Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
Immersion is not one practice with one result; it is a capacity that can be developed in four directions, and the direction is chosen by what one does with it.
The first: a blissful abiding
The four absorptions, given in the standard formula. The result named is diṭṭhadhammasukhavihāra, a blissful meditation in this life — and that is all that is claimed for it.
It is worth noticing how modest the claim is. The jhānas are not here said to produce insight, liberation, or knowledge. They produce a pleasant abiding now. The tradition values that and does not pretend it is more than it is, which is a useful corrective in both directions: against those who dismiss absorption as a detour, and against those who treat it as the goal.
The second: the perception of light
Ālokasaññā — applying the mind to the perception of light, focusing on the perception of day, as by day, so by night; as by night, so by day, developing a mind full of radiance with an open and unenveloped heart.
This is the least familiar of the four to most modern readers and the hardest to teach responsibly. It is a specific practice with a specific result — ñāṇadassana, knowledge and vision, which in this literature covers the divine eye and the perception of beings passing away and being reborn.
Two honest notes. First, the practice is described in the canon as a remedy for drowsiness as well as a basis for these attainments, and both uses are attested. Second, the results it is aimed at are not required for liberation; the fourth development on this list is. A reader who finds this one obscure has lost nothing essential, and it would be a mistake to make a page about it either mystifying or dismissive.
The third: mindfulness and awareness
They know feelings as they arise, as they remain, and as they go away. They know perceptions … they know thoughts …
Three objects — feeling, perception, thought — and three moments for each: arising, standing, vanishing. That is a complete and compact instruction, and it is arguably the most usable sentence in the chapter.
The choice of objects is worth remarking on. Not the body, not the breath, but the three mental events that most reliably feel like they are simply the case rather than like things that are happening. A feeling does not announce that it began. Watching for the arising and the going away is what converts it from a fact about the world into an event in the mind.
Sati-sampajañña, mindfulness and awareness, is the named result. This is the development that produces the ordinary working equipment of practice rather than any particular attainment.
The fourth: the ending of defilements
Observing rise and fall in the five grasping aggregates, with each of the five given its own line: such is form, such is its origin, such is its ending — and the same for feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness.
This is the one that leads to āsavakkhaya, and it is the only one of the four that does. Note what distinguishes it: the object is the five aggregates as a set, and the mode is watching them originate and end. Not stilling them, not perceiving them brightly, and not merely noting them — seeing them arise and cease.
Read against the third development the difference is precise. The third watches feeling, perception, and thought — three of the aggregates, and the ones nearest to hand. The fourth adds form and consciousness and completes the set. Between them they suggest that the third is the training and the fourth is the same skill applied to everything a person is made of.
The quotation
The discourse closes by citing itself — or rather, by citing an older text. And it was in this connection that I said in ‘The Way to the Far Shore’, in ‘The Questions of Puṇṇaka’, followed by four lines about one who has appraised the world high and low and is disturbed by nothing in it.
The Pārāyanavagga is a section of the Sutta Nipāta and one of the oldest strata of the canon; the Aṅguttara here treats it as an existing authority to be explained. That is unusual and worth pointing out to students, because it shows a text in the act of commenting on an earlier one within the canon itself.
The verse quoted is not obviously about immersion, and the connection asserted is the discourse’s own claim: the person described in the old verse is the one produced by the fourth development. Whether the original verse meant that is a separate question, and the discourse does not pretend to argue it.
Key terms
The text
Four developments
§1“Mendicants, there are these four ways of developing immersion further. What four? There is a way of developing immersion further that leads to blissful meditation in this life. There is a way of developing immersion further that leads to gaining knowledge and vision. There is a way of developing immersion further that leads to mindfulness and awareness. There is a way of developing immersion further that leads to the ending of defilements.
A blissful abiding
§2And what is the way of developing immersion further that leads to blissful meditation in this life? It’s when a mendicant, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, enters and remains in the first absorption … second absorption … third absorption … fourth absorption. This is the way of developing immersion further that leads to blissful meditation in this life.
Knowledge and vision
§3And what is the way of developing immersion further that leads to gaining knowledge and vision? It’s when a mendicant applies their mind to the perception of light, focusing on the perception of day: as by day, so by night; as by night, so by day. And so, with an open and unenveloped heart, they develop a mind that’s full of radiance. This is the way of developing immersion further that leads to gaining knowledge and vision.
Mindfulness and awareness
§4And what is the way of developing immersion further that leads to mindfulness and awareness? It’s when a mendicant knows feelings as they arise, as they remain, and as they go away. They know perceptions as they arise, as they remain, and as they go away. They know thoughts as they arise, as they remain, and as they go away. This is the way of developing immersion further that leads to mindfulness and awareness.
The ending of defilements
§5And what is the way of developing immersion further that leads to the ending of defilements? It’s when a mendicant meditates observing rise and fall in the five grasping aggregates. ‘Such is form, such is the origin of form, such is the ending of form. Such is feeling, such is the origin of feeling, such is the ending of feeling. Such is perception, such is the origin of perception, such is the ending of perception. Such are choices, such is the origin of choices, such is the ending of choices. Such is consciousness, such is the origin of consciousness, such is the ending of consciousness.’ This is the way of developing immersion further that leads to the ending of defilements. These are the four ways of developing immersion further. And it was in this connection that I said in ‘The Way to the Far Shore’, in ‘The Questions of Puṇṇaka’:
§6‘Having appraised the world high and low, there is nothing in the world that disturbs them. Peaceful, unclouded, untroubled, with no need for hope, they’ve crossed over rebirth and old age, I declare.’”
Self-check quiz
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