The Two Traditions Of Meditation In Ancient India

Johannes Bronkhorst, Motilal Banarsidass. Second Edition (1993)

Introduction

The study aims to define early Buddhist meditation by first determining what it was not.
The Buddhist canon contains many contradictions, and the author’s method is to identify practices that are criticized in some texts but approved of in others.
Practices that are criticized as “alternative” (and can be traced to Jainism or Hinduism) but are still found elsewhere in the canon are considered later, non-authentic borrowings.
The authentic core of early Buddhism is sought in the practices that stand in opposition to these borrowed ones.
The book presents a theory to explain the contradictions in the texts and suggests that constructive criticism should aim to provide a better theory.

Part I: Two traditions of meditation.

I. The ascetic practices of the Bodhisattva

Before his enlightenment, the Buddha experimented with two ascetic methods which he later rejected: ‘meditation without breath’ and ‘reduced intake of food’.
‘Meditation without breath’ involved stopping breathing through the mouth, nose, and ears, which resulted in extreme physical pain, described with similes such as a sword splitting the head, a leather strap tightening around it, a butcher’s knife cutting the belly, and being roasted over coals.
‘Reduced intake of food’ led to extreme emaciation, causing the Buddha’s body to wither, his bones to protrude, his eyes to sink, his skin to shrivel, and his hair to fall out.
These descriptions are likely critiques of non-Buddhist, probably Jaina, practices, for several reasons:
- Gods observing the Buddha’s state call it that of an “arahant,” a term used by Jainas for their highest practitioners.
- The Buddha’s initial intention to fast to death reflects the respected Jaina practice of voluntary starvation.
- The specific Pāli phrase for “self-inflicted torture” is used elsewhere in the canon only in connection with Jainas.
A parallel version of this episode in the Chinese Ekottara Āgama confirms a common source but is likely a later, muddled version, as it reverses the order of the practices, creating an inconsistency.
The most probable original context for this episode is the Mahāsaccaka Sutta, where the Buddha recounts these experiences to a Jaina named Saccaka Niganthaputta, framing it as a direct criticism of Jaina asceticism.
The episode is dated to the 3rd century B.C. at the latest, as it was composed before stories of the Buddha’s past lives (Jātakas) became popular.
The text contrasts these painful, violent ascetic practices with Buddhist meditation (the Four Dhyānas), which is described as a pleasant experience characterized by joy, bliss, and tranquility.

II. Further Buddhist criticism of alternative practices.

The Buddha encounters Jaina ascetics (Niganthas) who practice self-torture, such as standing without sitting, to exhaust past sinful actions and prevent future ones.
The Jainas argue that happiness must be reached through hardship, not through happiness itself.
The Buddha refutes this by claiming he can experience “unalloyed happiness” for seven consecutive days and nights without moving or speaking, proving his state is superior to that of a king living in comfort.
The text highlights a key doctrinal difference: Jainas considered bodily actions to be the worst form of bad activity, while the Buddha argued that mental actions were the worst.
Another criticized practice is the ‘cultivation of the senses’ to the point of non-functioning (e.g., not seeing with the eye or hearing with the ear). The Buddha points out that this would mean the blind and deaf have perfectly cultivated senses.
The Buddhist alternative to halting the senses is to cultivate equanimity (upekkhā) in response to sensory experiences.
The text concludes that the common goal of these non-Buddhist practices (motionlessness, fasting to death, breath-holding) was non-activity to avoid the consequences of karman.
Early Buddhists opposed these practices, proposing the Four Dhyānas instead of fasting and breath restraint, and equanimity instead of halting the senses.

Part II: The main stream.

III. Early Jaina meditation.

The earliest Jaina path to liberation, described in the Āyāraṃga scripture, involves ceasing all activity (āraṃbha), which is considered the source of suffering.
This path culminates in a voluntary starvation to death, where a monk gradually reduces food, diminishes passions, and ceases all bodily movement in a secluded place.
While not explicitly termed ‘meditation’, this process requires a specific mental attitude of concentration, purity, and non-attachment to life or death.
The slightly later Uttarajjhayana text introduces the term ‘pure meditation’ (sukkajjhāna) to describe the final stage of this process, where all activities of mind, speech, body, and even breathing are stopped to prevent new karma and destroy old karma.
The Thānaṃga Sutta details four stages of ‘pure meditation’, which progress from a mind considering multiple objects to one focused on a single object, and finally to the cessation of subtle and then all bodily activity, culminating in liberation at death.
Later texts classify dhyāna (a word meaning both ‘thought’ and ‘meditation’) into four types: afflicted (ārta), wrathful (raudra), pious (dharma), and pure (śukla).
Only ‘pure’ dhyāna is actual meditation for liberation; the others are forms of pondering, with afflicted and wrathful states being negative. This classification is considered a later systematization and not a reliable guide to early meditation.
Supportive practices for meditation included making the mind one-pointed, watchfulness of the mind, subjugating the senses to overcome likes and dislikes, and cultivating states like forbearance and freedom.

