---
title: "The Anatomy of a Jhāna-Factor — Taking One Factor Apart: Vitakka, Vicāra, and the Mechanism of Silence"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 5 — SAMĀDHI: From the Pāli Jhāna to Silent Illumination and the Huatou · Part III · Abhidharma and the Path of Purification"
series_short: "SAMĀDHI"
volume: 5
paper_id: "SAMADHI-P10"
paper_number: 10
part: Part III · Abhidharma and the Path of Purification
part_number: 3
date: 2026-06-01
version: "1.0"
license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
---

# The Anatomy of a Jhāna-Factor
***Taking One Factor Apart: Vitakka, Vicāra, and the Mechanism of Silence***

*中文主題：禪支分析——尋伺、喜樂，與一支禪支的內部*

*Taking One Factor Apart*

**Abstract**

A meditator who has been told that "in jhāna there is no thinking" will often still notice the mind moving — faintly, ceaselessly — and conclude she has not yet "arrived." The oldest analysis of the first jhāna says the opposite. The canonical formula lists, as the first constituent of the first jhāna, not a blank but a *movement*: applied and sustained thought (*vitakka-vicāra*; in the old Chinese, "awareness and examining"). This chapter does not rebuild the ladder of the four jhānas; it lays the scalpel on the inside of a single factor. Standing on the four-jhāna pericope that three textual witnesses share word for word — the *Madhyama* and *Saṃyukta Āgamas* in Chinese, the Pāli *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta* — it asks where the Abhidharma cuts on the question "what *is* this one factor." Applied and sustained thought are the mind's coarse and subtle stirring, the root of speech; that is why the second jhāna, in stilling them, earns the name *noble silence*. The intermediate phase in which applied thought has gone but sustained thought remains is built, in the North, into a *ground* of its own — the intermediate dhyāna — and in the South, into a *reckoning* of its own — the fivefold scheme: two traditions developing independently and landing on the very same subtle transition. As for bliss, the *Kośa* judges it to be tranquillity and rapture to be a joy-feeling; the Theravāda reverses this, taking bliss as feeling and rapture as a formation — the two judgments form mirror images. The upshot: a jhāna-factor is not a checklist of sensations one passes or fails, but a doctrine of mental events that can be taken apart one factor at a time, each interrogated for what it is and why it ceases. Two traditions share one canonical floor; each cuts a single decisive stroke into "what this factor is." To lay that scalpel out is the work of this chapter.

**Keywords:** jhāna-factor (禪支 / *jhānaṅga*), applied thought (尋 / *vitakka* / Skt *vitarka*), sustained thought (伺 / *vicāra*), the intermediate dhyāna (中間靜慮 / *dhyānāntara*), the fivefold reckoning (五支說 / *pañcaka-naya*), noble silence (聖默然 / *ariya-tuṇhībhāva*), verbal formation (語行 / *vacī-saṅkhāra*), rapture (喜 / *pīti* / Skt *prīti*), bliss (樂 / *sukha*), tranquillity (輕安 / *prasrabdhi* / *passaddhi*), joy-feeling (喜受 / *saumanasya*), Abhidharma, the four jhānas, awareness-and-examining (覺觀)

---

**Author:** Shi Huijing (釋慧鏡)
**Date:** June 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0
**Series:** SAMĀDHI — *From the Pāli Jhāna to Silent Illumination and the Huatou*

---

## I. The Question: The Moment the Mind Is Still Moving

A meditator sits down and does as the modern manuals tell her: real jhāna, the books say, has "no thinking" in it. She settles; the hindrances thin out; and yet she notices, clearly, that the mind has not gone wholly still. It is still moving, faintly — a beam of attention that aims lightly at its object and rests there a moment, aims and rests again. So she doubts: perhaps she has not "gotten in" yet.

But the oldest analysis of the first jhāna says exactly the reverse. When the canonical formula lists the constituents of the first jhāna, the first thing it names is not a blank but a movement — applied and sustained thought (in Pāli, *vitakka-vicāra*; in the old Chinese rendering, "awareness and examining"). In other words, that faint aiming and holding she notices is not the static of "not yet absorbed." It is precisely the factor the texts place first — and discard first. The work of this chapter is not to certify a blank mind but to take one factor apart: what, exactly, this one movement is, how it comes to rest, and why it must.

