Mindfulness of breathing in the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya
Seong-cheol Kim
The Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture December 1, 2010 DOI: 10.33521/jbs.2010.2.0.57 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation Buddhism |
| Key points | The paper argues that the Yogācārabhūmi, especially the Śrāvakabhūmi, formulates the concept of śamatha-vipaśyanā-yuganaddha-vahin to unite calming the mind and analytical insight inseparably. By defining both as belonging to "One pointedness of the mind" (cittaikāgratā), the text enables śamatha to encompass vipaśyanā and takes a methodological step toward their functional synthesis. |
Abstract
It is well known that the Vijñānavāda-school has developed from the meditators called yogācā, who practised various kind of the meditations in the wilderness. In the Yogācārabhūmi, the main text-corpus of the Vijñānavāda-school, we can find the striking definition on the meditation, which shows the synthetical character of this school very clearly, that the meditation is characterized by the terminus "parallel of the calming the mind (śamatha) and analytical insight (vipaśyanā)." It is hard to find out the meaning in the context of the traditional understanding of śamatha and vipaśyanā that they can be interpreted in such a manner, because the two concepts function very differently. The purpose of the present paper is to find out whether the origin of this kind of definition is traced back to the Vijñānavāda sources. In the present paper, I have dealt with two passages in the Yogācārabhūmi among three, which use the concept of "śamatha-vipaśyanā-yuganaddha- vahin" (止觀雙運) expressly. My observation arrives at the conclusion: The most interesting fact which the passages in the Yogācārabhūmi, more exactly the Śrāvakabhūmi, point out is that the concept in question seems to be formulated in an endeavor to unite śamatha with vipaśyanā inseparably tied with each other. The new definition of śamatha and vipaśyanā that they all belong to the "One pointedness of the mind" (cittaikāgratā), which amounts to the definition of sāmadhi in the Early Buddhist texts, makes it possible to enlarge the concept śamatha upon vipaśyanā. The more important methodological step toward the functional synthesis of the two concepts is achieved in the Śrāvakabhūmi. In a context of meditation object (ālambana) the text mentions clearly that śamatha and vipaśyanā form the complementary process of achieving the pureness of the inner bases and pureness of outer objects in the way that śamatha has as its meditative object
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