What path does meditative concentration (Dhyāna) belong to?

The Path is divided into the worldly path and the supramundane path. The worldly path is also called the outer path (non-Buddhist path), a path external to the Buddha's teachings; it has only the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions, without the wisdom of liberation, and does not realize the fruits of liberation. The supramundane path is divided into the Buddha path, the bodhisattva path, the pratyekabuddha path, and the śrāvaka path. The Buddha path and the bodhisattva path are paths of liberation that combine the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions with the Mahāyāna prajñā and Yogācāra wisdom; the pratyekabuddha path is a path of liberation that combines the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions with the wisdom of the twelve links of dependent origination; the śrāvaka path is a path of liberation that combines the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions with the wisdom of the Four Noble Truths. All four paths have their corresponding fruits of liberation. If a supramundane path has only the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions but not yet the wisdom of liberation, one cannot attain liberation—yet this is still far better than non-Buddhists who do not cultivate the Buddha's teachings. With the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions, one has the five supernatural powers; regarding birth and death, one is relatively more at ease than those without meditative concentration, temporarily able to exercise self-mastery within a certain range, but beyond that range one cannot exercise mastery. In the long run, one is still not at ease with birth and death and cannot escape the cycle of the six realms of rebirth.

In the Tang dynasty, the teacher of Chan Master Yunmen of the Yunmen school was called Muzhou. Monk Muzhou had supernatural powers. The emperor once invited Muzhou to serve as the National Preceptor, but Muzhou was unwilling to be constrained at the emperor's side and insisted on living alone in the mountains to propagate the Dharma. He had many disciples under him, but he simply would not appoint a head seat (shouzuo), because he was not satisfied with any of the disciples around him. He had his eye only on Yunmen—and at that time Yunmen had not yet even left home, indeed had not even been born. So although Monk Muzhou had been transforming sentient beings for more than ten years and had lived in the mountains for nearly twenty years, he still did not appoint a head seat; the position of head seat was kept reserved for Yunmen all along. One day he said to the assembly of disciples: "My disciple Yunmen has just been born." His supernatural powers were quite great; as soon as Yunmen was born he knew it. When Yunmen grew to over ten years old and began herding cattle, he said to the assembly, "My disciple Yunmen is herding cattle right now."

After Yunmen grew to adulthood, he began traveling through the mountains to visit various monasteries. One day Monk Muzhou told all his disciples: "My head seat has come." At that time Yunmen, still a layperson, came walking from afar carrying his bundle. At that time he had neither supernatural powers nor meditative concentration, yet Muzhou came out to welcome him and make him head seat. Upon entering the monastery, Yunmen was tonsured and directly became the head seat. Muzhou's character was such that he would rather leave a position vacant than fill it with someone unworthy; he recognized only one disciple and looked down on everyone else, so he did not appoint a head seat. What is the head seat? The head seat is the foremost disciple of the abbot, the supervisor of all matters large and small in the monastery, including the study of Dharma and meditative concentration; all affairs of the monastery, great and small, were managed by the head seat. Apart from the master, he was number one.

In the Tang and Song dynasties there were many Chan masters with supernatural powers like Muzhou. Although some of them had awakened to the Way, their attainment mainly manifested in having the four dhyānas. With the four dhyānas, one can be at ease with birth and death within a certain range, able to pass on to rebirth anytime and anywhere, generally being reborn in the human world—reborn into whatever family one wishes; one need only give a word of notice to the head of that household. There were also those who could be born immediately on the second day or some day after conception; those of great merit could seize a womb and be born early, without having to stay in the womb for ten months. One Chan master wanted to prove that he had attained the Way, so he demonstrated ease with birth and death: he lit a stick of incense, and before the incense had finished burning, he passed on to rebirth. Even so, a Chan master who had truly attained the Way would say: "Even though you have the ability to leave whenever you wish, this does not mean you are at ease with birth and death, because you have not awakened to the Way and cannot escape the cycle of the six realms. In this life you can escape evil destinies, but in the next life you will not be able to avoid them." 

There was also a Chan master who, after cultivating supernatural powers, learned that in the south there was a woman who had been pregnant for three years without giving birth—she was waiting for him to enter the womb and be born. His fellow Chan practitioners invited him several times to travel to the south, and finally, having no other choice, he went along with them. Halfway there, by a riverside, he saw that pregnant woman washing clothes by the river. He knew he could no longer escape, so he said to his fellow practitioners: "I cannot accompany you any further, because I must go take rebirth. After I take rebirth, in the ninth year, you will come to the south and see a nine-year-old boy riding on the back of an ox playing a flute—that child will be me." As a result, nine years later his fellow practitioner went to that place and indeed saw a young boy riding on the back of an ox playing a flute. Although the Chan master had such supernatural powers, this did not mean he had attained the Way.

From the various recorded public cases (gong'an) of Chan masters of the Tang and Song dynasties, we know that practitioners of that era, especially monastics, generally had the four dhyānas; laypeople also had meditative concentration. After leaving home, their main practice was cultivating concentration, and then investigating Chan. Many people did not achieve breakthrough in their Chan investigation, but they all developed meditative concentration. Why did they all cultivate the four dhyānas while we today cannot? Because people's minds in those days were relatively tranquil (praśama), their good roots and merit were relatively deep, there were not so many complicated interpersonal affairs and social information, and people's minds were simple and pure, so it was easy to cultivate meditative concentration. Every monastery had a Chan hall; monastics went to the Chan hall at fixed times every day to sit in meditation, cultivate concentration, and investigate Chan. When they went out to work in the fields, their minds were also investigating Chan within concentration, applying effort in the Way at every moment. It is not like now, when we are busy all day and unable to cultivate concentration; as soon as we learn a bit of Dharma we fall into intellectual and emotional conceptualization—even memorizing it all, yet still so far from the Way, unable to develop meditative concentration, capable only of intellectual understanding.

