies with Aśvaghoṣa's own words, and tallies with what little experience I have got in this field of cultivation.

My own feeling is that whatever word brings us back in the direction of attending to the means, or the cause, is a good word, a safe word. And conversely a word like "target" is liable to be a dangerous word, a word that invites end-gaining.

Thus, a cursory search of the internet for modern-day interpretations of the meaning of nimitta yields some fairly whacky and exotic attempts, involving various kinds of imaginary objects, symbols, signs, and the like. Was it ever thus? Was it so in Aśvaghoṣa's time? Was Aśvaghoṣa seeking to draw us back to a more real and practical understanding of nimitta and bhāvanā, grounded in cause and effect?

I feel he might have been.

Aware of the fact, however, that my feeling is ever liable to be wrong, and not wishing to produce a translation that is unduly idiosyncratic, for the present I am leaning in the direction of translating nimitta, in the series of verses from 16.53 to 16.67, as "target."

But if anybody thinks nimitta is better translated as "a cause" or as "[both a] cause [of] and target [for cultivation]," I am open to persuasion -- or, in other words, am still wobbling.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Putting the 'Just' in 'Just Sitting'

Before coming across the Saundara-nanda of Aśvaghoṣa, I had read about the four dhyānas, or stages of sitting-meditation, but hadn't found any satisfactory description of them.

Representation of ancient Indian words by Chinese pictographs is liable to raise more questions than it answers. It has struck me forcibly in recent days that if we translate both dhyāna and bhāvanā as "meditation," we are in danger of creating the same kind of confusion in English (which we needn't do, because English, like Sanskrit, is more amenable than Chinese and Japanese to saying what needs to said, be it ambiguous or unambiguous). Cultivating gladness, for example, is one thing. Sitting-dhyāna is another thing. Except there may be instances where they are one and the same thing. But that might be a topic for another post.

A cause (nimittam?) of great gladness, as far as I am concerned, is that in the Sanskrit of Aśvaghoṣa we have got a seminal description, which is very clear, of what the four dhyānas are -- or at least, more to the point, what their gist is, what their direction is.


17.35
Sprung free from pernicious theories,

Seeing an end to becoming,

And feeling horror for the consequences of affliction,

Nanda trembled not at death or hellish realms.

17.36
As full of skin, sinew, fat, blood, bone, and flesh,

And hair and a mass of other such unholy stuff,

He then observed the body to be;

He looked into its essential reality,
and found not even an atom.

17.37
He, firm in himself,
minimised the duality of love and hate

By the yoke of that very practice.

Being himself big across the chest,
he made those two small,

And so obtained the second fruit in the noble dharma.

17.38
A small vestige of the great enemy, red passion,

Whose straining bow is impatient desire
and whose arrow is fixity,

He destroyed using weapons
procured from the body as it naturally is --

Using the darts of the disagreeable,
weapons from the armoury of practice.

17.39
That gestating love-rival, malice,

Whose weapon is hatred
and whose errant arrow is anger,

He slayed with the arrows of kindness,
which are contained in a quiver of constancy

And released from the bow-string of patience.

17.40
And so the hero cut the three roots of shameful conduct

Using three seats of release,

As if three rival princes,
bearing bows in the van of their armies,

Had been cut down by one prince using three iron points.

17.41
In order to go entirely beyond the sphere of desire,

He overpowered those enemies that grab the heel,

So that he attained, because of practice,
the fruit of not returning,

And stood as if at the gateway to the citadel of nirvāṇa.

17.42
Distanced from desires and tainted things,

Containing ideas and containing thoughts,

Born of solitude and possessed of joy and ease,

Is the first stage of meditation, which he then entered.

17.43
Released from the burning of the bonfire of desires,

He derived great gladness
from ease in the act of meditating --

Ease like a heat-exhausted man diving into water.

Or like a pauper coming into great wealth.

17.44
Even in that, he realised, ideas about aforesaid things,

And thoughts about what is or is not good,

Are something not quieted,
causing disturbance in the mind,

And so he decided to let them go.

