When I first got into Buddhism 20 or so years ago, I read there was an abbot in Flushing who's thing was to read the Diamond Sutra over and over, once every day. A reading practice.
This morning I decided to read the Anapanasati sutta every day for a while.
Visakha: "Visakha later convinced Migara to see the Buddha, which led to him reaching sotapanna (stream entry), a stage of enlightenment. Migara was so grateful for Visakha helping him reach a stage of enlightenment he declared her his spiritual mother, earning her the nickname Migāramāta, or "Migara's mother".
So Visakha convinced another benefactor to pursue the path and he got his mind blown, and had an amazing spiritual career, and he traced it back to her hipping him to the path, and connecting him with the right people. I can't imagine he didn't give it all away and join the wandering monks. Or else maybe he joined the 3 month rain retreat every year, and then the other 9 months he was a regular bloke. It doesn't say. And the other monks nicknamed Visakha as Migara's mother, because her referral caused all that. She was given some glory of his attainments, an appreciation of what he did, was also reflected back on her. You can see how the system of patronizing was fostered through showing the benefactor how great it was that they supported the monks, what they made possible with their generosity.
The Buddha has done the 3 months rains retreats at the Eastern Monastery, which was sponsored by Visakha. It has gone so well, he decides to stay another month and gives the teaching for July, after being there May, August and June. They followed a lunar calendar in those days, and the phases of the moon, marked the week. The elder monks gave instructions. There were a lot of monks, but calculating the numbers seems difficult. 10+20+30+40 equals 100 monks being instructed, and we don't know how big the team of instructors is, though there are 9 leading disciples listed and the Buddha, so at least 110 monks at the Eastern Monastery or Pūrvārāma Monastery in Shravasti, more than 2,500 years ago. It says there were mother monks, so more than 131 monks. 150 is a nice round number, so probably not exactly that many. But the sutra says "some" which could be multiples. There could be 2, 3, 4, 5 of each group. It was like you start out with 10, then move to 20. There was a real ranking system, and you could imagine there were explicit criteria for moving from teaching one group to another. It could have been 750 people in the monastery. Seems unlikely to feed all those people even if they're partially enlighten, peaceful and didn't eat a whole lot. They'd done 3 months and were kicking it out for a 4th. Seems really intense.
(It's a 4 hour car drive from Lucknow. It's over $500 for one way flights to Lucknow, and under $900 round trip from NYC. There's a stupa to Angulimala, and Jetavana grove is there too. I see no remains of Pūrvārāma Monastery, but Jetavana monastery archaeological site can be seen in photos online. This was also where the Buddha had 3 residences when he was growing up. Anathapindika is the patron of Jetavana monastery, so maybe there were two big monasteries close to each other? "Visakha founded the temple Migāramātupāsāda" and Pūrvārāma Monastery. With two big monasteries, I would say Shravasti was a real center of early Buddhism, and set the precedent of benefactors, merit and generosity. Visakha and Anathapindika are held in reverence as the original benefactors. The Anandabodhi tree is in Jetavana grove to this day.)
They were content. But not just content, they were content in their hearts. You could probably infinitely expand it, they were content in their heart of hearts. It wasn't just contentment, it was beyond contentment. They were worthy of being supported by the community. To give a gift to this community was a special kind of amazingly great generosity. To host and support such a retreat was to give the best thing ever. I'm going to say it, it was a pure land.
There was no idle chatter. They were no psychoanalysing each other with free association, they were all quiet. They went about the day on retreat, eating so they could meditate and study, stay focused on this one particular meditate practice that flows from 16 stages of contemplation from focusing on the breath, through body awareness and calming, through rapture and joy, through underingstanding the conditionality of mental processes, though calming and gladdening, getting deeper in concentration and steadying the mind. There was liberation and insight, disentanglement and detachment, cessation and relinquishing. It wasn't just counting the breath, there was some intense application of ideas into meditative experience, listening and cultivating.
