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27-475: Dhammayuttika Nikāya Mahā Nikāya Its most basic meaning is as a word for meditation, with meditation being the main occupation of Buddhist monks . In Burma, senior meditation practitioners are known as "kammatthanacariyas" (meditation masters). The Thai Forest Tradition names itself Kammaṭṭhāna Forest tradition in reference to their practice of meditating in the forests. In the Pali literature , prior to

54-741: A class of basic visual objects of meditation used in Theravada Buddhism . The objects are described in the Pali Canon and summarized in the famous Visuddhimagga meditation treatise as kammaṭṭhāna on which to focus the mind whenever attention drifts. Kasina meditation is one of the most common types of samatha-vipassana , intended to settle the mind of the practitioner and create a foundation for further practices of meditation. The Visuddhimagga concerns kasina meditation. According to American scholar-monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu , "the text then tries to fit all other meditation methods into

81-476: A fifth and, to an even lesser extent, a sixth element may also be identified. In canonical texts, the four Great Elements refer to elements that are both "external" (that is, outside the body, such as a river) and "internal" (that is, of the body, such as blood). These elements are described as follows: Any entity that carry one or more of these qualities (attractive forces, repulsive forces, energy and relative motion) are called matter ( rupa ). The material world

108-508: Is a disk in a red-brown color formed by spreading earth or clay (or another medium producing similar color and texture) on a screen of canvas or another backing material. The next ten are impure ( asubha ) objects of repulsion ( paṭikkūla ), specifically 'cemetery contemplations' ( sīvathikā-manasikāra ) on ten stages of human decomposition which aim to cultivate mindfulness of body ( kāyagatāsati ). They are: The next ten are recollections ( anussati ): Four are 'stations of Brahma', which are

135-423: Is considered to be nothing but a combination of these qualities arranged in space ( akasha ). The result of these qualities are the inputs to our five senses, color ( varna ) to the eyes, smell ( gandha ) to the nose, taste ( rasa ) to the tongue, sound (shabda) to the ears, and touch ( sparsha ) to the body. The matter that we perceive in our mind are just a mental interpretation of these qualities. In addition to

162-515: Is declared an abstraction – instead of concentrating on the fact of material existence, one observes how a physical thing is sensed, felt, perceived. The Four Elements pertinence to the Buddhist notion of suffering comes about due to: Schematically, this can be represented in reverse order as: Thus, to deeply understand the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, it is beneficial to have an understanding of

189-411: The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad , the deities is identified as the source of the great elements: The same Upanishad also mentions, "When earth, water fire, air and aether arise, when the five attributes of the elements, mentioned in the books on yoga, become manifest then the yogi's body becomes purified by the fire of yoga and they are free from illness, old age and death." (Verse 2.12). In Buddhism ,

216-650: The Canon." Although practice with kasiṇas is associated with the Theravāda tradition, it appears to have been more widely known among various Buddhist schools in India at one time. Asanga makes reference to kasiṇas in the Samāhitabhūmi section of his Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra . Uppalavannā , one of the Buddha's chief female disciples, famously attained arahantship using a fire ( tejo ) kasina as her object of meditation. Of

243-787: The Great Elements. In the Satipatthana Sutta ("The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness," DN 22), in listing various bodily meditation techniques, the Buddha instructs: In the Visuddhimagga 's well-known list of forty meditation objects ( kamma ṭṭ hāna ), the great elements are listed as the first four objects. B. Alan Wallace compares the Theravada meditative practice of "attending to

270-502: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 211929358 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:39:25 GMT Mah%C4%81bh%C5%ABta Traditional Mahābhūta is Sanskrit for "great element". However, very few scholars define the five mahābhūtas in a broader sense as

297-610: The above four elements of underived matter, two other elements are occasionally found in the Pali Canon: According to the Abhidhamma Pitaka , the "space element" is identified as "secondary" or "derived" ( upādā ). While in the Theravada tradition, as well as in the earliest texts, like the Pali Canon, rūpa (matter or form) is delineated as something external, that actually exists, in some of

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324-430: The air, walking through solid obstructions, diving into the ground, walking on water and so forth are performed by changing one element , such as earth, into another element, such as air. The individual must master kasina meditation before this is possible. Dipa Ma , who trained via the Visuddhimagga , was said to demonstrate these abilities. Dhammayuttika Nikaya Too Many Requests If you report this error to

351-507: The breath to abandon discursive thought. The Pali commentaries further provide guidelines for suggesting meditation subjects based on one's general temperament: The six non-color kasinas and the four formless states are suitable for all temperaments. The Visuddhimagga is one of the extremely rare texts within the enormous literature of Buddhism to give explicit details about how spiritual masters are thought to actually manifest supernormal abilities . Abilities such as flying through

378-665: The context of some schools of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. In the Yogacara view, rūpa is not a substratum or substance which has sensibility as a property. For this school, it functions as perceivable physicality and matter, or rūpa, is defined in its function; what it does, not what it is. As such, the four great elements are conceptual abstractions drawn from the sensorium. They are sensorial typologies, and are not metaphysically materialistic. From this perspective, they are not meant to give an account of matter as constitutive of external, mind-independent reality. This interpretation