Before the first cut, three denials, to fix the posture of the analysis. First, **a jhāna-factor is not a checklist for scoring a meditation.** To treat "is there rapture, is there enough bliss?" as boxes to tick is to misread a doctrine of mental constituents as an experience questionnaire. Second, **a jhāna-factor is not a fixed ladder climbed by will.** We will see again and again that factors are *let go of*, not *taken up* — the deeper the concentration, the fewer the factors; each step up is a subtraction, not the addition of one more thing. Third, **a jhāna-factor is not a ruler for judging whose meditation counts as real.** The vocabulary here is diagnostic, not judicial; it takes apart "what applied thought is," and answers nothing about "whether your sitting counts." All three readings miss.

That third denial bears directly on an unsettled quarrel in contemporary Western meditation circles. One camp (the "lighter" approach, running through certain sutta-based lineages) holds that some residual thought-activity may remain even in the true first jhāna; another (the "deeper" approach, following the *Visuddhimagga*) holds that all thinking must cease entirely. On its face this "jhāna war" disputes whether thinking survives in real jhāna; underneath, it is a dispute over **what applied thought (*vitakka*) actually is.** This chapter will lay that terminological question open, so that each camp can see that they are using one word for different things — but **it stops there. It does not adjudicate which camp is right, and it issues no instructions on method, no depth-targets.** Diagnose the term; do not referee the practice.

One boundary must be drawn at the outset, to head off a common confusion. Applied and sustained thought are the "aiming and holding" factors on the track of *concentration*; they are not the same as mindfulness (*sati*) on the track of the four establishments of mindfulness (*satipaṭṭhāna*). Wherever this chapter says "watching how that movement quiets down," that is the author's analytic framing, not an instruction to "practice mindfulness in jhāna." The mindfulness *within* concentration is not the mindfulness of *satipaṭṭhāna* — a line another chapter of this volume has already drawn, restated here once.

As to its place: this chapter follows directly on the one before. Part III of this volume sets out to *systematize* the doctrine of concentration. The preceding chapter handled the **axis of the person** — how the forty meditation-objects are matched to different practitioners by temperament (*to whom* an object is given). This chapter handles the **axis of the factor** — the internal anatomy of a single jhāna-factor (what applied and sustained thought are, why they are severed at the second jhāna). The chapter after handles the **axis of the nature of concentration** (what attaining absorption itself consists in, and the dispute between two schools over it). This chapter neither re-walks the object-classification of the last nor pre-empts the dispute over the nature of absorption to come.

## II. The Common Ground: The Four-Jhāna Pericope, Read Three Ways

Before the cut, look at what the scalpel rests on. The two traditions — the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma in the North, the commentarial literature in the South — are not talking past each other: they share one and the same canonical floor of the four jhānas. That floor is matched, almost word for word, across the Chinese *Madhyama* and *Saṃyukta Āgamas* and the Pāli collection.

The *Madhyama Āgama* gives the clearest sequence of falling-away:

> "A monk, secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states, with awareness and with examining, with **rapture-and-bliss born of seclusion**, enters and abides in the first jhāna. … With awareness and examining stilled, inwardly settled, the mind one, without awareness, without examining, with **rapture-and-bliss born of concentration**, he enters and abides in the second jhāna. … **Secluded from the desire for rapture**, dwelling in equanimity, seeking nothing, mindful and fully aware, he feels bliss in the body … and enters and abides in the third jhāna. … With **bliss ceased and pain ceased, joy and sorrow already gone before, neither-painful-nor-pleasant, equanimity, mindfulness, purity**, he enters and abides in the fourth jhāna."[^1]

The *Saṃyukta Āgama* serves as a second witness: the wording differs slightly, the sequence is identical, and its "pure mindfulness, mind one" cross-checks against the *Madhyama*'s "purity of equanimity-and-mindfulness," confirming the sequence is no isolated reading:

> "Secluded from awareness and examining, **inwardly clear, the mind one**, without awareness, without examining, with rapture-and-bliss born of concentration, he is endowed with the second jhāna … the venerable one, **secluded from rapture**, dwelling in equanimity, mindful and fully aware, feels bliss in body and mind, of which the noble ones speak as equanimity, and is endowed with the third jhāna … secluded from pain, bliss stilled, sorrow and joy severed before, neither-painful-nor-pleasant equanimity, **pure mindfulness, the mind one**, he is endowed with the fourth jhāna."[^2]

The Pāli stock formula for the four jhānas in the *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta* matches the Chinese verb for verb in its sequence of falling-away:

> *…savitakkaṁ savicāraṁ vivekajaṁ pītisukhaṁ paṭhamaṁ jhānaṁ… **Vitakkavicārānaṁ vūpasamā** ajjhattaṁ sampasādanaṁ cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ **avitakkaṁ avicāraṁ** samādhijaṁ pītisukhaṁ dutiyaṁ… **Pītiyā ca virāgā** upekkhako…sukhañca kāyena paṭisaṁvedeti…tatiyaṁ… **Sukhassa ca pahānā** dukkhassa ca pahānā…adukkhamasukhaṁ upekkhāsatipārisuddhiṁ catutthaṁ jhānaṁ…*[^3]

Read the three side by side, and the verbs of falling-away surface plainly: the stilling of applied and sustained thought (*vitakkavicārānaṁ vūpasamā*) → the fading of rapture (*pītiyā virāgā*) → the abandoning of bliss (*sukhassa pahānā*) → at last the neither-painful-nor-pleasant, the purity of equanimity-and-mindfulness. **This floor the two traditions share; the divergence does not happen here.** How the four-jhāna ladder is itself constructed, how each factor falls away layer by layer, 5→4→3→2, is the business of another chapter, the spine of this volume; the stock formula is quoted here only to mark the verbs of falling-away, not to re-lay the ladder.

One verbal seam must be flagged here, or the rest will mislead. The Āgamas use "awareness, examining" throughout; the three Abhidharma treatises use "applied thought, sustained thought" — this is the fingerprint of a translation era, not a doctrinal divergence. The Āgama translations are early (the *Saṃyukta* under Guṇabhadra, the *Madhyama* under Saṅghadeva, both before Xuanzang) and use the old rendering 覺/觀, "awareness / examining." 尋/伺 — "searching-out / investigating" — is the new rendering of Xuanzang's line, alive in the *Kośa*, the *Mahāvibhāṣā*, the *Prakaraṇapāda*. So whenever the Sarvāstivāda side below speaks of "applied-and-sustained thought / without-applied-with-sustained-alone / intermediate dhyāna," recall that the Āgama base it rests on actually says "awareness-and-examining / without-awareness-with-little-examining." What is worth dwelling on is that the re-translation is itself a moment of the tradition tightening on itself: the graph 覺 ("awareness") was too easily heard as "cognition, knowing," and Xuanzang's 尋 ("searching, reaching-toward") fixed it precisely as the *act of casting attention onto an object*. A seventh-century translator, in effect, ruled the earlier rendering too loose and pulled it tight — a human thread we return to below.

## III. The Vitakka-Vicāra Axis: The Inside of a Moving Factor, and the Mechanism of Silence

The first cut falls on applied and sustained thought. This is the section where the mechanism is strongest: it turns a "jhāna-factor" from a list into a doctrine of mental events with causes and effects.

### 3.1 What Applied and Sustained Thought Are: Coarse and Subtle Stirring of the Mind

The *Prakaraṇapāda* gives applied and sustained thought a formal definition, terse to the point of coldness:

> "What is applied thought? The coarse-stirring nature of the mind. What is sustained thought? The subtle-stirring nature of the mind."[^4]

The fuller treatment adds the relation between the two:

> "Applied thought … makes the mind stir coarsely; this is called applied thought. Sustained thought … **follows upon applied thought**, makes the mind stir subtly; this is called sustained thought."[^4]

Two sentences fix three things. First, both are *stirring* — a movement of the mind, not the content of the mind; not "what was thought of," but "the mind moving once toward something, then sticking there a while." Second, coarse and subtle are two stretches of one movement: applied thought is the rougher casting-out, sustained thought the finer holding that follows. Third, "sustained thought follows upon applied thought" — sustained thought turns on applied thought, is its continuation. This last point looks minor, but it supplies the doctrinal ground for the order to come, "applied thought let go first, sustained thought after": since sustained thought is the stretch of subtle stirring stuck onto the back of applied thought, of course applied thought falls away first, and sustained thought only after.

Return to the meditator from the opening. That beam of "aiming lightly, resting lightly" she noticed is exactly applied and sustained thought here: the aim is applied thought's coarse cast, the rest is sustained thought's fine continuation. She is not "not yet absorbed"; she has come to rest precisely on the one movement the first jhāna explicitly contains. — This is a return for the sake of illustration, not a pointer to method.

### 3.2 Coarse and Subtle Together in One Mind: A Difference Within the Treatises

If the first jhāna is "with awareness and with examining" (with both applied and sustained thought), how can one mind hold two opposite stirrings, "coarse" and "subtle," at once? The Abhidharma has no single settled answer to this, and this chapter does not stitch one for it.