17.45
For, just as waves produce disturbance

In a river bearing a steady flow of tranquil water,

So ideas, like waves of thought,

Disturb the water of the one-pointed mind.

17.46
Just as, to one who is weary, and fallen fast asleep,

Noises are a source of bother,

So, to one indulging in his original state
of unitary awareness,

Ideas become bothersome.

17.47
And so gradually bereft of idea and thought,

His mind tranquil from one-pointedness,

He realised the joy and ease born of balanced stillness --

That inner wellbeing
which is the second stage of meditation.

17.48
And on reaching that stage, in which the mind is silent,

He experienced an intense joy
that he had never experienced before.

But here too he found a fault, in joy,

Just as he had in ideas.

17.49
For when a man finds intense joy in anything,

Paradoxically, suffering for him is right there.

Hence, seeing the faults there in joy,

He kept going up, into practice that goes beyond joy.

17.50
And so experiencing the ease enjoyed by the noble ones,
from non-attachment to joy,

Knowing it totally, with his body,

He remained indifferent, fully aware,

And, having realised the third stage of meditation,
steady.

17.51
Since the ease here is beyond any ease,

And there is no progression of ease beyond it,

Therefore, as a knower of higher and lower,
he realised it as a condition of resplendent wholeness

Which he deemed superlative -- in a friendly way.

17.52
Then, even in that stage of meditation, he found a fault:

He saw it as better to be quiet, not excited,

Whereas his mind was fluctuating tirelessly

Because of ease circulating.

17.53
In excitement there is interference,

And where there is interference there is suffering,

Which is why, insofar as ease is excitatory,

Devotees who are desirous of quiet give up that ease.

17.54
Then, because he had let go of ease and suffering,

And of working on the mind, already,

He realised the lucidity
in which there is indifference and full awareness:

Thus, beyond suffering and ease,
is the fourth stage of meditation.

17.55
Since in this there is neither ease nor suffering,

And the act of knowing abides here, being its own object,

Therefore utter lucidity
through indifference and awareness

Is specified in the protocol
for the fourth stage of meditation.

17.56
Consequently, relying on the fourth stage of meditation,

He made up his mind to win the worthy state,

Like a king joining forces with a strong and noble ally

And then aspiring to conquer unconquered lands.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

nimitta & bhavana: work in progress

Aśvaghoṣa is 12th in a line of 51 patriarchs linking the Buddha in India and Dogen in Japan, all of whom, according to Zen tradition, preached the primacy of sitting-meditation (ZA-ZEN; sitting-dhyāna).

In the Zen teaching of Dogen, represented by the famous phrase "just sitting," (SHIKAN-TAZA) there is no subject of meditation other than sitting itself: upright sitting is the meditation, and the meditation is to sit upright. Other than sitting itself, there aren't any meditation techniques.

In Canto 16 of the Saundara-nanda of Aśvaghoṣa, however, when the Buddha instructs Nanda how, having found solitude in the forest, to go about working on himself, the Buddha guides Nanda in the appropriate use of a nimitta.

EH Johnston in a footnote to his translation writes,nimitta, properly the general characteristic of an object, is used of the general characteristic of an object selected to secure any particular type of bhāvanā and so may be translated as [subject of meditation]."

The context of Canto 16 is that the Buddha is instructing Nanda how a sitting practitioner who has already gained possession of the four dhyānas (stages of meditation) and duly acquired the five powers of knowing, then applies his mind to eradicating the āsravas, those influences which pollute the practitioner's mind and prevent him from fully appreciating the four noble truths. The practitioner prevails over these influences, the Buddha tells Nanda, by means of bhāvanā – a term which is generally lumped together with dhyāna and translated as “meditation.”

