Choosing Your Meditation Subject

What this chapter covers: This is the gateway to all the concentration chapters that follow. It defines what concentration is, describes its many varieties, and then provides the practical roadmap for developing it: clearing away impediments, finding the right teacher, understanding your own temperament, and selecting from forty meditation subjects the one that fits you best. This chapter is the strategic manual — later chapters provide the tactical details.

What Is Concentration?

Concentration (samadhi) is profitable unification of mind — the state in which consciousness and its accompanying mental factors remain evenly and rightly on a single object, undistracted and unscattered.

• Its characteristic is non-distraction
• Its function is to eliminate distraction
• It is recognized as non-wavering — a steady, unshaken mind
• Its proximate cause is bliss — as the Buddha said: “Being blissful, his mind becomes concentrated”

The Many Kinds of Concentration

Concentration can be classified from one-fold up to five-fold. Here are the key distinctions a practitioner needs to understand:

Access and Absorption

There are two fundamental levels:

• Access concentration (upacara samadhi) — the threshold level. This is the unification of mind achieved through practices like the recollections, mindfulness of death, contemplation of repulsiveness in food, and the defining of the four elements. It is also the stage that immediately precedes full absorption in any meditation subject.
• Absorption concentration (appana samadhi) — full immersion. The mind enters completely into the meditation object. This is what follows directly after the preliminary work of developing a subject.

Mundane and Supramundane

• Mundane concentration is profitable unification of mind across the three planes of existence (sense, fine-material, and immaterial)
• Supramundane concentration is the unification associated with the noble paths — the direct insight into liberation

The Factors of Deep Absorption (Jhana)

In the four-fold reckoning:

1. First deep absorption has five factors: applied thought, sustained thought, happiness, bliss, and one-pointedness — following the suppression of the five hindrances
2. Second deep absorption has three factors: happiness, bliss, and one-pointedness — after eliminating applied and sustained thought
3. Third deep absorption has two factors: bliss and one-pointedness — with the fading away of happiness
4. Fourth deep absorption has two factors: one-pointedness and equanimous feeling — after bliss is abandoned

Background Note: There is also a five-fold reckoning that splits the second absorption into two stages: one where only applied thought is abandoned (but sustained thought remains), and one where both are abandoned. This creates five levels instead of four. Both reckonings are used throughout this text.

The distinction between happiness (piti) and bliss (sukha) is important. Happiness is an active thrill of rapture — classified under the formations aggregate. Bliss is refined pleasant feeling — classified under the feeling aggregate. Happiness is like the joy of a thirsty traveller who sees an oasis; bliss is like the satisfaction of drinking the water.

What Makes Progress Easy or Difficult

Four combinations of progress and direct knowledge:

What determines which combination you get:

• Cultivating suitable vs. unsuitable conditions — choosing the right meditation subject, environment, and approach
• Completing preparatory tasks — clearing impediments (explained below) makes progress easy; skipping them makes it difficult
• Skill in absorption — having it makes direct knowledge swift; lacking it makes it sluggish
• Craving and ignorance — being overwhelmed by craving makes progress difficult; by ignorance makes direct knowledge sluggish
• Prior practice — experience with serenity (calm) makes progress easy; experience with insight makes direct knowledge swift
• Defilements and faculties — sharp defilements with dull faculties is the worst case; blunt defilements with keen faculties is the best

The Four Directions Concentration Can Go

Having attained a level of absorption, the mind can move in four directions:

• Partaking of diminution — the mind becomes accessible to perceptions accompanied by sense desire. The concentration weakens and slides backward.
• Partaking of stagnation — the mindfulness conforming to that concentration merely stagnates. The concentration holds steady but goes nowhere.
• Partaking of distinction — the mind becomes accessible to perceptions of the next higher level (e.g., from first absorption, moving toward the second). The concentration advances.
• Partaking of penetration — the mind becomes accessible to perceptions accompanied by dispassion and directed to fading away. This is the transition from mundane concentration to the supramundane path — the most crucial direction.

