A book by Bhikkyu Kumāra, an ordained Theravadin monk, addresses the primary difference between long-time Theravadin teachings and those of the early Buddhist texts (the EBTs).
Kumāra writes that modern Theravadin teachings rely heavily on the separation of vipassana (insight) from samatha/jhana (concentration), a separation that transforms two conjoined components of the path into two distinct paths to enlightenment.
Bhikkyu Kumāra saw the separation of vipassana and samatha/jhana as a consequence of the existence of two different understandings of samādhi, or immersive concentration. He pointed out that the split is at least as old as a commentary on the EBT’s called the “Visuddhimagga” (written in about the 5th century C. E.):
To sum up, the “samādhi” of the Suttas (EBT’s) is about concentrating the mind itself, while the “samādhi” of the Visuddhimagga is about concentrating on an object.
(What You Might Not Know About Jhana and Samadhi, p 35)
Bhikkyu Kumāra asserted that the Visuddhimagga interpretation was based on a translation of the Pali word “ekaggatā”:
For a long time in Theravāda Buddhism, ekaggatā has been commonly translated as “one pointedness”.
… “One-pointedness” has gained such wide acceptance as the translation for ekaggatā that most people don’t question it. So, people who assume it means “fixing of close, undivided attention on a spatially limited location”, and believe it’s necessary, will try to practice that.
(ibid, p 42)
Kumāra researched the Pali language components of “ekaggatā”, and came up with a new translation:
The Pāli word has three parts: eka (one), agga, and tā (-ness). So clearly this common translation takes agga to mean “pointed”.
… Actually, “agga” has another meaning, as a contracted form of “agāra”. … it’s literally “empty place”, with agāra being simply “place”.
Could this other meaning of agga, i.e. “place”, be the actual meaning in “ekaggatā”?
Let’s join the parts: ekaggatā = eka (one) + agga (place) + tā (ness) = “one-place-ness” or “one-placedness” (modelling after “one-pointedness”).
(ibid, p 45)
Bhikkyu Kumāra implied that “one pointedness” belongs to the samādhi of “concentrating on an object”, while “one-placedness” belongs to the samādhi of “concentrating the mind itself’.
The two terms refer to the same phenomena. When a person is acutely self-aware, consciousness has a singular location, and that singularity remains constant even if the location of consciousness shifts.
Bhikkyu Kumāra was unsatisfied with his translation of “ekaggatā”:
Although I consider “one-placedness” very accurate, it may sound clumsy in English. So, I propose an idiomatic translation: stillness.
(ibid, p 45)
“Ekaggatā” is indeed associated with stillness in the early Buddhist texts, but only with a particular kind of stillness, the stillness of activity by choice.
Gautama’s teachings on the subject must be pieced together from sermons in different volumes of the EBT’s. The situation has been well-described by one Bhikku Bodhi:
… not only are the texts themselves composed in a clipped laconic style that mocks our thirst for conceptual completeness, but their meaning often seems to rest upon a deep underlying groundwork of interconnected ideas that is nowhere stated baldly in a way that might guide interpretation … the nikāyas (EBT sermons) embed the basic principles of doctrine in a multitude of short, often elusive discourses that draw upon and allude to the underlying system without explicitly spelling it out. To determine the principles one has to extract them piecemeal, by considering in juxtaposition a wide assortment of texts.
(Bodhi, “Musīla and Nārada revisited: seeking the key to interpretation,” in (edd) Blackburn & Samuels, Approaching the Dhamma, Buddhist Texts and Practice in South and Southeast Asia, Pariyatti, 2003; parenthetical added)
Here are Gautama’s teachings on intentional activity, on activity by choice, and the cessation of that activity:
It is intention that I call deeds. For after making a choice one acts by way of body, speech, and mind.
(AN 6.63, tr. Bhikkyu Sujato; Pali Text Society [PTS] vol III p 294)
And what are choices? There are three kinds of choices. Choices by way of body, speech, and mind. These are called choices.
(SN 12.2, tr. Bhikkyu Sujato)
The Pali Text Society translated the above passage with “activities” in place of “choices”:
And what are the activities? These are the three activities:–those of deed, speech and mind. These are activities.
(SN 12.2; tr. PTS F. L. Woodward, Vol II p 4)
The “activities” of the Pali Text Society’s translation are the intentional actions of body, speech, and mind, the actions that follow from choice.
Gautama declared that the “activities” become still, or “cease”, in particular states of concentration:
…I have seen that the ceasing of the activities is gradual. When one has attained the first trance, speech has ceased. When one has attained the second trance, thought initial and sustained has ceased. When one has attained the third trance, zest has ceased. When one has attained the fourth trance, inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased… Both perception and feeling have ceased when one has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.
(SN 36.11, tr. PTS vol IV p 146)
Gautama addressed the cessation of “activity” in speech directly, declaring that in the first concentration (or “trance”), “speech has ceased”.
However, instead of addressing the cessation of “activity” in the body directly, Gautama declared that in the fourth concentration, “inbreathing and outbreathing have ceased”. Instead of addressing the cessation of “activity” in the mind, he declared that in the final concentration, “perception and feeling have ceased”.
