Early Indian and Theravada Buddhism: Soteriological Controversy a ...

(2) the path based on tranquility meditation (samatha-bhāvanā)/states of meditative absorption (jhāna), and (3) the path based on insight meditation (vipassanā-bhāvanā)/wisdom (paññā). Throughout the Pāli canon, one finds texts that describe different idealized persons as following these distinct paths to the final goal. At the same time, the respective strong points of the noble persons’ paths, namely faith, concentration, and insight, are part of the “five spiritual faculties” (indriyas) that all practitioners must cultivate to the fullest. Finally, one also discovers indications of what later became the dominant normative position in the Theravāda tradition, that practices relating to insight are almost always the most essential ones, in which all adepts must engage themselves at some point.

Two of the three paths treated here, the path of samādhi (concentration), and the path of paññā (wisdom or insight), correspond to the two major approaches to meditation described in the Pāli texts: (1) the “cultivation of tranquility” (samatha-bhāvanā) and (2) the “cultivation of insight” (vipassanā-bhāvanā). As described in most parts of the early texts of the Pāli canon and receiving their classical Theravāda formulation at the hands of Buddhaghosa (fifth century CE) in his authoritative and encyclopedic treatise on the path, the VsM, these two methods are usually seen as complementary. The first, involving withdrawal of the mind and senses from internal and external input and providing the requisite amount of concentration (samādhi) and calm (samatha) through absorption in progressive states of meditative trance (jhāna), serves as preliminary or preparatory technique for the second, which involves a process of observation of mental and sensory activities through progressive stages of mindfulness. Although the cultivation of these two methods as coordinated parts of a coherent whole is enshrined in many Pāli discourses of the Buddha (sutta) and Theravāda meditation manuals such as the VsM, it must be noted the early canon as a whole contains a rather inchoate mass of materials on meditation, sometimes overlapping but not infrequently contradicting each other. The concern of this study is to point to the differences and diversity found in Theravāda texts