Of these, corruption is the state partaking of diminution, and cleansing is the state partaking of distinction.

The Four Predominances

Concentration can be attained by making one of four things predominant:

• Zeal (chanda) — strong desire to practice
• Energy (viriya) — vigorous effort
• Consciousness (citta) — natural purity of mind
• Inquiry (vimamsa) — investigation and examination

How to Develop Concentration: The Overview

Supramundane concentration — the kind associated with the noble paths — is developed through the method of developing understanding (covered in Chapter 22). When you develop path-understanding, supramundane concentration develops with it.

Mundane concentration is what we must actively develop. Here is the roadmap in brief:

1. Take your stand on purified virtue
2. Sever any of the ten impediments you may have
3. Approach a good teacher — the giver of a meditation subject
4. From the forty meditation subjects, apprehend the one that suits your temperament
5. Avoid an unfavourable monastery; go to one that is favourable
6. Sever the lesser impediments
7. Do not overlook any of the directions for development

The Ten Impediments

Before taking up serious meditation practice, you must clear away whatever is entangling your mind. There are ten impediments:

A dwelling, family, and gain, A class, and building too as fifth, And travel, kin, affliction, books, And supernormal powers: ten.

1. A Dwelling

A room, a hut, or an entire monastery can be an impediment — but only for someone whose mind is caught up in building projects, stored belongings, or business connected with the place. For someone with no such attachments, even a busy monastery is no impediment.

Here is a story that illustrates this. Two monks went forth together at the Thuparama monastery. One left for the forest retreat at Pacinakhandaraji. After a long time there, he returned to visit his friend. He expected to be welcomed with gifts of ghee, molasses, or special food — but got nothing. The next morning they went for alms together and received only a ladle of gruel. After eating, the visitor said: “How is this? Do you always live this way?” — “Yes, friend.” — “Pacinakhandaraji is comfortable; let us go there.”

The elder immediately took the road to leave. The visitor asked: “But have you no extra belongings after living here so long?” — “The bed and chair belong to the community. They are put away as usual. There is nothing else.” — “But I have left my staff and oil tube and sandal bag there!” — “Have you already collected so much, living there for just one day?”

The visitor was humbled. He paid homage and said: “For those like you, everywhere is a forest dwelling. This is a place where the relics of four Buddhas rest. Here you should stay.” And on the following day, the visitor departed alone.

2. A Family

A family of relatives or supporters becomes an impediment only when you live in close association — pleased when they are pleased, sad when they are sad, never going even to a neighbouring monastery without members of the family.

But even mother and father need not be an impediment, as shown by the story of the young monk, nephew of the elder at the Korandaka Monastery. This young monk went to Rohana for instruction and stayed for years. Eventually he decided to visit home. His uncle, the elder, set out from the opposite direction to fetch him. They met on the banks of the Mahaveli River.

The elder sent him on to the monastery, where he was assigned lodging that his own father had responsibility for. His father came the next day and said: “Whoever takes up residence in our lodging must take alms food only in our house for three months.” The young monk agreed. He ate in his parents’ home for three months — and his own mother did not recognize him, nor did he reveal himself.

When the three months were done, the elder’s sister had been waiting anxiously for her brother to bring back her son. Seeing the elder return alone, she fell weeping at his feet. The elder showed her the cloth her son had left as a gift, and told her everything. Appeased, she prostrated in the direction her son had gone and said: “Surely the Blessed One taught the way of contentment with the four requisites and delight in development, making a monk such as my son a body-witness. For three months he ate in the house of the mother who bore him, yet he never said ‘I am your son, you are my mother!’ Oh, admirable man!“

3. Gain

The four requisites (robes, food, shelter, medicine) become an impediment when a meritorious monk is showered with offerings. Between giving blessings, teaching, and receiving visitors from sunrise to late at night, he never gets a chance for the ascetic’s duties. He should leave his group and wander alone where he is not known.