Perception and feeling are often undertaken by choice, so “the cessation of perception and feeling” could well represent the cessation of choice in the action of the mind. Inbreathing and outbreathing, on the other hand, are very seldom undertaken by choice, so “the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing” cannot immediately be seen to represent the cessation of choice in the action of the body.
Bhikkyu Kumāra offered his own explanation of the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing, an explanation that did not mention intention or choice, but that did accord with his interpretation of ekaggatā as “stillness”:
In the case of concentrating on breathing, the breathing gradually becomes regular, long and pleasant. It’s very likeable. Due to the lack of energy use, the breathing naturally becomes shorter and subtler, until it stops. If one doesn’t worry about that, it’s possible to stay with that subtle sensation of no breathing.
Some of the above can be connected to the Suttas: the attention to breathing and the no breathing: “For one engaged in the fourth jhana, in-and-out breathing has ceased.” (Rahogata Sutta, SN36.11)
(What You Might Not Know About Jhana and Samadhi, p 29)
There is another explanation of “the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing”, one that concerns the cessation of choice in the actions of the body through concentration.
Gautama began his instructions on concentration with a metaphor for the first concentration:
… just as a handy bathman or attendant might strew bath-powder in some copper basin and, gradually sprinkling water, knead it together so that the bath-ball gathered up the moisture, became enveloped in moisture and saturated both in and out, but did not ooze moisture; even so, (a person) steeps, drenches, fills, and suffuses this body with zest and ease, born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest and ease.
(AN 5.28, tr. PTS vol. III pp 18-19)
The “bath-ball” is a metaphor for consciousness, at such time as a person becomes acutely self-aware. A person gathers and firms the “one-place-ness” (“one-pointedness”) of consciousness by extending zest and ease such that “there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” by the feelings of zest and ease.
As I wrote previously:
Words like “steeps” and “drenches” convey that the weight of the body accompanies the feelings of zest and ease.
The weight of the body sensed at a particular point in the body can shift the body’s center of gravity, and a shift in the body’s center of gravity can result in what Moshe Feldenkrais termed “reflex movement”. Feldenkrais described how “reflex movement” can be engaged in standing up from a chair:
…When the center of gravity has really moved forward over the feet a reflex movement will originate in the old nervous system and straighten the legs; this automatic movement will not be felt as an effort at all.
(“Awareness Through Movement”, Moshe Feldenkrais, p 78)
“Drenching” the body “so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” with zest and ease allows the weight of the body and “one-pointedness” to effect “reflex movement” in the activity of the body.
In falling asleep, the mind can sometimes react to hypnagogic sleep paralysis with an attempt to reassert control over the muscles of the body, causing a “hypnic jerk”. The extension of a weighted zest and ease can pre-empt the tendency to reassert voluntary control in the induction of concentration, and make possible a conscious experience of “reflex movement” in inhalation and exhalation.
A moment-to-moment conscious experience of “reflex movement” in inhalation and exhalation is “the cessation of inbreathing and outbreathing”, the cessation of the fourth concentration.
Gautama described the extension of a “purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind” in the fourth concentration:
… seated, (one) suffuses (one’s) body with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded with purity by the pureness of (one’s) mind.
(AN 5.28, tr. PTS vol. III pp 18-19, parentheticals paraphrase original)
“The pureness of mind” is the pureness of the mind without any will or intent to act in the body, and the extension of such purity “so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded” allows the action of the body to take place as “reflex movement”.
In his book, Bhikkyu Kumāra wrote about the separation of vipassana (insight) from samatha/jhana (concentration) in Theravadin teachings. He traced the separation to the Theravadin interpretation of samadhi as “concentrating on an object”, rather than “concentrating the mind itself”.
Ekaggatā, or “one-pointedness”, continues to be described as “concentrating on an object” in Theravadin teaching (as here).
Nevertheless, I would guess that:
… most respected Buddhist teachers experience the “five limbs” of concentration regularly, and most practice a mindfulness very much like the mindfulness that made up Gautama’s way of living.
The “five limbs” were the four concentrations together with an overview of the body (the “survey-sign”) taken after the fourth concentration (AN 5.28, tr. PTS vol. III pp 18-19). The mindfulness that made up Gautama’s way of living was “the mindfulness of inbreathing and outbreathing”, a mindfulness that included the mindfulness of cessation in the course of inhalation and exhalation (SN 54.8, 54.11, tr. Pali Text Society vol V p 284, 298; MN 118).
How could a Buddhist teacher experience the “five limbs” regularly and practice a way of living like Gautama’s, yet not describe their experience as such?
Evidence suggests that the left hemisphere (of the brain) tends to create inferences and explanations to resolve uncertainty. As Gazzaniga suggested over two decades ago, the left hemisphere is an interpreter (Gazzaniga, 1989). … its inferences do not necessarily have to be correct, or even plausible in some cases, as long as they bridge gaps in information and create a cohesive story.
(“Divergent hemispheric reasoning strategies: reducing uncertainty versus resolving inconsistency”, Nicole Marinsek, Benjamin O Turner, Michael Gazzaniga, Michael B Miller, Front Hum Neurosci. 2014 Oct 21;8:839)
My own inferences regarding the four concentrations and Gautama’s way of living may be found collected under the title, A Natural Mindfulness.