The orthodox verdict of the *Mahāvibhāṣā* holds that coarse and subtle can co-exist in one mind without conflict:

> "The verdict: within one and the same mind, the coarse nature is called applied thought, the subtle nature sustained thought … applied thought makes the mind coarse, sustained thought makes the mind subtle. Question: how do these two, coarse and subtle, not conflict in one mind? Answer: because their functions differ. Applied thought is sharp and swift, sustained thought slow and dull; jointly assisting one mind, though coarse and subtle, they do not conflict."[^5]

But the *Kośa*, elsewhere, takes a different tack: applied and sustained thought cannot arise together in the same instant, and "possessing five factors" is said with respect to one *ground*, not one instant —

> "Applied and sustained thought, these two, can certainly not be held to be associated in one mind … the phrase 'possessing five factors' is said with respect to one ground, not one instant."[^6]

The two treatises are in genuine tension in their detail: the *Mahāvibhāṣā* speaks of coarse and subtle harmonizing in "the same instant," the *Kośa* speaks of five factors being possible on "the same ground." Both are dissolving the same puzzle — how the first jhāna can hold five factors at once — but by different routes. This chapter marks this plainly as a difference the Abhidharma itself permits, and does not stitch it into one unified, false-composite citation. What matters is not adjudicating who is right, but seeing this: even a question as fine as "how two stirrings share one mind" the tradition was willing to spend argument taking apart — which is itself the evidence that a jhāna-factor was treated as a dissectible object.

### 3.3 Bell and Bird: Two Similes the Tradition Carries Itself

That applied thought is coarse-and-first and sustained thought subtle-and-after, the tradition says through two ready similes. These are commonly assigned to the Theravāda commentaries, but in fact the Northern *Mahāvibhāṣā* already cites them from the *Prajñapti* and the *Dharmaskandha*, so they need not be sought outside:

> "**The *Prajñapti* says: as when a bell, a chime, a vessel of copper or iron is struck, its sound, in setting out, is coarse first and subtle after — so too applied and sustained thought. The *Dharmaskandha* says: as when heaven cracks thunder, or a man blows a conch, it is large first and faint after — so too applied and sustained thought. And it is also said: as a bird, flying in the sky, beats its wings and soars, coarse first and subtle after — so too applied and sustained thought.**"[^7]

A bell first struck: the sound is coarse first, and the lingering resonance thins out after — that first strike is applied thought, that resonance is sustained thought. A bird beats its wings to take off, first the effortful flapping, then the effortless glide — the flapping is applied thought, the glide sustained thought. Both similes say the one thing through: applied thought is the more effortful investment, sustained thought the less effortful holding that follows; they are not two things but two stretches of one act.

### 3.4 Applied and Sustained Thought as "the Root of Speech": Why the Second Jhāna Is Called Noble Silence

Here the section answers its most crucial question — **why is it precisely at the second jhāna that applied and sustained thought are severed?** The *Mahāvibhāṣā* gives, not the circular answer "because that is where one's cultivation reaches and they cease," but a three-link causal chain:

> "The second dhyāna ceases the root of speech. The root of speech is applied and sustained thought. As the discourse says: 'One must have applied and sustained thought to be able to issue speech, not without them.' In the second dhyāna applied and sustained thought are already ceased; there is no root of speech, and so it is said to be born of concentration. Further, the second dhyāna is called noble silence … The Buddha said to Maudgalyāyana: 'Do not slight the second dhyāna, for this is the noble ones' way of silence.'"[^8]

Take the three links apart. First, applied and sustained thought are "the root of speech" — a person can issue speech because the mind first has the stirring of applied and sustained thought (it aims first, sticks first, before words can be assembled); without them, there is no root from which speech issues. Second, in the second jhāna applied and sustained thought are already ceased; the root of speech being cut, its rapture-and-bliss is called "born of concentration" (arisen from concentration), as distinct from the first jhāna's, called "born of seclusion" (arisen from seclusion from sensual desire) — in other words, the second jhāna's rapture-and-bliss no longer carries the stirring that pushes toward speech. Third, just because the root of speech is now stilled, the second jhāna earns the name *noble silence*.