4. A Class of Students

Teaching students of the discourses or the higher teaching becomes an impediment when instruction leaves no time for practice. If much remains to teach, hand the students over to another capable teacher within reach. If none is available, take leave of the class: “I have a task to see to, friends; go where it suits you.”

5. Building Work

New construction — knowing what materials have been obtained, supervising carpenters, checking progress — is always an impediment. If little remains, finish it. If much remains, hand it over to others and depart.

6. Travel

A planned journey creates an impediment even in the forest, because the mind runs ahead to the destination. Complete the journey first, then take up practice.

7. Sick Relatives

A sick teacher, preceptor, co-resident, pupil, or family member is an impediment. Sever it by curing them with nursing care. A preceptor must be cared for as long as life lasts if the illness does not soon depart.

8. Illness

Your own illness is an impediment while it afflicts. Treat it with medicine. If it is not cured after several days, then address your body directly: “I am not your slave or your hireling. I have come to suffering through maintaining you through the beginningless round of rebirths.” Then take up practice regardless.

9. Responsibility for Scriptures

Constant recitation and study can be an impediment — but not for everyone. The Elder Revata the Majjhima Reciter went to the Elder Revata in the Hill Country for a meditation subject. Asked about his scriptural duties, he said he was studying the Middle Length Discourses. The elder warned: “The Majjhima is a hard responsibility. How can you take up a meditation subject?” — “When I have taken a meditation subject from you, I shall not look at the scriptures again.”

He did no recitation for nineteen years and reached full awakening in the twentieth year. When monks later came for recitation, he told them: “I have not looked at the scriptures for twenty years, yet I am familiar with them. You may begin.” From beginning to end, he had no hesitation over a single syllable.

Similarly, the Elder Maha-Naga at Karaliyagiri put aside the scriptures for eighteen years, then recited the Dhatukatha to monks. When they checked with the elders at Anuradhapura, not a single question was out of order.

The story of the Elder Tipitaka-Cula-Abhaya carries an important lesson about lineage authority. This elder, who knew all three collections of scripture, had the golden drum struck, announcing: “I shall expound the three collections.” But his preceptor tested him: “How do the teachers explain this passage?” Abhaya gave the correct answer — three different ways. Each time the preceptor dissented. Then: “Your first explanation was the way of the teachers. But because you have not actually learnt it from the teachers’ lips, you cannot maintain it with authority. Go and learn it from our own teachers.”

He was sent to the Elder Maha-Dhammarakkhita in the Rohana country, who said: “I have not looked at the other texts for thirty years. But you may repeat them in my presence by night, and I shall explain them to you by day.” When the instruction was complete, the elder sat on a mat on the ground before his own student and said: “Explain a meditation subject to me.” Abhaya protested: “Have I not heard it all from you?” The elder replied: “This path is different for one who has actually travelled by it.” He took the meditation subject and later attained full awakening.

The teaching here is twofold: even a correct interpretation lacks authority unless received through the lineage of teachers; and even a great scholar must walk the path himself, not merely know the texts.

10. Supernormal Powers

The supernormal powers of an ordinary person are fragile — like a prone infant or young corn — and the slightest thing breaks them. But they are an impediment to insight, not to concentration, since they arise from concentration. So this impediment applies only to one seeking insight.

Finding the Right Teacher

A meditation subject is of two kinds:

• Generally useful subjects — to be developed by everyone before taking up a special subject:

  • Loving-kindness toward the monastic community within the boundary
  • Loving-kindness toward the local deities, principal people, all humans, and all living beings
  • Mindfulness of death — thinking “I have got to die” to give up improper pursuits and develop urgency
  • Perception of foulness — so that even divine objects do not tempt the mind to greed

• The special meditation subject — the one from the forty that suits your temperament. This is the one you must carry constantly with you.

What Makes a Good Teacher

The ideal teacher is “revered and dearly loved, speaks and suffers speech, utters what is profound, and does not urge without a reason” — wholly concerned with your welfare and partial to your progress.