IV. Meditation as part of asceticism in early Hindu scriptures.

Early Hindu scriptures like the Mahābhārata (MBh) and Kaṭha Upaniṣad describe meditation as part of a broader ascetic practice aimed at stopping all bodily and mental activity to achieve liberation.
The ideal state involves complete motionlessness of the body and mind, compared to that of a stone, pillar, or mountain, where the senses, mind (manas), and intellect (buddhi) are still.
In this state, known as Yoga (yukta), the practitioner ceases to hear, smell, taste, see, or feel touch, and the mind no longer forms conceptions.
Specific physical techniques are mentioned, such as holding the body straight (Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad) and a six-membered Yoga that includes breath restraint and sense withdrawal (Maitrāyañiya Upaniṣad).
Breath restraint (prāṇāyāma) is defined as the complete cessation of inhalation and exhalation and is sometimes presented as a preparatory step for fixing the mind or as a practice at the time of death.
Fasting to death is described as a final ascetic act, with texts like the MBh and Yājñavalkyasmṛti detailing a progression of increasingly severe fasts, from eating fruits and roots to consuming only water and then air.
The text concludes that the key features of early Jaina meditation (cessation of activity, fasting to death, stopping breath, motionlessness) are all found in early Hindu scriptures, suggesting they belong to a shared “main stream meditation” tradition.

V. Theory and practice in the main stream.

The Bhagavad Gītā criticises the idea that liberation is achieved by abstaining from activity, arguing that no one can remain completely inactive.
It proposes an alternative path: liberation through the knowledge (jñānayoga) that one’s true self (soul) is separate from the body and never actually performs any actions.
Actions are attributed to the gunas of Original Nature (prakṛti), and the belief that “I am the doer” is a delusion of the ego.
This concept, also found in the Upaniṣads, describes the soul as unchangeable and unaffected by actions, which can lead to liberation in this life.
Some traditions argued that knowledge alone was insufficient and must be combined with ascetic and meditative practices.
One justification was that an enlightened person still experiences pain, implying something more than knowledge is needed.
Another view held that ascetic practices were a necessary precondition for acquiring true knowledge of the soul.
The Mahābhārata also combines these paths, stating that renunciation of actions without knowledge of the soul only leads to suffering.
When practice is combined with the goal of knowledge, the emphasis can shift from physical austerities to mental disciplines.
Meditation becomes the primary means to realize the true, inactive nature of the self.
This “Yoga-activity,” described in the Mahābhārata, involves practices like study, sense-restraint, and concentration to withdraw the senses and fix the mind on the self, causing Brahman to “shine forth.”
The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika system presents a unique view where the soul is technically an actor but is fundamentally a motionless, omnipresent substance.
Action occurs through qualities (like desire, effort, virtue, sin) that inhere in the soul.
Liberation is the state where the soul is completely freed from these special qualities, resulting in a state without knowledge or happiness.
The path involves using right knowledge to stop generating new virtue and sin, while practices like Yoga and fasting help exhaust the old.
“Pure” forms of physical asceticism, such as Haṭha Yoga, persisted alongside knowledge-focused paths.
In these traditions, terms for meditation (dhyāna, samādhi) were often reinterpreted as stages achieved through bodily practices like breath restraint (prāṇāyāma).
Mental practices (Rāja Yoga) were often presented as a final stage, only attainable after mastering difficult physical techniques, making them inaccessible to most.
The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā expresses skepticism towards knowledge-only paths, calling them “deceitful and false chattering” without the mastery of physical and energetic practices.