This sense of "noble silence" the Āgamas had already seeded. The *Saṃyukta Āgama*'s Maudgalyāyana discourse:

> "If a monk stills awareness-and-examining, inwardly clear, the mind one, without awareness, without examining, the concentration born of rapture-and-bliss, and dwells endowed with the second jhāna, this is called noble silence … Maudgalyāyana, you should keep noble silence; give rise to no heedlessness."[^9]

The old "awareness-and-examining" is the new "applied-and-sustained thought"; the *Mahāvibhāṣā* simply systematizes this discourse's observation into a mechanism. One point must be made sharply here, lest a Western reader misunderstand: **"noble silence" is not behavioral muteness, not a closed-mouth silent retreat.** It names the fact that the mental mechanism that pushes the mind toward speech — applied and sustained thought — has come to rest. A person who shuts his mouth but whose mind still stirs with applied and sustained thought is not, in this sense, silent; conversely, this silence is a matter at the level of mental events, and has nothing to do with whether the tongue moves.

The mechanism can be reinforced by a side witness. The *Mahāvibhāṣā* elsewhere lists the three-formation sequence of the attainment of cessation: "first the verbal formation ceases (i.e. applied and sustained thought, first to second jhāna), next the bodily formation ceases (i.e. in-and-out breathing, third to fourth jhāna), last the mental formation ceases (feeling and perception)"[^10] — applied and sustained thought are precisely the "verbal formation" ceased first, corresponding to this second-jhāna threshold. And the *Mahāvibhāṣā* explains why applied and sustained thought must be let go: "Applied and sustained thought, coarse-stirring, are not at peace; the higher grounds, subtle, are at peace"[^10] — the nature of applied and sustained thought is *movement*, at odds with the peace of the higher grounds, so the deeper the concentration, the more that stirring must be let go.

At this point the Western quarrel from §I can be cashed out. "Whether thinking survives in jhāna" becomes a quarrel because each camp needs "applied thought" to be a different thing: the "lighter" camp needs it to be some residual thought, the "deeper" camp needs it gone entirely. But the Abhidharma's anatomy long ago supplied the distinction that dissolves it — applied and sustained thought are "the investing and holding of attention" (coarse cast first, fine continuation after), not conceptual thinking. So: the first jhāna, though it explicitly contains this movement, is not thereby "thinking about things"; and its cessation between the first and second jhānas is "the letting-go of the last force of aiming," not a cutting-off of the mind. **This distinction is enough to let each camp see that they are using one word for different things. But the chapter stops here — it does not adjudicate which camp is right, and it issues no instructions on method, no depth-targets.**

## IV. The Intermediate-Stage Axis: The Rung Where Vitakka Is Gone but Vicāra Remains, and the Convergence of Two Traditions

The second cut falls on a finer transition: the moment when applied thought (awareness) has ceased and yet sustained thought (examining) remains — where does that belong? This is the sharpest section of the chapter, because here the two traditions each make an independent architectural choice, and what makes the choice worth dwelling on is precisely that they **landed independently on the same observation.**

### 4.1 The Seed the Āgamas Had Already Sown: Three Concentrations

Look at the discourses first. The *Saṃyukta Āgama*, treating concentration, has only two divisions: "with awareness and examining" and "without awareness and examining," no transition between. Yet the *Madhyama Āgama* plainly lists three concentrations:

> "I shall train in three concentrations: I shall train in the **concentration with awareness and examining, the concentration without awareness and with little examining, the concentration without awareness and without examining**. … If I train in the concentration with awareness and examining, the mind then inclines toward the concentration without awareness and with little examining …"[^11]

This "concentration without awareness and with little examining" — awareness already gone, examining still slight — is the canonical witness for that intermediate phase, "applied thought ceased, sustained thought remaining." And it is no one-off phrasing of a single discourse: another *Madhyama* discourse lists these three concentrations under the four establishments of mindfulness for repeated cultivation, showing that "the concentration without awareness and with little examining" is a fixed item in the discourses, not a single ad-hoc formulation.[^12] The discourses themselves had already seen this rung; what the Abhidharma does is find it a place in the system.

### 4.2 The North Adds a "Ground": The Intermediate Dhyāna

The Sarvāstivāda choice is to set up, for this intermediate phase, a separate "ground." The *Kośa*:

> "The intermediate dhyāna is without applied thought; it possesses three [factors], with equanimity-feeling alone. The treatise: … Of the upper seven concentrations, none has applied or sustained thought; **only the intermediate dhyāna has sustained thought without applied thought**, and so it **surpasses the first and does not reach the second**; on this sense the name 'intermediate' is set up … This concentration can summon the fruit of the realm of Great Brahmā."[^13]

