Dhyāna is a very important term in Buddhism (in Pali it is jhāna). In Chinese dhyāna is Chan and in Japanese, Zen. This is what a beginner must know. But knowing it well—well, that ain’t easy.
It is also true to say that scholarly types who study Zen Buddhism and monastics who practice Zen find the term problematic. If you don’t believe me read Keren Arbel’s book, Early Buddhist Meditation: The Four Jhānas as the Actualization of Insight (2017), or Johannes Bronkhorst’s book, The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India (1993). Hoping to see the forest for the trees in both books proves difficult. One thing for sure, both authors do not believe that dhyāna leads one to a mere conceptualization of ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is beyond any conceptualization and dhyāna is the means.
Something else is going on with dhyāna. It is more of a process of opening us up to the unknown while at the same time having us abandon our conditioned mind with its way of doing business. In other words, dhyāna is a kind of de-conditioning process that takes us to the edge where the leap of intuition takes place. Notice, that in these lines I have not mentioned the word ‘sitting’. Why? Because dhyāna has nothing whatsoever to do with physical posture.
Before Siddhartha became the Buddha (that is awakened to the absolute) he practiced dhyāna. It was the means for getting him there; maybe to the edge but certainly not enlightenment, directly. Even the fourth dhyāna is considered to be constructed.
“This fourth jhāna is constructed and produced by volition. But whatever is constructed and produced by volition is impermanent, subject to cessation” (AN V.344).
The above also seems to chime with what the Lankavatara Sutra has to say:
“The Dhyanas, the immeasurables, the formless, the Samadhis, and the complete extinction of thought (nirodha)—these do not exist where the Mind alone is” (121).
We can surmise from the last quote that we are still short of the absolute, even with the practice of dhyāna. We are still caught in a mental construction, albeit, a very subtle one. Dhyāna has only managed to take us to the precipice, that is, the brink of our seeming disaster but one that in J.R. Tolkien’s language will be a “Eucatastrophe”this being a sudden unexpected turn; a brief glimpse of ultimate reality and with it the good news (evangelium) so that there is a happy ending for us.
Yes, dhyāna is what the Buddha tried to teach his followers. It makes up part of the Buddha narrative. But the part of awakening, itself, is beyond the reach of dhyāna.
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