Tagged: Absorption
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Anālayo- Definitions Of Right Concentration In Comparative Perspective (2019)
1Through a comparative analysis of early Buddhist discourses in Pāli and their Chinese and Sanskrit parallels, this article argues that the definition of right concentration as the attainment of the four absorptions (jhānas) represents a later stage of textual evolution. The author demonstrates that parallel versions of key Pāli texts which define right concentration this way either lack a definition entirely or describe it differently, often as a mind unified and endowed with the other seven factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. This historical-critical perspective suggests that the earliest understanding of right concentration was more integrated with the other path factors and did not necessitate deep absorptive states. Consequently, the author concludes that the ability to attain the four absorptions is not a necessary condition for reaching stream-entry, the first stage of awakening.
Polak - The Pleasure of Not Experiencing Anything (2023)
2Grzegorz Polak's article reconstructs the philosophical basis for the early Buddhist claim that the pleasure (*sukha*) of nibbāna lies in the absence of experience (*vedayita*). The author argues that *vedayita* and the five aggregates (*khandhas*) do not represent all cognition but a specific type of introspectable, reportable "access consciousness" that is inherently fabricated (*saṅkhāra*) and tied to a mistaken sense of self. Drawing on modern cognitive science, the paper posits that this form of consciousness is not continuous and its very generation is correlated with a subtle tension and fundamental discomfort (*dukkha*). Consequently, states of deep absorption or "flow" are pleasurable due to a lower frequency of this self-conscious awareness. The ultimate psychological transformation, therefore, involves ceasing to identify with one's consciousness, which allows for its absence to be realized not as annihilation, but as a profound, non-introspectable comfort (*sukha*) while the organism remains intelligently and receptively engaged with the world.