So "without applied thought, with sustained thought alone" becomes a rung of its own — higher than the first jhāna (which has both applied and sustained thought), short of the second jhāna (which has neither), wedged in between, hence named the *intermediate dhyāna* (*dhyānāntara*). It even has its own karmic fruit: one who cultivates this concentration is reborn among the Great Brahmā gods. With the *Kośa*'s "three samādhis" the position becomes clearer still:

> "Unification is of three kinds in all: one, with applied and with sustained thought; two, without applied thought, with sustained thought alone; three, without applied and without sustained thought … **the lowest has applied-and-sustained, the middle has sustained alone, the upper has neither.**"[^13]

With-both (first jhāna and the access concentration) / with-sustained-alone (the intermediate dhyāna) / without-both (the second jhāna up to the peak of existence) — the samādhis are cut into three stretches by the presence or absence of applied and sustained thought, and the intermediate dhyāna sits squarely on the second. In other words, the North made the observation "awareness ceased, examining remaining" into a rung that **has a ground (*bhūmi*) of its own.**

### 4.3 The South Adds a "Reckoning": The Fivefold Scheme

The Theravāda commentaries, facing the same observation, make a different choice: they do not set up a separate ground, but on the very same four-jhāna ladder set up a separate *reckoning*. Besides the standard "fourfold reckoning" (*catukka-naya*, four jhānas in four rungs), the commentaries set up a "fivefold reckoning" (*pañcaka-naya*) — inserting, between the first jhāna and the second, the rung "without applied thought, with sustained thought alone" (*avitakka-vicāramatta*), making the ladder five rungs.[^14]

Here the scalpel must fall with great care, to avoid two symmetrical misstatements. **One must not say "the Theravāda has an intermediate jhāna, just as the Sarvāstivāda does"** — the Theravāda did not, as the North did, set up for this rung a separate "ground" with an independent karmic fruit. **Nor must one say "the Theravāda has no intermediate jhāna"** — it plainly kept a place for this rung in the fivefold reckoning. The correct reading is this: **both traditions saw the intermediate phase "awareness ceased, examining remaining"; the North added a *ground* for it, the South added a *reckoning*.** One observation (that applied and sustained thought can fall away in sequence), two different architectural choices. (The details of the Theravāda fivefold reckoning and the *avitakka-vicāramatta* rung are stated here at the level of doctrine, without attaching specific text-numbers, so as not to overreach what can be verified.)

### 4.4 Convergence as the Signature of "There Really Being Such a Phase"

Set §4.2 and §4.3 side by side, and the chapter's strongest single point surfaces. The Northern intermediate dhyāna and the Southern fivefold intermediate rung **developed independently** in different treatise traditions, yet both land on one and the same fact — the subtle transition "awareness already ceased, examining still remaining."

Two systems not in communication tracked, independently, the same transition, and each gave it a place in its own architecture. This is not "a vague description artificially systematized"; quite the reverse, it is the signature of "there really being such a phase, analyzed separately." If the jhāna-factors were merely a list compiled later, with nothing real behind them, two traditions would be unlikely to cut, unprompted, at the same fine point. Convergence is the hardest evidence that a jhāna-factor can be dissected.

## V. The Pīti-Sukha Axis: Is Sukha a Feeling, or Is It Tranquillity?

The third cut falls on rapture (*pīti*) and bliss (*sukha*). The divergence in the previous two sections lay in "how applied and sustained thought cease"; the divergence here lies in "what rapture and bliss actually *are*" — and the two traditions' judgments here turn out to be two sides of one mirror. One line must be declared first, running through the whole section: this section discusses rapture and tranquillity only in the sense of "the jhāna-factors / the arising of concentration." Rapture and tranquillity have another place elsewhere (among the seven awakening-factors, in the context of what leads toward nibbāna); that belongs to another chapter of this volume, on the awakening-factors, and this section touches none of it.

### 5.1 The Kośa's Judgment: Bliss Is Tranquillity, Rapture Is the Joy-Feeling

The *Kośa* first lists the count of jhāna-factors — five for the first jhāna, four for the second, five for the third, four for the fourth:

> "The first possesses five factors: one, applied thought; two, sustained thought; three, rapture; four, bliss; five, unification … The second dhyāna has four factors only: one, inner clarity; two, rapture; three, bliss; four, unification. The third dhyāna possesses five factors: one, equanimity-of-formation; two, right mindfulness; three, right discernment; four, the feeling of bliss; five, unification. The fourth dhyāna has four factors only: one, the purity of equanimity-of-formation; two, purity of mindfulness; three, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling; four, unification."[^15]

