BUDDHIST MEDITATION by EDWARD CONZE LONDON GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LTD' Ruskin House Museum Street FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1956 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of privat.e study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1911, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher. © George Allen & Unwin Ltd' 1956 J Printed in Great Britain in 11 point Baskerville type by Bradford & Dickens London GENERAL INTRODUCTION As a result of tW9 Wars that have devastated the World l11:en and women everywhere feel a twofold need. We need a deeper understanding and appreciation of other pteoples and their, civilizations, especially their moral and spiritual achievements. And we need a wider vision of the Universe, a clearer insight into the fundamentals of ethics and religion. How ought men to behave? How ought nations? Does God exist? What is His Nature? How is He related to His creation? Especially, how can man approach Him? In other words, there is a general desire to know what the greatest minds, whether of East or West, have thought and said about the Truth of God and of the beings who (as most of them hold) have sprung from Him, live by Him, and return to Him. It is the object of this Series, whic~priginated among a group of Oxf0rd men and their frf~nds, to place the chief ethical and religious masterpieces of the world, both Christian and non-Christian, within easy reach of the intelligent reader who is not necessarily an expert the ex-Service man who is interested in the East, the undergraduate, the adult student, the intelligent public generally. The Series will contain books of three kinds: translations, reproductions of ideal and religious art, and background hooks showing the surroundings in which the literature and art arose and developed. These books overlap each other. Religious art, both in East and West, often illustrates a religious text, and in suitable cases the text and the pictures will be printed together to complete each other. The background books will often consist largely of translations. The volumes will be 5 prepared by scholars of distinction, who will try to make them, not only scholarly, but intelligible and enjoyable. This Introduction represents the views of the General Editors as to the scope of the Series, but not necessarily the views of all contributors to it. The contents of the books will also be very varied-ethical and social, biographical, devotional, philosophic and mystical, whether in poetry, in pictures or in prose. There is a great wealth of material. Confucius lived in a tim~ mud! like our own, when State was at war with State and the people suffering and disillusioned; and the 'Classics' he preserved or inspired show the social virtues that may unite families, classes and States into one great family, in obedience to the Will of Heaven. Asoka and Akbar (both of them great patrons of art) ruled a vast Empire on the principles of religious faith. There are the moral anecdotes and moral maxims of the Jewish and Muslim writers of the Middle Ages. There are the beautiful tales of courage, love and fidelity in the Indian and Persian epics. Shakespeare's plays show that he thought the true relation between man and man is love. Here and there a volume will illustrate the unethical or less ethical man and difficulties that beset him. Then there are the devotional and philosophic works. The lives and legends (legends often express religious truth with clarity and beauty) of the Buddha, of the parents of Mary, of Francis of Assisi, and the exquisite sculptures and paintings that illustrate them; Indian and Christian religious music, and the words of prayer and praise which the music intensifies. There are the prophets and apocalyptic writers, Zarathustrian and Hebrew; the Greek philosophers, Christian thinkers and the Greek, Latin, medieval and modem-whom they so deeply influenced. There is, too, the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian teaching expressed in such great 6 monuments as the Indian temples, Barabudur (the Chartres of Asia) and Ajanta, Chartres itself and the Sistine Chapel. Finally, there are the mystics of feeling, and the mystical philosophers. In God-loving India the poets, musicians, sculptors and painters inspired by the spiritual worship of Krishna and Rama, as well as the philosophic mystics from the Upanishads onward. The two great Taoists Lao-tze and Chuang-tze and the Sung mystic"(il painters in China, Rumi and other sufis in Islam, Plato and Plotinus, followed by 'Dionysius' , Eckhart, St. John of the Cross and (in our view) Dante and other great mystics and mystical painters in many Christian lands. Mankind is hungry, but the feast is there, though it is locked up and hidden away. It is the aim of this Series to put it within reach, so that, like the heroes of Homer, we may stretch forth our hands to the good cheer laid before us. No doubt the great religions differ in fundamental respects. But they are not nearly so far from one another as they seem. We think they are further off than they are largely