Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Do inside the absorption what the absorption was for, and the destination changes.
One clause, swapped
Set the two discourses side by side. AN 4.123: they enjoy it and like it and find it rewarding. AN 4.124: they contemplate the phenomena there — included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness — as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as gloom, as an affliction, as alien, as breaking apart, as empty, as not-self.
Everything else in the two texts is common. Same four absorptions, same person, no mention of extra effort, no longer practice, no additional virtue. The pair is as close to a controlled experiment as the collection gets, and the isolated variable is the attitude taken to the state while inside it.
That is the whole doctrinal content of the discourse, and it is why the text can afford to be four sentences long. Everything else it needs has already been said next door.
The eleven ways of looking
The list of eleven is a stock formula and it is worth reading as a list rather than skimming as a phrase. Three of the eleven are the familiar marks — impermanent, suffering, not-self. Two are about disintegration — breaking apart, empty. Six are medical or hostile: diseased, a boil, a dart, gloom, an affliction, alien.
The medical vocabulary is doing something the abstract terms cannot. A boil and a dart are not neutral descriptions; they are things you want out. The formula is designed to produce a specific disenchantment rather than a general assent.
What it is applied to is the striking part: the phenomena there, whatever is present in the absorption itself, sorted into the five aggregates. So the object of the contemplation is the refined and pleasant state the meditator is currently sitting in. The instruction is to take the best thing available and see it as a boil.
The pure abodes
Suddhāvāsa, the pure abodes, are the realms reserved for non-returners, and the discourse’s closing line makes the point without using the technical term: this rebirth is distinct from that of ordinary people, asādhāraṇā puthujjanehi, not held in common with ordinary people.
Compare what AN 4.123 said. There the noble disciple and the ordinary person went to the same realm and parted only when the lifespan ran out. Here the realms themselves diverge, because an ordinary person cannot be reborn there at all.
There is also a quiet consequence for the earlier discourse. AN 4.123 described a noble disciple who relishes the absorption and is extinguished only after an eon or five hundred. AN 4.124 describes someone who does not relish it, and does not wait. The pair is not just ordinary-versus-noble; it is also a comparison of two ways of being a practitioner.
Why the abridgment matters
AN 4.124 gives the first absorption in full and then compresses the second, third, and fourth into a single line of ellipses. AN 4.123 wrote all four out.
That is not carelessness, and it is worth explaining to students who find the manuscript ellipses off-putting. The full text was recited; the written abridgment is a storage format. A reciter who has just been through AN 4.123 four times over does not need the fourth absorption spelled out again to know what it says.
The result is a text that is unreadable on its own and completely clear in place. This chapter is a good place to see that, because the abridgment gets heavier as the material repeats — AN 4.126 is compressed further still.
What to carry out of it
The usable claim does not depend on the cosmology. It is that a good state does nothing by itself, and that what makes the difference is what the mind does with it while it lasts.
That is a claim about every good state, not only about the absorptions. The chapter is about to make the same move again with love, compassion, rejoicing, and equanimity in AN 4.125 and AN 4.126, and the answer will be the same word for word: the same eleven ways of looking, applied to the same five aggregates, producing the same result.
Repetition on that scale is an argument. What the discourse is claiming, by repeating it, is that the principle is indifferent to the material — that it holds for anything a practitioner might reach and want to keep.
Key terms
The text
The first absorption, contemplated
§1“Mendicants, these four individuals are found in the world. What four? Take an individual who, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption … They contemplate the phenomena there—included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness—as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as gloom, as an affliction, as alien, as breaking apart, as empty, as not-self. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in the company of the gods of the pure abodes. This rebirth is distinct from that of ordinary people.
The second, third, and fourth
§2Furthermore, take an individual who, as the placing of the mind and keeping it connected are stilled, enters and remains in the second absorption … third absorption … fourth absorption … They contemplate the phenomena there—included in form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness—as impermanent, as suffering, as diseased, as a boil, as a dart, as gloom, as an affliction, as alien, as breaking apart, as empty, as not-self. When their body breaks up, after death, they’re reborn in the company of the gods of the pure abodes. This rebirth is distinct from that of ordinary people. These are the four individuals found in the world.”
Self-check quiz
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