16.5.08

Concentration Meditation (part 1)

There are two types of meditation. One is the development of mental concentration (samatha bhavana, or samadhi). The other type of meditation is insight meditation (vipassana). Samatha meditation is essential in attaining jhana or absorption concentration. It is different from insight meditation in its methods, its objects, its results, its benefits.
Samatha meditation is practiced by those aiming for absorption concentration (jhana). Noble persons also attain psychic powers through concentration practice.

It is this concentration meditation (samatha) (anencabhi sankhara) that give results in the brahma plane in the form sphere and formless sphere.

Sankhara paccaya vinnanam
Anencabhisankhara paccaya brahma vinnanam.
Dependent upon conditional activities, rebirth consciousness arises.
Dependent upon conditional activities, that are concentration meditation with attainment of jhana, rebirth consciousness in the form and formless brahma planes arises.

Some meditators practise insight meditation based on pure vipassana method.
Some practise concentration meditation first, and then go on to insight meditation.

10.5.08

The Buddha’s Enlightenment (part 1)

Six years after he had renounced worldly pleasures, on the full moon day of Vesakha (May), in the first watch of the night, with his mind purified and tranquil, he possessed the first knowledge that could see aeons of previous existences of beings (pubbe-nivasænussati ñæ¼a) in aeons of world-cycles. He saw how each being came to be in a certain place, with a certain name, clan, caste, etc. Then, passing away from that life, he saw how this being came into existence elsewhere, with another name, in another clan, caste, etc. His purified mind saw how beings passed away from one existence and were immediately reborn in the succeeding existence. He saw beings beautiful and ugly, good and evil, rich and poor, etc. He saw beings being reborn in woeful states because of their evil deeds. He saw beings being reborn in human and celestial planes because of their good deeds. In the second watch of night, he achieved the divine power of the eye (dibbacakkhu nana) He realized the four noble truths which are the noble truth of suffering, the noble truth of the cause of suffering, the noble truth of cessation of suffering, the noble truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering. Thus in the last watch of the night, in the year 103 maha era , he attained extinction of moral intoxicants (asavakkhaya nana) , and attained Buddhahood. He was delivered from the defilements of craving and ignorance. He realized that for him there would be no more rebirths, that he had been delivered. Wisdom arose; he had been enlightened at the age of thirty five years. He had become the Buddha, the Gotama Buddha.