Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Three things to attend to in rotation, and each of them alone will ruin the work in its own way.
What a nimitta is here
The word is the one AN 3.32 used for the aspect of a thing that the mind takes hold of, and AN 3.68 used for the beautiful and repellent features that feed greed and hate. Sujato renders it here as basis, which keeps it from sounding like a meditation object in the technical sense.
The three are samādhinimitta, the basis of immersion; paggahanimitta, the basis of exertion; and upekkhānimitta, the basis of equanimity. They are aspects of one’s own practice, not external objects: the settledness of the mind, the effort being applied, and the willingness to leave it alone.
The instruction is kālena kālaṁ, from time to time. Not simultaneously and not in a fixed order — by turns, as the situation requires, which is exactly what the goldsmith does.
Three ways to get it wrong
Attend solely to immersion and it’s likely their mind will incline to laziness. A meditator who only ever cultivates settledness ends up somewhere pleasant and inert.
Attend solely to exertion and it’s likely their mind will incline to restlessness. Effort applied continuously produces agitation, which is the thing effort was supposed to remove.
Attend solely to equanimity and it’s likely their mind won’t properly become immersed in samādhi for the ending of defilements. Watching without ever adjusting produces nothing at all.
These three failures are recognizable to anybody who has meditated for a few months, and naming them is most of the discourse’s value. The third is the least often noticed and the most common in experienced practitioners: a settled, patient, non-interfering attitude that never becomes anything.
The crucible
The goldsmith prepares a forge, fires the crucible, picks up native gold with tongs, and puts it in. Then, from time to time, he fans it; from time to time, sprinkles water on it; from time to time, just watches over it.
Fanned only, the gold is scorched. Sprinkled only, it cools. Watched only, it is not properly processed. The correspondence with the three bases is exact and the discourse does not need to spell it out: fanning is exertion, sprinkling is settling, and watching is equanimity.
The image does something a list cannot. A goldsmith does not fan and sprinkle according to a schedule; he does it according to what the metal is doing, which he can see. The instruction from time to time is therefore not vague. It means: respond to the state in front of you.
The result is the same three adjectives as AN 3.101 — pliable, workable, radiant, not brittle — and the same list of ornaments.
Where this went in the Chinese manuals
This discourse is the seed of a very large tradition. The problem it names — a mind that goes slack or goes agitated, and the need to correct in the opposite direction — is the organizing problem of the Chinese meditation literature, where 昏沉 (sinking, dullness) and 掉舉 (scattering, agitation) are the standing pair of faults and the manuals give detailed procedures for each.
Zhiyi’s treatises work this out at length: what to do when the mind sinks, what to do when it scatters, and how to tell which is happening. A reader who meets that material without this discourse will find it fussy; a reader who has this discourse first will recognize it as the expansion of a three-line instruction.
It is also worth saying that the Pāli discourse is more economical and in one respect more useful: it names three failures rather than two, and the third — equanimity alone, producing nothing — is the one a practitioner is least likely to diagnose in themselves.
Using it
This is the most immediately usable meditation instruction in the Threes and it fits on a card. Three things: settling, effort, and leaving alone. Each alone fails in its own way. Rotate according to what is actually happening.
For a class, the goldsmith is the part to dwell on, because it supplies the missing term. The instruction is not do all three equally but do the one the situation calls for, and the only way to know which is to look — which is itself the third basis, doing its work.
Key terms
The text
Three bases
§1“Mendicants, a mendicant committed to the higher mind should focus on three bases from time to time: the basis of immersion, the basis of exertion, and the basis of equanimity. If a mendicant dedicated to the higher mind focuses solely on the basis of immersion, it’s likely their mind will incline to laziness. If they focus solely on the basis of exertion, it’s likely their mind will incline to restlessness. If they focus solely on the basis of equanimity, it’s likely their mind won’t properly become immersed in samādhi for the ending of defilements. But when a mendicant dedicated to the higher mind focuses from time to time on the basis of immersion, the basis of exertion, and the basis of equanimity, their mind becomes pliable, workable, and radiant, not brittle, and has become rightly immersed in samādhi for the ending of defilements.
The crucible
§2It’s like when a goldsmith or a goldsmith’s apprentice prepares a forge, fires the crucible, picks up some native gold with tongs and puts it in the crucible. From time to time they fan it, from time to time they sprinkle water on it, and from time to time they just watch over it. If they solely fanned it, the native gold would likely be scorched. If they solely sprinkled water on it, the native gold would likely cool down. If they solely watched over it, the native gold would likely not be properly processed. But when that goldsmith fans it from time to time, sprinkles water on it from time to time, and watches over it from time to time, that native gold becomes pliable, workable, and radiant, not brittle, and is ready to be worked. Then the goldsmith can successfully create any kind of ornament they want, whether a bracelet, earrings, a necklace, or a golden garland.
Within range
§3In the same way, a mendicant committed to the higher mind should focus on three bases from time to time: the basis of immersion, the basis of exertion, and the basis of equanimity. … When a mendicant dedicated to the higher mind focuses from time to time on the basis of immersion, the basis of exertion, and the basis of equanimity, their mind becomes pliable, workable, and radiant, not brittle, and has become rightly immersed in samādhi for the ending of defilements. They extend the mind to realize by insight each and every thing that can be realized by insight; and they are capable of realizing those things, since each and every one is within range.
§4If they wish: ‘May I wield the many kinds of psychic power’ … ‘With clairaudience that is purified and superhuman, may I hear both kinds of sounds, human and divine, whether near or far.’ … ‘May I recollect many kinds of past lives.’ … ‘With clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman, may I see sentient beings passing away and being reborn.’ … ‘May I realize the undefiled freedom of heart and freedom by wisdom in this very life, and live having realized it with my own insight due to the ending of defilements.’ They are capable of realizing these things, since each and every one is within range.”
Self-check quiz
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