A person with the four dhyānas can take rebirth whenever he wishes and be reborn into whatever family he wishes. He can give advance notice to the head of the household into which he will be reborn, and the manner of rebirth can also be quite special: a person of great merit and without desire can be reborn without passing through the union of male and female, entering the womb directly, and may even seize a womb and be born early, just like the process of the Fifth Patriarch's rebirth. When the Fifth Patriarch in his previous life met the Fourth Patriarch, he was a Daoist cultivator, not a Buddhist, and was already very old. The Fourth Patriarch recognized his spiritual faculties (indriya) and said to him: "This physical body of yours is already failing; exchange it for another body." The Fifth Patriarch immediately understood and went to seek an opportunity for rebirth. Walking to a riverside, he saw a young girl washing clothes. He greeted her and said: "I have no place to stay; may I come and stay at your home?" The girl thought he wanted to stay at her parents' house, not knowing he wanted to enter the womb, and so she agreed.

Not long after the girl returned home, she felt as if she were pregnant. When the signs of pregnancy became obvious, her parents discovered it. The girl could not explain what had happened, and her parents drove her out of the house. From then on the girl wandered bitterly in all directions, and finally gave birth to the Fifth Patriarch. When the Fifth Patriarch was a few years old, he met the Fourth Patriarch, left home and was tonsured under him, and awakened to the Way at a very young age. When the Fifth Patriarch was a non-Buddhist, he already had the skill of meditative concentration, but a path with only meditative concentration is not the correct path of liberation; only the path realized through enlightenment is the true path.

The non-Buddhist who cultivated meditative concentration to the highest level was Udraka Rāmaputra, Śākyamuni Buddha's non-Buddhist teacher. When Śākyamuni Buddha first left home, he took Udraka as his teacher to study the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions. After the Buddha had cultivated the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions, he considered that this was still not the Way, so he abandoned the four dhyānas, eight absorptions, and asceticism, and resolved to cultivate the path anew. So he went to the river to bathe, drank the milk offered by the herdswoman, then went to sit beneath the Bodhi tree, and in the middle of the night, upon seeing the morning star, he greatly awakened and attained the Way. After attaining the Way, he wished to liberate his teacher, because the Buddha knew that Udraka, studying non-Buddhist teachings, could not attain the Way. But He could not find His teacher. The Buddha looked with the divine eye and saw that Udraka was no longer in the human world—he had already been reborn in the heaven of neither perception nor non-perception, absorbed in meditation for eighty thousand great kalpas, enjoying the blessings of concentration in that heavenly realm.

Eighty thousand great kalpas is an extremely long time for us, but for a person in meditative absorption, the time is very short, passing in the blink of an eye. Because a person in concentration has only a faint mind consciousness, the manas, and the eighth consciousness—these three consciousnesses—without a physical body, in a state of no-mind, and because meditative concentration is extremely blissful, the passage of time seems very fast. After emerging from concentration after eighty thousand great kalpas, whatever karmic seeds in the tathāgatagarbha ripen, sentient beings will be born in accordance with those karmic seeds into the six realms. With the divine eye, Śākyamuni Buddha saw that His teacher, in the course of his cultivation, had once made a malicious vow: while he sat cultivating concentration, the little birds around him chirped incessantly, disturbing his meditation, so he made a vicious vow, saying: "When in a future life I become a great bird, I will kill you all."

After making this vicious vow, he continued cultivating and finally attained the highest meditative concentration in the three realms, and was reborn in the heaven of neither perception nor non-perception. Because of this vicious vow, when he in the future falls from that heaven, his vicious vow will be fulfilled—that is, his vow will be satisfied—and he will be reborn as a great bird and kill all those little birds. In this way he will create great unwholesome karma, and at the end of that life, because of this karmic offense, he will fall directly into hell to suffer retribution. The Buddha did not wish Udraka to create such evil karma in the future, but there was nothing to be done—the Buddha could no longer find him; to this day he is still absorbed in meditation in that heaven.

So we see that the "Way" of cultivating the Way includes not only the Buddha path but also various non-Buddhist paths external to the Buddha path. The Buddha path is the path of escaping the bitter retribution of birth and death; non-Buddhist paths, although possessing profound meditative concentration, lack the wisdom of liberation and do not belong to the paths of liberation of the Great or Small Vehicle. The Buddha path requires not only the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions, but also the wisdom of no-self of the Great and Small Vehicles—a path possessing both concentration and wisdom. Even if one studies Buddhism and cultivates the Way, if one has only meditative concentration without eradicating the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa) and without seeing the mind and seeing one's nature, one has not yet attained the Way and cannot escape the suffering of birth and death. Only a path possessing both concentration and wisdom can be free from the karma of the three evil destinies, free from the bitter retribution of birth and death, and able to end birth and death and attain liberation. All other paths are not the true Way.