by Bhikkhu Anīgha
The training of the mind fundamentally boils down to restraining and abandoning what’s unwholesome (greed, aversion, delusion) and cultivating and maintaining what’s wholesome (non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion). In an ideal scenario, these instructions would suffice to take an individual all the way to Arahantship. But the reality is that we start out not being able to tell with certainty what’s wholesome or unwholesome in our own minds. There is bound to be a great deal of confusion when trying to make that distinction, which is why the idea of a method, technique, or observance that bypasses the toil required to gain such clarity—something that you can safely assume to be wholesome without needing to understand for yourself why it is so—is quite appealing.
What the Buddha devised to address this was nothing along the lines of a modern meditation technique, which solves the problem by turning a blind eye to it, but rather the “Stepwise Training” (anupubbasikkhā). This is the closest thing to a methodical practice that he taught:
“‘Master Gotama, in this stilt longhouse we can see sequential progress down to the last step of the staircase. Among the brahmins we can see sequential progress in learning the chants. Among archers we can see sequential progress in archery. Among us accountants, who earn a living by accounting, we can see sequential progress in calculation. For when we get an apprentice we first make them count: ‘One one, two twos, three threes, four fours, five fives, six sixes, seven sevens, eight eights, nine nines, ten tens.’ We even make them count up to a hundred. Is it possible to similarly describe a sequential training, sequential progress, and sequential practice in this teaching and discipline?’
‘It is possible, brahmin. Suppose a deft horse trainer were to obtain a fine thoroughbred. First of all, he’d make it get used to wearing the bit. In the same way, when the Realized One gets a man for training, he first guides him like this: ‘Come, bhikkhu, live fulfilling virtue and the training rules. Live restrained by the code of conduct, endowed with proper behavior and a suitable environment. Seeing danger in the slightest fault, train in the training rules…’
When the bhikkhu is virtuous, the Realized One guides him further: ‘Come, bhikkhu, guard your sense doors…’
When the bhikkhu has his sense doors guarded, the Realized One guides him further: ‘Come, bhikkhu, be moderate in eating…’
When the bhikkhu eats in moderation, the Realized One guides him further: ‘Come, bhikkhu, be committed to vigilance…’
When the bhikkhu is committed to vigilance, the Realized One guides him further: ‘Come, bhikkhu, be possessed of recollection-and-awareness…’
When the bhikkhu is possessed of recollection-and-awareness, the Realized One guides him further: ‘Come, bhikkhu, frequent a secluded lodging—a wilderness, the root of a tree, a hill, a ravine, a mountain cave, a charnel ground, a forest, the open air, a heap of straw…’
He gives up these five hindrances, defilements of the mind that weaken understanding. Then, quite disjoined from sensuality, disjoined from unwholesome phenomena, with thinking and with pondering, with joy and comfort born of separation, he abides having entered upon the first jhāna… second jhāna… third jhāna… fourth jhāna…
That’s how I instruct the bhikkhus who are trainees—who haven’t achieved their goal, but live aspiring to the supreme safety from the yoke.’”
—MN 107
If a beginner is told to purify their mind from the five hindrances—which is often all the detail the Suttas give, and not by accident—they will not succeed, no matter how much theoretical information they are given about what the hindrances are. Like a blind person needing to be told in what direction to walk, the most they could do is try to follow a directive that they can only assume or infer—based on tradition, hearsay, or logic—will get rid of those very subtle forms of unwholesomeness, such as keeping their attention on a meditation object, repeating a mantra, or contemplating a certain idea. They would only be able to gauge success through secondary criteria, such as what they experience and how they feel, and not through a direct discernment of whether the hindrances are still present. They cannot see the hindrances in their own right, as things that they can either choose to engage with or not, and because of that, there is no way that they can truly abandon them.1 This is why presenting meditation as the gateway to Buddhism, as is usually done, is such a grave mistake. In reality, the meditation the Buddha taught represents the most refined stage of the training, and many Suttas go as far as stating that only attained individuals are in a position to rightly develop it. 2,3
But what even the most uninitiated individual can recognize as a choice they’re responsible for—and thus can abstain from—is the breaking of the precepts: coarse, visible actions of body and speech. This is why the training starts there. They would likely still encounter doubts and confusion at certain times when striving to keep the precepts, but their discernment of what is wholesome and unwholesome will not be that far below what’s required for the task: purifying their virtue is a realistic goal given their current position.
Once their virtue is purified,4 their discernment of kusala and akusala will have been refined, making sense restraint the next, slightly loftier goal in the same line of development. Since it involves the same principle that underpins virtue but on a subtler level, they would now have some ability to discern the motivation behind their looking, listening, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking, i.e., whether it’s greed or non-greed, aversion or non-aversion, or distraction or non-distraction. That internal clarity is what would guide their efforts, so a static, externally-prescribed observance of always avoiding specific sights, sounds, etc., in the name of sense restraint—which would only ignore and further obscure the whole dimension of intentionality—would be redundant.
In this way, a person would gradually become more familiar with their own mind, which is the prerequisite for attaining the Right View: the understanding of what’s wholesome and unwholesome that goes to the very root, leaving nothing out, and leads to the complete destruction of suffering when recollected and followed.
With that understanding in place, the only right meditation—the one that is not driven by nor further fuels any unseen defilements, and thus cannot be encapsulated by any form of static and methodical instruction5—becomes possible.
- At best, they can “suppress” them, which is another way of saying “giving up on the actual task and shifting attention elsewhere”. It’s no coincidence that meditation is commonly viewed as the means to “suppress” the hindrances. ↩︎
- In fact, there is no record of the Buddha teaching any sort of meditation to lay people unless they were at least sotāpannas, and mindfulness of breathing—counterfeit versions of which are nowadays more widespread than even the most basic tenets of Buddhism, such as virtue, renunciation, and relinquishment—never appears in a discourse where householders are said to be present. ↩︎
- Since each stage of the training builds upon the discernment and fortitude of mind developed by all the previous ones, it is categorically impossible for a person to succeed in meditation (the cleansing of the hindrances) without succeeding in virtue, sense restraint, etc. The fact that this often does seem to happen in many modern traditions that see meditation as essential and everything else as a helpful but ultimately optional accessory speaks to how severely they diverge from what the Buddha actually taught. It clearly should be the other way around if we go by the Suttas: virtue, restraint, and a degree of renunciation are not negotiable, while “formal” meditation enters the picture only for the few who are dedicated enough to have fulfilled its prerequisites: monastics, or laypeople who live as such. And even then, unless they have the Right View, their task would be to understand what it is that should be developed in meditation, and not to meditate per se. ↩︎
- As is often mentioned in the Suttas, this doesn’t mean keeping the precepts by the letter and nothing more. One needs to live “seeing the danger in the slightest fault,” which means that one’s virtue needs to encompass actions of body and speech—even of mind, to an extent—that may not be strictly against the precepts, but can be seen to be rooted in greed, aversion, or distraction. ↩︎
- Which is why there aren’t any in the Suttas. Not due to a slip on anyone’s part, nor because there wasn’t the intellectual sophistication required to invent such descriptions in those days. ↩︎