The crux: the *Kośa* holds that the "bliss" factor listed for the first and second jhānas **is not a pleasant feeling but tranquillity (*prasrabdhi*).** Its argument is three steps:

> "Why does the third [jhāna] alone speak of the increase of pleasant feeling? Because the bliss of the first two is included under tranquillity. By what reasoning do we know it is tranquillity? Because in the first two concentrations there is no faculty of pleasure. It is not that the first two concentrations have bodily pleasant feeling, for while actually in concentration the five sense-consciousnesses do not arise. Nor is there mental pleasant feeling, for [the treatise] has said there is rapture; and rapture is the joy-feeling. There cannot be two feelings running together in one mind, so there is no pleasant feeling."[^16]

Three steps apart: first, the first two jhānas have no "faculty of pleasure" (the faculty of pleasant feeling). Second, it cannot be bodily pleasant feeling, because while actually in concentration the five sense-consciousnesses do not arise, so there is no source for bodily feeling. Third, it cannot be mental pleasant feeling either, because the treatise has said the first two jhānas "have rapture," and rapture is the joy-feeling (*saumanasya*, included under the aggregate of feeling); two feelings cannot run together in one mind, and rapture-as-joy-feeling being present, there is no further pleasant feeling. The three steps force the conclusion: the "bliss" of the first two jhānas can only be tranquillity — the suppleness, workability, unruffledness of body and mind, not a "pleasant feeling" within the feeling-aggregate. Only the bliss of the third jhāna is a genuine pleasant feeling.

The *Kośa* also accounts for the factor that replaces applied and sustained thought in the second jhāna — "inner clarity":

> "Inner clarity … this concentration, far removed from the agitation of applied and sustained thought, flows on in continuous purity, and is called inner clarity. If there is the agitation of applied and sustained thought … as a river has waves … therefore it should be said this is the faculty of faith."[^17]

Applied and sustained thought are like waves in a river; the waves still, the surface flows on in continuous purity, and this purity is "inner clarity," which the *Kośa* judges to be the faculty of faith. The first jhāna has applied and sustained thought as factors; the second jhāna has inner clarity filling their place — once more a dissection of "subtract one factor, supply another."

### 5.2 A Counter-View Vasubandhu Sets Up Himself: An In-House Dispute

The fineness of the *Kośa* is that Vasubandhu does not merely give the orthodox view; he sets up, within the treatise, a counter-view and rebuts it point by point. This counter-view comes close to the Theravāda judgment — it holds that the "bliss" factor of the first, second, and third jhānas is all the faculty of pleasure included under bodily feeling:

> "**There is a view: there is no faculty of mental pleasure**; where the three dhyānas speak of a bliss-factor, it is all the faculty of pleasure included under bodily feeling … and the fourth concentration, where tranquillity is redoubled, is not said to have a bliss-factor."[^18]

This is a dispute *within* the *Kośa*'s text, a counter-view Vasubandhu raises in order to break — not the *Kośa*'s own orthodox position. In citing it, one must mark this. Its value lies here: this is an Abhidharma in-house debate conducted purely at the level of jhāna-factors, drawing in nothing of the awakening-factors at all — which, for this chapter, makes it the safest and most penetrable stretch of Chinese-tradition material. And the very reason the counter-view itself offers turns around to support the orthodox view: at the fourth jhāna "tranquillity is redoubled, yet no bliss-factor is set up" — by the fourth jhāna tranquillity is fuller than before, yet the treatise no longer sets up a "bliss" factor for it. This fits the spirit of subtraction exactly: bliss, even the bliss of tranquillity, is after all a kind of "stirring" that must be stilled, and so the fourth jhāna is purely the purity of equanimity-and-mindfulness, with even this peace no longer marked as a factor.

### 5.3 The Mirror: The Theravāda Reverses the Judgment

The Theravāda commentaries' judgment is precisely the mirror of the *Kośa*'s. In the Theravāda analysis, bliss (*sukha*) is from the first jhāna onward a **feeling** (*vedanā*), while rapture (*pīti*) belongs to the aggregate of **formations** (*saṅkhāra*), not to feeling.

Set the two side by side: the *Kośa* judges "rapture is feeling, bliss is tranquillity"; the Theravāda judges "bliss is feeling, rapture is a formation" — on the question "of rapture and bliss, which is the 'feeling'," the two traditions hold opposite ends of one mirror. Here especially one must take care: **one must not stitch this into a single false-composite citation of the form "the treatise says: rapture is feeling, bliss is tranquillity,"** as if this were a doctrine both traditions agreed on. It is no shared doctrine; it is a single stroke each tradition cut for itself — and this very act of *collation* is the load-bearing image of this chapter: two traditions, on one and the same four-jhāna floor, each performing a different dissection.