405-599: The emblem of consciousness" to the practice in Mahamudra and Dzogchen of "maintaining the mind upon non-conceptuality", which is also aimed at focusing on the nature of consciousness. In the Pali Canon , the Four Elements are described in detail in the following discourses ( sutta ): The Four Elements are also referenced in: In addition, the Visuddhimagga XI.27 ff has an extensive discussion of

432-540: The five fundamental aspects of physical reality. In Hinduism 's sacred literature, the "great" elements ( mahābhūta ) are fivefold: aether, air, fire, water and earth. See also the Samkhya Karika of Ishvara Krishna, verse 22. For instance, the Taittirīya Upaniṣad describes the five "sheaths" of a person (Sanskrit: puruṣa ), starting with the grossest level of the five evolving great elements: In

459-481: The forty objects meditated upon as kammaṭṭhāna, the first ten are kasina described as 'things one can behold directly'. These are described in the Visuddhimagga , and also mentioned in the Pali Tipitaka . They are: The kasinas are typically described as a coloured disk, with the particular colour, properties, dimensions and medium often specified according to the type of kasina. The earth kasina, for instance,

486-453: The four Great Elements (Pali: cattāro mahābhūtāni ) are earth, water, fire and air. Mahābhūta is generally synonymous with catudhātu , which is Pāli for the "Four Elements." In this, the Four Elements are a basis for understanding that leads one through unbinding of 'Rupa' or materiality to the supreme state of pure 'Emptiness' or Nirvana. In the Pali Canon , the most basic elements are usually identified as four in number but, on occasion,

513-676: The fourth jhana is induced, the fourth brahma-vihara (equanimity) arises. Each kammatthana can be suggested, especially by a spiritual friend ( kalyāṇa-mitta ), to a certain individual student at some specific point, by assessing what would be best for that student's temperament and the present state of his or her mind. All of the aforementioned meditation subjects can suppress the Five Hindrances , thus allowing one to fruitfully pursue wisdom . In addition, anyone can productively apply specific meditation subjects as antidotes , such as meditating on foulness to counteract lust or on

540-472: The later schools, like the Yogachara , or "Mind Only" school, and schools heavily influenced by this school, rupa means both materiality and sensibility—it signifies, for example, a tactile object both insofar as that object is tactile and that it can be sensed. In some of these schools, rūpa is not a materiality which can be separated or isolated from cognizance; such a non-empirical category is incongruous in

567-414: The mold of kasina practice, so that they too give rise to countersigns, but even by its own admission, breath meditation does not fit well into the mold." He argues that by emphasizing kasina meditation, the Visuddhimagga departs from the focus on jhāna in the Pali Canon. Thanissaro Bhikkhu states this indicates that what "jhana means in the commentaries is something quite different from what it means in

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594-522: The post-canonical Pali commentaries , the term kammaṭṭhāna comes up in only a handful of discourses and then in the context of "work" or "trade." Buddhaghosa uses "kammatthana" to refer to each of his forty meditation objects listed in the third chapter of the Visuddhimagga , which are partially derived from the Pāli Canon . In this sense "kammatthana" can be understood as "occupations" in

621-421: The sense of "things to occupy the mind" or "workplaces" in the sense of "places to focus the mind on during the work of meditation". Throughout his translation of the Visuddhimagga , Ñāṇamoli translates this term simply as " meditation subject ". Kasina (Pali: 𑀓𑀲𑀺𑀦 , romanized:  kasina , lit.   'a whole', Sanskrit: 𑀓𑀾𑀢𑁆𑀲𑁆𑀦 , romanized:  kṛtsna ) refers to

648-424: The ten kasinas . According to Gunaratana, the following meditation subjects only lead to "access concentration" ( upacara samadhi ), due to their complexity: the recollection of the Buddha, dharma, sangha, morality, liberality, wholesome attributes of Devas, death, and peace; the perception of disgust of food; and the analysis of the four elements. Absorption in the first jhana can be realized by mindfulness on

675-451: The ten kinds of foulness and mindfulness of the body. However, these meditations cannot go beyond the first jhana due to their involving applied thought ( vitaka ), which is absent from the higher jhanas. Absorption in the first three jhanas can be realized by contemplating the first three brahma-viharas . However, these meditations cannot aid in attaining the fourth jhana due to the pleasant feelings associated with them. Conversely, once

702-516: The virtues of the " Brahma realm" (Pāli: Brahmaloka ): Four are formless states (four arūpa-āyatana ): Of the remaining five, one is of perception of disgust of food ( aharepatikulasanna ) and the last four are the 'four great elements' ( catudhatuvavatthana ): earth ( pathavi ), water ( apo ), fire ( tejo ), air ( vayo ). According to Gunaratana, following Buddhaghosa, due to the simplicity of subject matter, all four jhanas can be induced through ānāpānasati (mindfulness of breathing) and

729-534: Was hotly contested by some Madhyamaka thinkers like Chandrakirti . Many Indian philosophers of both Buddhist and non Buddhist schools also heavily criticized Yogacara thinking. The Four Elements are used in Buddhist texts to both elucidate the concept of suffering ( dukkha ) and as an object of meditation. The earliest Buddhist texts explain that the four primary material elements are the sensory qualities solidity, fluidity, temperature, and mobility; their characterisation as earth, water, fire, and air, respectively,

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