because. we so often misunderstand and misrepresent them. Those whose own religion is dog matic have often been as ready to learn from other teachings as those who are liberals in religion. Above all, there is an enorn10US amount of common ground in the great Jreligions, concerning, too, the most funda mental matters. There is frequent agreement on the Divine Nature; God is the One, Self-subsisting Reality, knowing Himself, and therefore loving and rejoicing in Himself. Nature and finite spirits are in some way subordinate kinds of Being, or merely appearances of the Divine, the One. The three stages of the way of man's approach or return to God are in essenc~ th~ 7 same in Christian and non-Christian teaching: an ethical stage, then one of knowledge and love, leading to the mystical union of the soul with God. Each stage will be illustrated in these volumes. Something of all this may (it is hoped) be learnt from the books and pictures in this Series; Read and pondered with a desire to learn, they will help men and women to find 'fulness of life,' and peoples to live together in greater understanding and harmony. To-day the earth is beautiful, but men are disillusioned and afraid. But there may come' a day, perhaps not a distant day, when there will be a renaissance of man's spirit: when men will be innocent and happy amid the beauty of the world, or their eyes will be opened to see that egoism and strife are folly, that the universe is fundamentally spiritual, and that men are the sons of God. They shall not hurt nor destroy In all My holy mountain: For all the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord As the waters cover the sea. THE EDITORS 8 " " • 1'1 CONTENTS GENERAL INTRODUCTION page 5 INTRODUCTION I The meaning and purpose of Buddhist Meditation I I 2 Its range and principal divisions 13 3 The literary sources 24 4 ~he arrangement of the selections 27 5 Buddhist Meditation and Modern Psychotherapy 37 SELECTIONS I Devotional Exercises 45 I The TIuce Treasures 45 a. The Recollection of the Buddha 45 b. The Recollection of the Dharma 49 c. The Recollection of the Sarngha 51 2 The Bodhisattva's example 52 3 Worship 56 4 A Note on Visions 59 11 Mindfulness 62 I The mindful awareness of the body 62 a. Bodily Postures, Attitudes and Behaviour 62 b. Breathing Mindfulness 65 2 The mindful awareness of mental processes 70 a. Feelings 70 b. The five hindrances 72 3 The repudiation of the sensory world 78 a. Guarding the senses 78 b. The control. of the mind 83 c. Similes for the evils of sense-desires 85 4 The recollection of death 86 5 Distaste for the body, and its functions 95 a. The Thirty-two parts of the Body 95 b. The Repulsiveness of food 100 c. The F ouI. The Corpses on the charnel field 103 6 The Goal (Nirvana). The recollection of Peace 107 ~ ~ 9 III Trance IIO I The practice of introversion 1I0 a. Withdrawal from the world 110 h. The eight stages of trance JI3 2 The cultivation of the social emotions JI8 a. Nine preliminary reflections on hate 1-18 h. Unlimited Friendliness HI6 c. Unlimited Compassion 131 d. Unlimited Sympathetic Joy 132 e. Unlimited Evenmindedness 132 • 3 The evocation of deities .133 IV Wisdom. 140 I The four holy truths 140 a. The truth of ill 140 h. The sixteen aspects 142 2 The three marks of conditioned things 146 a. The 165 Considerations 146 h. The three marks defined 148 3 Survey of conditions 149 a. The range of conditioning 149 h. The automatic nature of conditioning 151 c. Conditioned co-production 152 4 Withdrawal from the world (the eight cognitions) 158 5 Emptiness 169 .. NUMERICAL LISTS 174 SOURCES 177 EDITIONS USED 179 10 • INTRODUCTION I. The meaning and purpose of Buddhist Meditation 1"Ieditational practices constitute the very core of the Buddhist approach to life. An intensely practical religion, Buddhism is by contrast inclined to. treat doctrinal defini tions and historical facts with some degree of unconcern. As prayer in Christianity, so meditation is here the very heartbeat of the religion. Enlightenment, or the state of Nirvana, is, of course, the ultimate aim of Buddhist meditations. On the way to Nirvana they serve to promote spiritual development, to diminish the impact of suffering, to calm the mind and to reveal the true facts of existence. Increased gentleness and sympathy are among their by-products, together with an opening up to life's message, and a feeling that death has lost its sting. The intended result is stated quite clearly in the verses by which the monks of old testified to their attainment of gnosis (anna). These poem~ mirror for us the aims of the monks, together with the. oc~asion of the final insight which may spring from any of the meditations outlined in this book. For in them the monks 'tell of the good they have won (attha), without bringing in their own ego (atta).'l There is, first of all, a deep sense of the perishable nature of all that exists, and a desire not to become again. 'Nowhere is there any pcnnanence in becoming, and there is no eternity about conditioned things. The skandhas rise, and then dissolve again. Now I know that lAnguttara Nikaya iii 359. I I