Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The highest meditative attainments buy an enormous amount of time and settle nothing.
What the three attainments are
The formless attainments, in the standard order and with their standard formulas. Infinite space: going beyond perceptions of form, with perceptions of impingement gone and perceptions of diversity not attended to. Infinite consciousness: going beyond infinite space. Nothingness: going beyond that.
These sit above the four absorptions in the canon’s scheme and they are the highest states the tradition inherited from the meditation culture around it. MN 26 records the Bodhisatta learning the third of them from Āḷāra Kālāma and the fourth from Uddaka Rāmaputta, and leaving both teachers because the attainments did not do what he wanted.
The title word, āneñja, means imperturbable or unshakable, and it is the canon’s standard epithet for these states. That is what makes the discourse’s point sharp: the states really are imperturbable, and it is not enough.
The three verbs that do the damage
“They enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. If they’re set on that, committed to it, and meditate on it often without losing it…”
Assādeti abhinandati — the same verb family as the assāda, gratification, of AN 3.103. What produces the rebirth is not the attainment but the enjoyment of it.
That is the mechanism and it should be made explicit. A meditator reaches a state of extraordinary refinement and does with it exactly what an ordinary person does with an ordinary pleasure: finds it good, wants more of it, and settles into it. The three-term analysis applies unchanged. There is gratification here, and the discourse is showing what happens when the drawback is not seen.
The refinement of the object makes no difference at all, which is the same point AN 3.76 made about the three realms: the mechanism is identical all the way up.
The two outcomes
For the ordinary person: they stay until the lifespan is spent, and then they go to hell or the animal realm or the ghost realm.
That sentence is one of the harshest in the collection and it should not be softened. Twenty thousand eons in a formless realm ends in a lower rebirth, because nothing was resolved during it. The attainment was a very long pause.
For the disciple of the Buddha: they stay until the lifespan is spent, and then they’re extinguished in that very life.
The difference is not the attainment, the realm, or the lifespan, all of which are identical. It is described as the difference between a learned noble disciple and an unlearned ordinary person as regards their place of rebirth — and what distinguishes them was settled before either of them got there.
What this is warning against
The target is specific and worth naming. It is not meditation, and it is not the formless attainments, which the canon treats as real and describes without hostility.
It is the assumption that a sufficiently high state is itself the resolution. A person who has reached the dimension of nothingness has gone further than almost anyone and the discourse says that from that position, without the noble disciple’s qualification, the eventual destination is a lower realm.
The numbers are doing rhetorical work here in the same way as AN 3.70’s heavenly arithmetic. Sixty thousand eons is not a figure anybody can hold, and its function is to make the ending land: however long it is, it ends, and what follows was determined by something else.
For a modern class the transferable version does not need the cosmology. A state of mind, however refined and however long it lasts, is a state of mind; and the question of what happens when it ends is not answered by how good it was.
Using it
Teach it to anybody whose practice is going well, and teach it beside AN 3.101, where a concentration held in place by force is named as not yet the thing. Between them the two discourses cover both failure modes available to a meditator: a state that is not deep enough, and a state that is deep enough and is being enjoyed.
The three-term analysis of AN 3.103 is the tool that makes this discourse usable. Ask of any attainment: what is its gratification, what is its drawback, what is the escape? A meditator who cannot answer the second question about their own best state is the person this discourse describes.
Key terms
The text
Infinite space
§1“Mendicants, these three individuals are found in the world. What three? First, an individual, going totally beyond perceptions of form, with the disappearance of perceptions of impingement, not focusing on perceptions of diversity, aware that ‘space is infinite’, enters and remains in the dimension of infinite space. They enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. If they’re set on that, committed to it, and meditate on it often without losing it, when they die they’re reborn in the company of the gods of the dimension of infinite space. The lifespan of the gods of infinite space is twenty thousand eons. An ordinary person stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they go to hell or the animal realm or the ghost realm. But a disciple of the Buddha stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they’re extinguished in that very life. This is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an unlearned ordinary person as regards their place of rebirth.
Infinite consciousness
§2Furthermore, an individual, going totally beyond the dimension of infinite space, aware that ‘consciousness is infinite’, enters and remains in the dimension of infinite consciousness. They enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. If they’re set on that, committed to it, and meditate on it often without losing it, when they die they’re reborn in the company of the gods of the dimension of infinite consciousness. The lifespan of the gods of infinite consciousness is forty thousand eons. An ordinary person stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they go to hell or the animal realm or the ghost realm. But a disciple of the Buddha stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they’re extinguished in that very life. This is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an unlearned ordinary person as regards their place of rebirth.
Nothingness
§3Furthermore, an individual, going totally beyond the dimension of infinite consciousness, aware that ‘there is nothing at all’, enters and remains in the dimension of nothingness. They enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. If they’re set on that, committed to it, and meditate on it often without losing it, when they die they’re reborn in the company of the gods of the dimension of nothingness. The lifespan of the gods of nothingness is sixty thousand eons. An ordinary person stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they go to hell or the animal realm or the ghost realm. But a disciple of the Buddha stays there until the lifespan of those gods is spent, then they’re extinguished in that very life. This is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an unlearned ordinary person as regards their place of rebirth. These are the three individuals found in the world.”
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.