Reexamining Jhana Towards A Critical Reconstruction Of Early Buddhist Soteriology

A practical guidebook for meditators interested in achieving the states of bliss and deep focus associated with the Buddhist jhānas One of the elements of the Eightfold Path is Right Concentration: the one-pointedness of mind that, together with ethics, livelihood, meditation, and more, leads to the ultimate freedom from suffering. So how does one achieve Right Concentration? According to the Buddha himself, the jhānas—a series of eight progressive altered states of consciousness—are an essential method. But because the jhānas can usually be achieved only through prolonged meditation retreat, they have been shrouded in mystery for years. Not anymore. In Right Concentration, Leigh Brasington takes away the mystique and gives instructions on how to achieve them in plain, accessible language. He notes the various pitfalls to avoid along the way and provides a wealth of material on the theory of jhāna practice—all geared toward the practitioner rather than the scholar. As Brasington proves, these states of bliss and concentration are attainable by anyone who devotes the time and sincerity of practice necessary to realize them.

The book offers a comprehensive discussion on the Buddhist liberation and meditation concepts based on the original Pāli scriptures of Theravāda Buddhism. It interprets the early Buddhist soteriology critically and sympathetically by interweaving the Buddhological and the Buddhistic debates on understanding the Buddha’s original teaching on bondage, liberation, liberated ones, and meditation. It showcases the liberal and pluralistic character of early Buddhist soteriology by interpreting it psychologically through the lens of the Buddha's recognition of two sets of psychosomatic and epistemic mental configurations active in the human mind. It shows how this dualism pervades the early Buddhist soteriology by pointing out its recognition of craving and ignorance as two causes of suffering; the emancipation of mind and the emancipation by wisdom as two constituents of liberation; and the meditative appeasing and the meditative watching as two methods to attain that liberation. It demonstrates how the Buddha structures a gradual path to liberation enabling individuals to experience many temporary and irreversible secondary goals along the way and allowing them to join the path at any stage appropriate to their temperaments and advancement at a given time and space. The book therefore serves the students and scholars of Buddhism, religion, and psychology to obtain a comprehensive and insightful introduction to Buddhist soteriology.

This book offers a new interpretation of the relationship between 'insight practice' (satipatthana) and the attainment of the four jhànas (i.e., right samàdhi), a key problem in the study of Buddhist meditation. The author challenges the traditional Buddhist understanding of the four jhànas as states of absorption, and shows how these states are the actualization and embodiment of insight (vipassanà). It proposes that the four jhànas and what we call 'vipassanà' are integral dimensions of a single process that leads to awakening. Current literature on the phenomenology of the four jhànas and their relationship with the 'practice of insight' has mostly repeated traditional Theravàda interpretations. No one to date has offered a comprehensive analysis of the fourfold jhàna model independently from traditional interpretations. This book offers such an analysis. It presents a model which speaks in the Nikàyas' distinct voice. It demonstrates that the distinction between the 'practice of serenity' (samatha-bhàvanà) and the 'practice of insight' (vipassanà-bhàvanà) – a fundamental distinction in Buddhist meditation theory – is not applicable to early Buddhist understanding of the meditative path. It seeks to show that the common interpretation of the jhànas as 'altered states of consciousness', absorptions that do not reveal anything about the nature of phenomena, is incompatible with the teachings of the Pàli Nikàyas. By carefully analyzing the descriptions of the four jhànas in the early Buddhist texts in Pàli, their contexts, associations and meanings within the conceptual framework of early Buddhism, the relationship between this central element in the Buddhist path and 'insight meditation' becomes revealed in all its power. Early Buddhist Meditation will be of interest to scholars of Buddhist studies, Asian philosophies and religions, as well as Buddhist practitioners with a serious interest in the process of insight meditation.

This book provides a philosophical account of the major doctrinal shift in the history of early Theravada tradition in India: the transition from the earliest stratum of Buddhist thought to the systematic of the Pali Abhidhamma movement.

Does Buddhism require faith? Can an atheist or agnostic follow the Buddha’s teachings without believing in reincarnation or organized religion? This is one man’s confession. In his classic Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor offered a profound, secular approach to the teachings of the Buddha that struck an emotional chord with Western readers. Now, with the same brilliance and boldness of thought, he paints a groundbreaking portrait of the historical Buddha—told from the author’s unique perspective as a former Buddhist monk and modern seeker. Drawing from the original Pali Canon, the seminal collection of Buddhist discourses compiled after the Buddha’s death by his followers, Batchelor shows us the Buddha as a flesh-and-blood man who looked at life in a radically new way. Batchelor also reveals the everyday challenges and doubts of his own devotional journey—from meeting the Dalai Lama in India, to training as a Zen monk in Korea, to finding his path as a lay teacher of Buddhism living in France. Both controversial and deeply personal, Stephen Batchelor’s refreshingly doctrine-free, life-informed account is essential reading for anyone interested in Buddhism.

In this book, Bhikkhu Analayo, scholar and meditation teacher, examines central aspects of Buddhist meditation as reflected in the early discourses of the Buddha, based on revised and reorganized material from previously published articles. The main topics he takes up are mindfulness, the path to awakening, absorption, and the brahmaviharas. He compares parallel versions of the discourses in a variety of languages which offers a window on the earliest stages in the development of these Buddhist teachings.