The best teacher is someone whose mental impurities are destroyed, who has used that particular meditation subject to achieve the four-fold and five-fold levels of absorption, and who reached the destruction of impurities by building insight on that very foundation. In descending order of preference: a non-returner, a once-returner, a stream-enterer, an ordinary person who has achieved absorption, one who knows three collections of scripture, two, or one. At minimum: someone familiar with one collection together with its commentary and who is himself conscientious. As the Ancient Elders said three times: “One who is conscientious will guard it.”

A learned teacher will “explain a meditation subject showing a broad track, like a big elephant going through a stretch of jungle” — selecting discourses and reasons from here and there, explaining what is suitable and what is not.

How to Approach a Teacher

Go to the teacher carrying your own bowl and robes, with few belongings, living in the greatest simplicity. Do not go surrounded by pupils or bearing gifts. Go straight to the teacher’s dwelling — do not stop elsewhere first, where others hostile to the teacher might discourage you.

Dedicate yourself to the Buddha: “Blessed One, I relinquish this my person to you.” This ensures that if a frightening experience arises during practice in a remote place, no fear overcomes you — only joy, as you reflect: “Have you not wisely already dedicated yourself to the Enlightened One?”

Also dedicate yourself to the teacher: “I relinquish this my person to you, venerable sir.” One who has not done this becomes unresponsive to correction, goes about as he likes, and — critically — the teacher will not help him with either material support or instruction in the profound meditation texts. Without these two kinds of help, he finds no footing in the teaching and soon falls to misconduct or the lay state.

The student’s inclination should be sincere in six modes: non-greed, non-hate, non-delusion, renunciation, seclusion, and relinquishment. All noble ones — stream-enterers, once-returners, non-returners, fully awakened ones, solitary buddhas, and Fully Enlightened Buddhas, whether past, future, or present — arrive at the distinction peculiar to each through these same six modes. Three monks came to the Elder Cula-Pindapatika-Tissa. One said: “I am ready to fall from a cliff a hundred men high, if it is to your advantage.” Another: “I am ready to grind this body away on a flat stone.” The third: “I am ready to die by stopping breathing.” Observing that they were capable of progress, the elder gave them a meditation subject. Following his advice, all three attained full awakening.

The Six Temperaments

Every person has a dominant temperament that determines which meditation subject will be most effective. There are six:

Why the Parallels?

The faithful temperament parallels the greedy because faith shares qualities with greed: both are affectionate and tenacious. Greed does not give up what is harmful; faith does not give up what is beneficial. Greed seeks sense pleasures; faith seeks the special qualities of virtue.

The intelligent temperament parallels the hating because understanding shares qualities with hate: both are disaffected and do not cling to their object. Hate seeks out imagined faults; understanding seeks out real faults. Hate condemns living beings; understanding condemns conditioned formations.

The speculative temperament parallels the deluded because obstructive thoughts share qualities with delusion: both are restless and vacillating.

The Source of Temperaments

According to the teachers of the commentaries, temperament is determined by the mental qualities present at the moment of accumulating the actions (kamma) that produce rebirth. When greed was strong at that moment but non-hate and non-delusion were also strong, the person is reborn with greed but is also good-natured and intelligent. When all three unwholesome roots were strong, the person has greed, hate, and delusion. And so on through all the combinations.

How to Recognize Temperaments

Temperament shows itself in five ways:

By posture: The greedy person walks carefully, evenly, with a springy step. The hating person walks as though digging with the tips of his feet, quickly, with a dragged step. The deluded person walks hesitantly, pressing down suddenly.

By action: The greedy person sweeps cleanly, evenly, without hurrying — “as if strewing flowers.” The hating person sweeps with a harsh noise, hurriedly throwing sand to each side. The deluded person sweeps unevenly, turning the sand over confusedly.

By eating: The greedy person likes rich, sweet food, makes round lumps, eats slowly, savouring each taste. The hating person likes rough, sour food, fills his mouth, eats hurriedly. The deluded person has no settled preference, makes small lumps, drops bits in the dish, smearing his face, mind astray.