VI. The influence from Buddhist meditation.

For a long time, mainstream meditation remained largely unaffected by Buddhist meditation, primarily because it was more widespread and its core idea—combating activity with inactivity—was simpler.
Some Buddhist influence is first seen in the Mahābhārata (MBh 12.188), but it is confined to terminology like ‘fourfold dhyānayoga’ and the ‘first Dhyāna’ with vicāra and vitarka. The underlying meditation technique remains non-Buddhistic, focused on stopping the senses and mind.
The Yoga Sūtra (YS) shows stronger influence, creating a contradiction within its first chapter.
- YS 1.2 defines Yoga as the suppression of mental activity, which aligns with mainstream meditation.
- However, YS 1.17 introduces saṃprajñāta samādhi, which includes mental activities (vitarka, vicāra, ānanda) similar to the Buddhist Dhyānas.
- YS 1.20 lists prerequisites for higher concentration (śraddhā, vīrya, smṛti, samādhi, prajñā) that are key terms in Buddhism.
- The concept of destroying subliminal impressions (saṃskāra) with insight (prajñā) to reach nirbīja samādhi (YS 1.51) is also parallel to Buddhist ideas.
Later texts, such as the Yogakundalī and Muktikā Upanishads, also show traces of Buddhist influence, particularly the concept of destroying subconscious impressions (vāsanā).
In these later texts, the Buddhist-influenced concepts are grafted onto mainstream techniques like breath control, and the overall aim remains aligned with the main tradition of meditation.

Part III: Buddhist meditation.

VII. Influence on Buddhist meditation (I).

It is likely that mainstream Indian meditation influenced early Buddhist meditation, rather than the reverse, due to the former’s prevalence and the attention paid to it in Buddhist scriptures.
Concrete examples of this influence include:
- The adoption of optional ascetic practices (dhutañgas) that mirror demands made by Devadatta.
- A story where the Buddha surpasses the non-Buddhist Ārāda Kālāma’s meditative ability to ignore external sounds.
- The inclusion in one sutta of a mainstream meditation technique (clenching teeth, pressing the tongue) that is criticized elsewhere in the canon.
- The acceptance of Jaina concepts like ‘annihilation of former actions’ in some texts, despite being criticized in others.
A core set of four meditational states (Infinity of Space, Infinity of Perception, Nothingness, and Neither Ideation nor Non-Ideation) appears in various canonical lists.
These four states, the arūpas, likely originated from outside Buddhism (possibly Jainism), as they aim for mental cessation without the pleasure characteristic of Buddhist Dhyānas.
The story of the Buddha learning from two teachers who taught the Stage of Nothingness and the Stage of Neither Ideation nor Non-Ideation was likely invented to critique these states as insufficient for full enlightenment, implying they were a final goal for others.
Buddhism integrated these foreign states by either assimilating them into the Four Dhyānas or, more commonly, by placing them sequentially after the Dhyānas to form the “nine Successive States” path.
The idea that the arūpas were a separate path is supported by several Buddhist schools which taught that liberation could be attained through them at the moment of death.
The four Brahmic States (benevolence, compassion, joy, indifference) were also practiced by non-Buddhists and were framed in Buddhist texts as either a component of a higher path or as an older, inferior practice.
This widespread influence was facilitated by early uncertainty within Buddhism about the details of the Buddha’s original teachings.
The Four Dhyānas, the subsequent destruction of intoxicants, and the practice of mindfulness are considered authentic to the oldest layer of Buddhist meditation.

VIII. Influence on Buddhist meditation (II).

Mainstream Indian asceticism, which viewed liberation as occurring after death, is thought to have influenced Buddhism by encouraging two developments: the postponement of liberation until after death, and the creation of an explicit, central “liberating insight.”
Despite this, numerous canonical passages confirm that original Buddhism taught that liberation was attainable in this life, before death.
The Buddha’s teaching is described as ‘belonging to this life’ (sāmdrṣtika), and Nirvāṇa is defined as the destruction of desire, hatred, and delusion—a state achievable in this world.
A later tendency to postpone liberation is seen in texts that distinguish between ‘highest enlightenment’ (in life) and Nirvāṇa ‘without a remainder of upādi’ (at death).
This conflict was sometimes resolved by proposing two kinds of Nirvāṇa: one ‘with a remainder of upādi’ for this life and one ‘without’ for after death, though this was likely a later harmonization.
Another solution presented the highest meditative state (nirodhasamāpatti) as a temporary anticipation of the true Nirvāṇa that occurs after death.
The Buddhist belief in liberation in this life created a need to define the specific “liberating insight” that caused it, a concept influenced by mainstream traditions.
The content of this liberating insight varied over time, reflecting what was considered most central to Buddhist doctrine, such as the Four Noble Truths, Origination-in-Dependence, or the non-existence of a self.
A tension existed between achieving liberation through insight/knowledge versus direct experience/practice, mirroring the Sāṃkhya-Yoga distinction in mainstream meditation.
The standard scriptural account places the realization of the Four Noble Truths at the end of the path, which is illogical as this knowledge is required to begin the path.
The Four Noble Truths are often presented as a teaching for beginners and are absent from some early versions of the Buddha’s first sermon, suggesting they were not the original final liberating insight.
It is proposed that the original “insight” (prajñā) was an unspecified and personal understanding needed to navigate the final stages of meditation, guided by the Buddha’s individual instruction.
The later insertion of specific doctrines like the Four Noble Truths was likely influenced by the mainstream idea that liberation in this life requires an explicit, definable insight.