Thus, by methodically taking possession of the mind,
Getting rid of something and gathering something together,/
The practitioner makes the four dhyānas his own,
And duly acquires the five powers of knowing: //16.1//

The principal transcendent power, taking many forms;
Then being awake to what others are thinking;/
And remembering past lives from long ago;
And divine lucidity of ear; and of eye. //16.2//

From then on, through investigation of what is,
He applies his mind to eradicating the polluting influences,/
For on this basis he fully understands suffering and the rest,
The four true standpoints: //16.3//

This is suffering, which is constant and akin to trouble;
This is the cause of suffering, akin to starting it;/
This is cessation of suffering, akin to walking away.
And this, akin to a refuge, is a peaceable path. //16.4//

Understanding these noble truths, by a process of reasoning
While getting to know the four as one,/
He prevails over all the influences, by means of meditation (bhāvanayā, inst. sg.)
And, on finding peace, is no longer subject to becoming.//16.5//

For by failing to wake up and come round
To this four, whose substance is what is,/
Humankind goes from existence to existence without finding peace,
Hoisted in the swing of saṁsāra.//16.6//


Among multiple definitions of bhāvanā in the Monier Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary7 are: “1. the act of producing or effecting; 2. forming in the mind, thought, meditation; 3. reflection, contemplation (with Buddhists said to be of five kinds); and 4. water.”

In light of extensive knowledge of ancient Buddhist texts, Ānandajoti Bhikkhu asserts that “the idea of using meditation (bhāvanā) to overcome defilements is very well established in early Buddhism.” This assertion would seem to be supported by Aśvaghoṣa's use of the term bhāvanā in Canto 15, when he quotes the Buddha comparing bhāvanā to water that can put out a smouldering fire:

If some desirous idea, a fever of the mind,
Should venture to offend you,
Entertain no scent of it but shake it off
As if pollen had landed on your robe.//15.3//

Even if, through insight,
You have dropped off desires,
You must, as if lighting up darkness,
Abolish them by means of their opposite.//15.4//

What lies behind them sleeps on,
Like a fire covered with ashes;
You are to extinguish it, my friend, by means of meditation (bhāvanayā),
As if using water to put out a fire.//15.5//


What is problematic for a devotee of “just sitting,” is the principle of sitting cross-legged and using particular types of meditations to overcome specific defilements, as opposed to the indirect principle of just sitting for the sake of sitting, and letting defilements come out, as it were, in the wash.

EH Johnston's translation of nimitta as “subject of meditation,” rests upon his understanding of a direct correspondence between various types of nimitta and particular types of bhāvanā. It is in the process of developing a particular type of bhāvanā, according to Johnston's explanation, that a specific nimitta , or "subject of meditation" is employed.

To glean some understanding of where EH Johnston was coming from, let us consider what the ancient Pali texts have to say about the development of bhāvanā, taking as our starting point the traditional practice of contemplating impermanence, suffering, and non-self.

In Canto 17 of Saundara-nanda, Aśvaghoṣa describes how Nanda, sitting upright with legs crossed, contemplates the elements of earth, water, fire, and so on, as being impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. By this means, Aśvaghoṣa tells us, Nanda causes the tree of the afflictions to shake (17.17). This is in accordance with what the Buddha tells Rāhula in The Long Discourse Giving Advice to Rāhula. In this ancient Pali text the Buddha instructs Rāhula, in a step preliminary to the development of bhāvanā, to see the elements of earth, water, fire, and so on, as they really are:

Whatever there is, Rāhula, that is inside, in oneself, that is hard or has become solid, and is attached to, like this: head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidney, heart, liver, pleura, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, undigested food, excrement - or whatever else there is that is inside, in oneself, that is hard, or has become solid, and is attached to, that, Rāhula, is called the internal earth element. Now, that which is the internal earth element, and that which is the external earth element, that is only the earth element. “This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self,” like this it ought to be seen, as it really is, with right wisdom. Having seen it like this, as it really is, with right wisdom, one loses interest in the earth element, one detaches the mind from the earth element.

