Training of the mind
The collecting of the mind
“What exactly is collected — and on what?”
Nine chapters of the book belong to the second purification. Concentration in them is not a mood but the one-pointedness of wholesome consciousness. The Visuddhimagga lists forty objects of practice, orders them by temperament, and describes in a single long chapter — the earth kasiṇa — step by step how attention becomes absorption.
For reading
Editorial explanation — quotations are marked as Canonical text and linked.
In one sentence
Concentration in the manual is not calm but directedness: the one-pointedness of a wholesome consciousness upon a single object.
In today's language
Chapter III begins with the same form of question as the chapter on virtue: what is concentration? And the answer is terse — one-pointedness of wholesome consciousness. Two words in it carry everything.
One-pointedness means: directed upon one object, not upon many. Not emptiness, not the absence of thoughts, but a mind that stays with one thing.
Wholesome is the qualification that first makes the word usable. A thief too is concentrated while he works. Anger too is one-pointed. Concentration in the sense of the book is that of a consciousness which does not stand in greed, hatred or delusion.
Then comes the practical part, and it is long. The book enumerates forty objects of practice: ten kasiṇas (earth, water, fire, air, four colours, light, space), ten contemplations of the unlovely on a corpse, ten recollections (of the Buddha, the teaching, the community, virtue, generosity, the deities, death, the body, the breath, peace), the four divine abidings, the four formless spheres, the perception of the repulsiveness of food and the analysis of the four elements.
And then the book does something that shows how it is built: it describes a single one of these objects completely — the earth kasiṇa, chapter IV — from the making of the disk right into the fourth absorption, with every mistake that happens on the way. All the other objects are treated more briefly afterwards, because the pattern is in place.
Why this matters
Because here the three grades of concentration are kept apart, and on that hangs the question of how much meditation someone needs for the rest of the way.
- Full concentration (appanā): the absorptions themselves.
- Access concentration (upacāra): the stage immediately before, in which the hindrances already rest.
- Momentary concentration (khaṇika): a concentration that renews itself from moment to moment instead of standing in one state.
The insight of the later chapters can be set upon any one of them. The book treats the absorptions in detail and yet does not make them a condition — it knows the way with full concentration and the way without.
Canonical basis
AN 9.36 is the passage where the discourses themselves clarify the relation of absorption and insight: one enters an absorption — and then regards what is present in it of the material and the mental as impermanent, as suffering, as not-self. The absorption itself becomes the object. That is exactly the position the Visuddhimagga gives it.
AN 4.41 distinguishes four developments of concentration by their purpose: well-being here and now; knowledge and vision; mindfulness and clear comprehension; the ending of the taints. Four purposes, one practice — this too explains why the manual carries so many objects.
MN 19 shows the way of working: the Buddha divides his thoughts into two heaps and observes where each leads before he brings the mind to stillness. Concentration arises there not through force but through observation.
Components
- The definition: one-pointedness of wholesome consciousness.
- Forty objects of practice, ordered by group and by temperament.
- Three signs: the preliminary sign (the thing itself), the learning sign (the image held inwardly), the counterpart sign (the clarified image, cleansed of the flaws of the thing).
- Five hindrances, which fall away in the transition to absorption.
- Three grades of concentration: momentary, access, full.
- Chapter XI: the closing chapter, which completes concentration and leads over to the higher powers of mind and then to insight.
Connection with other teachings
The four absorptions are the eighth factor of the eightfold path. The divine abidings — loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity — stand in the manual as chapter IX within concentration, not as a separate way beside it. And the four formless spheres stand expressly still within the second purification: they are subtle, but they are not the goal.
Significance for practice
Two sentences from this block are immediately usable in practice.
The first: the object must not be constantly changed. SN 47.8 has the image of the unskilled cook who never looks to see how his master likes the food, and therefore receives no wages.
The second: access concentration is enough for the rest of the way. Whoever has reached no absorption after years is not thereby excluded from the path — the book says so itself in several places.
Common misinterpretations
“Concentration means having no thoughts.” By the book's definition it means standing on one object. The thoughts do not stop because one forbids them, but because they no longer get any food.
“Without the absorptions nothing works.” The manual itself carries the way of momentary concentration; the later chapters build on it.
“The absorptions are the insight.” They are its tool and its object. In AN 9.36 the attained absorption is itself analysed and recognised as impermanent — that is the step the next stage describes.
What you now have in hand
- reproduce the definition of concentration as one-pointedness of wholesome consciousness
- divide the forty objects of practice into their groups
- explain why the book assigns objects according to temperament
- distinguish the three signs (preliminary, learning and counterpart sign) and the grades of concentration
- say why the absorptions are not the goal in the book
Key terms of this stage
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Immersion samādhi
One-pointed collectedness of mind.
Note for myself
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One-pointedness ekaggatā
One-pointedness, collectedness (a jhāna factor).
Note for myself
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Absorption jhāna
A state of collected attention resting in itself; the canon describes four such stages and names for each the factors that carry it.
Note for myself
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Meditation subject kammaṭṭhāna
The subject one works with in practice; the training in concentration knows forty of them.
Note for myself
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Hindrance nīvaraṇa
One of the five things that keep the mind from settling — sensual desire, ill will, dullness, restlessness and doubt.
Note for myself
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Momentary immersion khaṇika-samādhi
Momentary immersion (it is what carries vipassanā).
Note for myself
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Further reading optional
Rapture pīti Loving-kindness mettā Formless absorption arūpa-jhāna Mindfulness sati Serenity and insight samatha-vipassanā
Source texts Canonical text
- AN 9.36 — The absorptions and the formless spheres in order — and the pointer that each of them itself becomes an object of insight
- MN 19 — Two kinds of thought: how the Buddha divided and observed his own mind before he brought it to stillness — concentration as work, not as a state
- MN 118 — Mindfulness of breathing in sixteen steps — the most fully treated of the objects of contemplation in the manual
- AN 4.41 — Four developments of concentration, each with a different purpose: well-being here and now, knowledge and vision, mindfulness, the ending of the taints
In the book itself
“Sammlung ist die 'Einspitzigkeit' (ekaggatā, d.h. Einobjektigkeit oder Gerichtetsein auf ein einziges Objekt) des heilsamen Bewußtseins.”
In other words: Concentration is the “one-pointedness” (ekaggatā, that is, having one object, or being directed upon a single object) of wholesome consciousness.
The chapters this stage deals with — they are readable in full under Study on this site:
For reflection
Why does the definition say “wholesome” consciousness?
Because an unwholesome mind can be one-pointed too. Whoever is set on a thing is concentrated — only not on the path. The word “wholesome” marks exactly that boundary; without it the definition would apply to any concentration whatever.
Do I have to reach the absorptions in order to go further?
The book presents them in detail but does not require them throughout. Besides full concentration it knows access concentration and momentary concentration; on the latter the insight of the later chapters is built. Whoever works with momentary concentration only is later called a “dry-insight worker” in the manual.
Forty objects — which one is mine?
The book answers this not with a recommendation but with an assignment by temperament: to the greedy type the contemplation of the unlovely, to the hating type loving-kindness, to the confused the breath. And it says who ought really to make this assignment — a teacher who knows the person.