IX. The origin of Buddhist meditation.

Buddhist meditation is a tradition distinct from the practices found in Jainism and many Hindu scriptures.
The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (BĀU), which contains a sentence that could refer to a similar form of meditation, is argued to be later than the Buddha based on several lines of evidence:
- Grammatical analysis by Kātyāyana and Patañjali indicates that the Brāhmaṇa works of Yājñavalkya (which include the BĀU) were considered recent compositions in their time (c. 3rd-2nd century BC).
- The legendary depiction of a debate between Yājñavalkya and Śākalya suggests a composition date closer to 150 BC than 350 BC.
- The contemporaneous use of Vedic accents in both the BĀU and early Buddhist texts suggests parts of the BĀU are as late as the period shortly after the Buddha’s death.
- The legendary portrayal of King Ajātaśatru, a contemporary of the Buddha, implies the text was written a considerable time after the Buddha lived.
- The presence of philosophical concepts similar to later classical Sāṃkhya also points to a later date.
The BĀU’s presentation of the doctrine of karman as new and secret does not prove it predates Buddhism, as Jainism already held this belief. The BĀU was likely incorporating a belief that was already widespread in non-Brahmin circles.
Buddhist scriptures do not contain any reliable information that the Buddha learned his meditation techniques from others; the practices of his teachers are not considered part of authentic Buddhist meditation.
The Buddhist canon explicitly claims the Buddha discovered his meditation techniques himself, referring to them as ‘things which had not been heard of before’.
The evidence suggests that Buddhist meditation was introduced by the founder of Buddhism and did not exist prior to him.

X. Pratyekabuddhas, the Sutta Nipāta, and the early Sangha.

The early Buddhist view of the Buddha’s teaching as new was later challenged by the concept of Pratyekabuddhas—solitary, self-enlightened beings who did not preach and were believed to have lived before Śākyamuni.
The Khaggavisāna Sutta, often attributed to Pratyekabuddhas, cannot be pre-Buddhist as it contains a direct reference to the Buddha (as Ādiccabandhu), proving it was composed during or after his lifetime.
The attribution to Pratyekabuddhas was likely a later explanation by commentators to reconcile the Sutta’s praise of solitary wandering with the later norm of communal monastic life.
The Sutta, along with other old texts like the Dhammapada and Thera Gāthā, reflects the life of early Buddhist followers who were often solitary wanderers before monasticism became common.
These early texts, originating from wandering ascetics, show more susceptibility to outside influences from traditions like Jainism and Hinduism.
Examples of this influence in the Sutta Nipāta include the promotion of ascetic practices (tapas) and the suppression of effort (ārambha), food (āhāra), and movement (iñjita).
The presence of these borrowed elements may explain why the canonicity of these ancient works remained uncertain for some time.

Conclusion - XI. The position and character of early Buddhist meditation.

Ancient Indian religious movements, outside of Buddhism, held a tradition of asceticism and meditation based on the belief that action leads to misery and rebirth.
This tradition involved either abstaining from action or seeking insight that the true self does not act.
Although Buddhist scriptures criticize this tradition, some of its practices and ideas were incorporated into Buddhism.
Examples include the last five steps of the Eight Liberations, the Brahmic States, the gradual postponement of liberation until after death, and the emphasis on a specific liberating insight.
The text suggests that philology has reached its limits in understanding Buddhist meditation and a different approach is needed for further study.