By seeing: The greedy person looks long at even slightly pleasing objects, seizes on trivial virtues, discounts real faults, and departs with regret. The hating person avoids looking long at even slightly unpleasant objects, picks out trivial faults, discounts real virtues, and departs without regret. The deluded person copies what others do — criticizes when others criticize, praises when others praise.

By the kind of mental states that frequently arise:

• Greedy: Deceit, pride, discontent, vanity, foppery
• Hating: Anger, enmity, disparaging, domineering, envy, avarice
• Deluded: Stiffness, torpor, agitation, worry, uncertainty, tenacious clinging
• Faithful: Free generosity, desire to see noble ones, desire to hear the teaching, great gladness, honesty, trust
• Intelligent: Readiness to be spoken to, good friends, right measure in eating, mindfulness, sense of urgency, wisely directed effort
• Speculative: Talkativeness, sociability, boredom with what is profitable, failure to finish things, planning at night and acting by day, mental running hither and thither

However, these signs are guidelines, not certainties. A teacher with the ability to read minds can know the temperament directly. Otherwise, the teacher should simply ask the student.

What Suits Each Temperament

The greedy person should be given conditions that counteract attachment: an unwashed, dilapidated lodging; coarse, ugly robes; an unattractive bowl; a disagreeable alms route; unsightly food. For contemplation: any colour totality device (kasina) whose colour is not pure, or foulness meditation.

The hating person should be given conditions that soothe: a beautiful, well-proportioned lodging adorned with flowers and perfumes; fine, well-dyed robes; a polished bowl; a pleasant alms route; attractive, carefully served food. For contemplation: any colour device whose colour is quite pure, or the divine abidings (loving-kindness, etc.).

The deluded person needs an open lodging with a view, where all four quarters are visible. Walking is the right posture. A large meditation object — the mind becomes more confused in a confined space. Otherwise, conditions as for the hating person.

The faithful person: Same conditions as the hating person. Any of the recollections is suitable.

The intelligent person: Nothing unsuitable as far as lodging. Mindfulness of death, recollection of peace, defining the four elements, and perception of repulsiveness in food are especially suitable.

The speculative person needs the opposite of an open view — a deep cave screened by woods, with no gardens, groves, or panoramas visible. These create conditions for proliferating thought. A small meditation object is right — a large one also feeds the proliferation.

The Forty Meditation Subjects

Here is the complete inventory:

The List

• Ten totality devices (kasina): Earth, water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, light, limited space
• Ten kinds of foulness: The bloated, the livid, the festering, the cut-up, the gnawed, the scattered, the hacked-and-scattered, the bleeding, the worm-infested, a skeleton
• Ten recollections: The Buddha, the teaching (dhamma), the community (sangha), virtue, generosity, deities, death, the body, breathing, and peace
• Four divine abidings: Loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity
• Four formless states: Boundless space, boundless consciousness, nothingness, neither-perception-nor-non-perception
• One perception: Repulsiveness in food
• One defining: The four elements

How to Progress: Surmounting

There are two kinds of surmounting — two ways you advance from one stage to the next:

• Surmounting of factors: In any subject that produces multiple levels of absorption, you advance by abandoning specific mental factors in the same object. For example, you surmount applied thought and sustained thought to move from the first to the second absorption, while the object (e.g., the earth device) stays the same. This also applies to the fourth divine abiding (equanimity), which is reached by surmounting joy in the same object as loving-kindness.
• Surmounting of the object: In the formless attainments, you advance by transcending the object itself. The base of boundless space is reached by surmounting one of the first nine totality devices. Boundless consciousness is reached by surmounting space. And so on upward.

The Nature of the Object

Of the forty subjects:

• 22 have counterpart signs as object: The ten totality devices, the ten kinds of foulness, breathing, and the body contemplation. These produce a mental image that can be worked with.
• 12 have individual-essence states as object: Eight recollections (minus breathing and body), repulsiveness in food, defining elements, the base of boundless consciousness, and the base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.
• 6 have objects not easily classified: The remaining subjects.
• 8 have mobile objects in the early stage (though the counterpart sign is stationary): the festering, the bleeding, the worm-infested, breathing, the water/fire/air devices, and the light device using sunlight.