The Buddha continues in the same vein, describing as “not my self” the other elements of water, fire, wind, and space. He then exhorts Rāhula to progress further and, with regard to the earth element, to develop bhāvanā, thus:

Develop the meditation (bhāvanaṁ bhāvehi), Rāhula, that is to be even as the earth, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is to be even as the earth, appealing and unappealing contacts that have arisen in the mind will not take a hold there. Just as, Rāhula, they throw what is clean on the earth, and they throw what is unclean, and they throw what has become dung, and they throw what has become urine, and they throw what has become spit, and they throw what has become pus, and they throw what has become blood, but the earth is not distressed, or ashamed, or disgusted by it, just so do you, Rāhula, develop the meditation that is to be even as the earth, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is to be even as the earth, appealing and unappealing contacts that have arisen in the mind will not take a hold there.

Continuing in like fashion for the other elements of water, fire, wind, and space, the Buddha points out that water is not worried about what it washes, fire about what it burns, and wind about what it blows over, while space does not settle anywhere.

Thus, if we follow EH Johnston's line of reasoning, we can understand that the nimitta in question is the general characteristic that all the elements share, which is not to react emotionally, whatever the circumstance. The nimitta is a general characteristic shared by all the elements, and there is one bhāvanā in view, i.e, the meditation that is to be even.

As the Long Discourse continues, however, the Buddha evidently exhorts Rāhula further to develop six bhāvanas:

Develop the meditation, Rāhula, that is friendliness, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is friendliness, whatever ill-will there is will be given up. Develop the meditation, Rāhula, that is kindness, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is kindness, whatever violence there is will be given up. Develop the meditation, Rāhula, that is gladness, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is gladness, whatever discontent there is will be given up. Develop the meditation, Rāhula, that is equanimity, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is equanimity, whatever resentment there is will be given up. Develop the meditation, Rāhula, on the unattractive, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation on the unattractive (asubhaṁ bhāvanam), whatever passion there is will be given up. Develop the meditation, Rāhula, that is the perception of impermanence, for, Rāhula, from developing the meditation that is the perception of impermanence, whatever (kind of) ‘I am’ conceit there is will be given up.

Still following EH Johnston's argument, we can understand that the Buddha has here enumerated six bhāvanās each with a corresponding nimitta, namely friendliness, kindness, gladness, equanimity, the unattractive, and impermanence.

Subsequently, when we read in Saundara-nanda 16.63 that the Buddha taught Nanda to resort, at a time of heightened passion, to aśubham nimittam (a nimittam which is unattractive, disagreeable or impure), knowledge of the ancient Pali text would naturally tend to lead us to understand that aśubham nimittam belongs to what is described in the The Long Discourse Giving Advice to Rāhula as asubhaṁ bhāvanam (meditation on the unattractive/disagreeable/impure). Hence the following translations of Saundara-nanda 16.63:

EH Johnston:
But when the mind is excited by passion, the subject of meditation called 'impure' (a-śubham nimittam) should be selected so as to reach steadfastness; for thus the man of passionate nature obtains relief, like the man subject to phlegm who uses astringent remedies.

Linda Colvill:
When the mind is stirred up by passion, one should find stability and practice the impurity meditation (a-śubham nimittam), for that is how a man of passionate nature finds relief, like a patient with a phlegm condition using astringent treatments. 

In this understanding, then, a subject of meditation (nimitta) is specifically linked to the development of a particular type of meditation (bhāvanā), with the aim of overcoming a specific defilement.

The essential oneness of sitting-meditation (in Japanese: ZA-ZEN) is Dogen's fundamental teaching, and I would like to think that it is Aśvaghoṣa's fundamental teaching too.

As I said above, the approach to defilements of a devotee of "just sitting," as I understand it, is an indirect one: Just sit, accepting and using the whole self well, and let everything come out in the wash.

But when I re-read Canto 16 and survey the textual evidence impartially, Aśvaghoṣa almost seems to be making a point of falsifying my generalist idea:

Just as a physician, for a disorder of bile, phlegm, or wind, 
-- For whatever disorder of the humours has manifested the symptoms of disease --
Prescribes a course of treatment to cure that very disorder, 
So did the Buddha prescribe for the faults. //16.69//


So I go into the New Year with a sense that something is not adding up, and a sense that there is work to do -- very probably in the direction of abandoning a cherished idea.