Monday, May 20, 2019

Are Samatha and Vipassana mentioned in the Pali Canon as different styles/techniques of meditation?

https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/33347/are-samatha-and-vipassana-mentioned-in-the-pali-canon-as-different-styles-techni/33352#33352
I've seen in a lot of discussions that there are two kinds of meditation methods with different but complementary goals: meditation for establishing tranquility (samatha) and meditation for establishing insight or clear vision (vipassana).
But in a few places, some authors and practitioners say that both are not different styles, but two quatities and aspects that are developed during Samma Samadhi (Right Inmersion), and that in the Pali Canon there are no mentions of those two aspects being reached through different methods.
So, what do the Pali Canon tell us about this? Are these two different methods, or just two different aspects that are eventually developed hand-in-hand?
Thanks in advance for your time, wisdom and patience.
Kind regards!


AN 4.94 is a good sutta to study, to see the relationship from an EBT perspective between samadhi, samatha, vipassana. http://lucid24.org/an/an04/an04-0094/toc-addon/index.html
And another important sutta, SN 46.2 samatha is a nutriment of samadhi, not equivalent to samadhi, as later Theravada tends to treat it.
http://lucid24.org/sn/sn46/sn46-002/toc-addon/index.html
In the EBT, the 4 jhanas have samatha and vipassana built in to each jhana, working hand in hand closely together. They are not separate mutually exclusive qualities that one develops in separate stages, as later Theravada has devolved into. The most clear example of this, look at the standard 3rd jhana formula, with the sati and sampjano explicity contained within it, and then look at AN 4.41 what S&S does. It's doing exactly what modern Theravada calls "vipassana" type of mental examination. http://lucid24.org/an/an04/an04-0041/toc-addon/index.html

No comments:

Post a Comment