Where They Can Be Practiced

• The ten kinds of foulness, body contemplation, and repulsiveness in food do not occur among deities (there are no corpses or repulsive food there)
• These twelve plus breathing do not occur in the Brahma world
• Only the four formless states occur in the formless realm
• All forty occur among human beings

How They Are Apprehended

• By sight (19 subjects): Nine totality devices (minus air) and the ten kinds of foulness — in the early stage, the sign must be apprehended by constantly looking
• By touch: Mindfulness of breathing — the sign is apprehended at the nose-tip
• By sight and touch: The air device
• By sight and hearing: Body contemplation — the five parts ending with skin by sight, the rest by hearing
• By hearing (18 subjects): All the rest
• Not apprehendable by a beginner: The divine abiding of equanimity and the four formless states — these require prior mastery of the lower stages

What Each Is a Condition For

• Nine totality devices (minus space) are conditions for the formless attainments
• All ten devices are conditions for the kinds of direct knowledge (supernormal powers, divine ear, divine eye, etc.)
• The first three divine abidings are conditions for the fourth (equanimity)
• Each lower formless state is a condition for the next higher one
• The base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception is a condition for the attainment of cessation
• All forty are conditions for living in bliss, for insight, and for fortunate kinds of rebirth

Which Bring Access Only, Which Bring Full Absorption

Access only (10 subjects): The first eight recollections (excluding body and breathing), repulsiveness in food, and defining the four elements — these cannot produce full absorption, only access concentration.

Full absorption (30 subjects): All the rest. Specifically:

• The ten totality devices and mindfulness of breathing produce all four levels of absorption
• The ten kinds of foulness and mindfulness of the body produce only the first level
• The first three divine abidings (loving-kindness, compassion, joy) produce three levels
• The fourth divine abiding (equanimity) and the four formless states produce the fourth level

Which Need to Be Extended, Which Do Not

Only the ten totality devices need to be extended — that is, mentally expanded to cover a wider and wider area. It is within the space you have extended a device that you can hear with the divine ear, see with the divine eye, or know others’ minds.

The foulness meditations and body contemplation need not be extended — they have a definite location (the body or a corpse), and extending them would only produce a quantity of corpses with no benefit.

Breathing need not be extended — it has a definite location at the nose-tip.

Divine abidings need not be extended by expanding a sign — instead, they are “extended” by progressively including more and more beings: one house, two houses, one direction, all directions.

Formless states need not be extended — space is merely the removal of a material object; consciousness is an individual essence that cannot be spatially expanded.

Recollections need not be extended — they have no counterpart sign to extend.

Matching Subjects to Temperaments

For the speculative temperament, any device should be limited (small). For the deluded temperament, it should be measureless (large).

However, this matching is about direct opposition and complete suitability. In reality, there is no beneficial meditation that does not help with every temperament to some degree. As the Buddha said in the Meghiya Sutta: “Foulness should be developed for abandoning greed. Loving-kindness for abandoning ill will. Mindfulness of breathing for cutting off proliferating thought. Perception of impermanence for eliminating the conceit ‘I am.’” And in the Rahula Sutta, seven different subjects were given for a single temperament. So rather than insisting on the mere letter, seek the intention in each case.

How to Receive the Subject

When the teacher explains the meditation subject, the student must apprehend the sign — connecting each aspect: “This is the preceding point, this is the subsequent point, this is its meaning, this is its intention, this is the analogy.” When he listens attentively and apprehends the sign in this way, his meditation subject is well apprehended. Then, and because of that, he successfully attains distinction — but not otherwise.

This is the third chapter, “The Description of Taking a Meditation Subject,” in the section on the Development of Concentration in the Path of Purification, composed for the purpose of gladdening good people.