I'm not going to go into the chief disciples: Ven. Sariputta, Ven. Maha Moggallana, Ven. Maha Kassapa, Ven. Maha Kaccana, Ven. Maha Kotthita, Ven. Maha Kappina, Ven. Maha Cunda, Ven. Revata, Ven. Ananda.
The Buddha ranks and describes attainments of those present. Arhats, anagami, sakadagami and sotapathana. There are levels of enlightenment that has to do with how many fetters have been broken and weakened. They're also called stream entrant, once returner, non-returner and arhant. Once you enter the stream, you will eventually get enlightened.
The lists below are a clear reference to the Satipatthana sutta, which will be my next obsession, after this one, and all the teachings, which like Indra's net, the goddess of creation, reflects and intensifies each jem, each jem reflects light back onto every other jem in potentially an infinite runaway:
Four foundations of mindfulness: Body, feeling, mind and Dharma
Four right exertions: stop unskillful mental states, snuff out unskillful arisen mental states, cause skillful mental states, maintain and strengthen skillful mental states.
Four bases of success: Keen interest, persistence, wholeheartedness, and careful to make adjustment and corrections in the path, they saw how to detect the need for adjustments and found the ways to do these adjustments.
Five faculties: Faith, persistence, mindfulness, concentration and wisdom.
Five strengths are the lack of the opposites of the five faculties.
Seven factors of awakening: Rosenberg suggests going through these while contemplating the body.
8 fold path: Right understanding, righ aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
Brahma Viharas: Universal loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.
Mindfulness of breathing develops the four foundations of mindfulness and leads to the seven factors of awakening, and they lead to perfect insight and awakening. The various lists guide the realization when understood correctly, practiced with zeal and supported by others. Then after 3 months, they really focused on anapanasati for a month.
The meditation setup: go to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore. Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.
Dropping my daughter off at school, I do a walking meditation home, to set mindfulness to the fore so that when I get home, I can meditate.
16 stages:
1&2. Know the quality of the breath: long or short
3. Sensitive to the body while breathing.
4. Calming body while breathing.
5. Sensitive to rapture.
6. Sensitive to pleasure.
7. Sensitive to mental processes.
8. Calming mental processes.
9. Sensitive to mind.
10. Gladdening the mind.
11. Steadying the mind.
12. Liberating the mind.
13. Focus on impermanence.
14. Focusing on fading away.
15. Focusing on cessation.
16. Focusing on relinquishment.
There's something about the way Kamalashila describes it that makes it come alive for me. You can read Breath by Breath by Rosenberg. And Buddhadasa's Mindfulness of Breathing is also a book about anapanasati, he taught Larry Rosenberg. I'm currently reading Analayo's book Mindfulness of Breathing. This is a the kind of Buddhist books I really dig. The more takes I have on all this the better. This is one of the things I can go over and over and over.
The sutra goes through the 16 stages 2 more times. My hope in reading it over and over is that I'll figure out what that is all about, or whether it's just the oral tradition liked to repeat things. You're more likely to remember a sutta if you way it over 3 times instead of just one.
They add in "subduing greed and distress" that gets more and more intense. To me, I feel like that's cutting out all sort of neurotic wanting, and overcoming the trauma that makes one want more and more, the extra from they're actually getting.
"...with reference to the world," to me seems to be saying, you're able to apprehend what the world is actually giving you, so that you don't really have room for greed, and you're not out of distress, wanting more to make yourself feel better.
Links to translations:
Wikipedia
p. 198 in Breath by Breath by Larry Rosenberg doesn't attribute the translation, so it must be his. I have a hard copy of this book that came out in 1998.
Access To Insight
BuddhaNet (pdf)
BCBS cheat sheet
Gil Fronsdal translation (pdf)
Sujato translation
Bhikkhu Bodhi translation
Plum Village
Student notes from Vaddhaka (Triratna)
Audio Readings:
YouTube Bhante Vimalaramsi, don't really know much about him, but he has a particular take on anapanasati, not endorsing it, just like all information and perspectives.
Vimalaramsi makes an interesting point that thinking is a sense pleasure.
Ajahn Brahmavamso's 2 hour talk.
Last edited 11/7/2023.
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