### 5.4 Why the Sequence of Falling-Away Is As It Is

Return to the verbs of falling-away, and the sequence of rapture and bliss too has its anatomical reason. Rapture (*pīti*) is the coarser elation — it carries a leaping vibration, and so falls first; bliss (whether judged a pleasant feeling or tranquillity) is the finer enjoyment, the more settled abiding, and so falls after; by the fourth jhāna even this fine peace is stilled, leaving only the pure equanimity and mindfulness. The "verbal movement" of applied and sustained thought, the "elation" of rapture, the "enjoyment" of bliss are three layers of "stirring" from coarse to subtle, subtracted layer by layer — the four jhānas are not the layer-by-layer addition of higher experiences but the layer-by-layer setting-down of finer stirrings.

## VI. In Dialogue with Modern Scholars, and the Closing of the Three Axes

### 6.1 Three Readings

With the three cuts laid out, we can answer three readings of the jhāna-factors in contemporary scholarship.

**Martin Stuart-Fox**, in his essay on jhāna and Buddhist scholasticism, raises a forceful challenge: the list of jhāna-factors is neither stable nor consistent across discourses and treatises (the four-versus-five dispute, the co-existence of the awareness/examining bipartition with the three-concentration intermediate phase), and this is precisely scholastic systematization "papering over the vagueness of experience" — the treatise-masters merely imposing order on a description that was never precise to begin with.[^19]

This challenge must first be granted its concession: **the list does vary.** The fourfold and fivefold reckonings genuinely co-exist; the *Madhyama*'s "without awareness, with little examining" does indeed stand beside the *Saṃyukta*'s bipartition. The variation is not invented. But the variation is **principled, not vague.** Different lists are interrogating **different axes of analysis** — whether to "count" how many mental events, or to "map" which transitional grounds (whether there is the awareness-ceased-examining-remaining rung). They are answers to different questions, not contradictory answers to one question. And the strongest counter-evidence is precisely the convergence of §IV: the Southern fivefold intermediate rung and the Northern intermediate dhyāna developed independently yet landed on one and the same fact. Two traditions tracking, independently, the same subtle transition — this is the signature of "a real phase being analyzed," not the trace of "vagueness systematized."

**Rupert Gethin**, treating the path to awakening, reads the jhāna-factors as a coherent map of "the mind progressively coming to rest": each factor, and its withdrawal, marks a real and ordered stage.[^20] This chapter's position is close to his, and may be cited as one voice for sound systematization. But this chapter probes one level deeper on his map — where he asks "why the sequence of factors is as it is," this chapter asks "what the inside of the first factor to go actually is, and how exactly it goes" (applied-and-sustained thought = coarse cast plus fine continuation; the mechanism of its cessation = the verbal formation come to rest). This is a deepening of his map at one node, not a quarrel with it.

**Johannes Bronkhorst**, treating two traditions of meditation in ancient India (the suppressive and the Buddhist), points out that certain descriptions of meditation conflict with one another, suggesting that the "absorbed" layer and the "still-observing" layer were not fused thoroughly.[^21] This much can be granted: applied and sustained thought genuinely will not fit into a purely suppressive model — a concentration that runs wholly on suppression ought not to retain the factor of "the investing and holding of attention." But this conflict is **dissolved** by the distinction "investment, not thinking," rather than revealed by it: applied and sustained thought are precisely the signature of the non-suppressive, attention-directed stream, marking the Buddhist line off from the suppressive line. The contemporary "light / deep" quarrel can thus be seen, historicized, as the continuation of this ancient inheritance, rather than a problem invented only recently.

(A boundary must be added: there is a contemporary reading that takes *jhāna* directly to "be insight-wisdom"; this chapter is in dialogue with it but does not adopt it as a frame — concentration cannot be swallowed by wisdom, which is a baseline of this volume.)

### 6.2 Middle-Way Corrections

Following the method of this study, three deviations to be guarded against.

❌ **Reading rapture and tranquillity into the context of the awakening-factors.** Rapture is also the "rapture awakening-factor," tranquillity also the "tranquillity awakening-factor," and in the context of the awakening-factors leading toward nibbāna they have another sense. This chapter discusses them only in the sense of "the jhāna-factors / the arising of concentration"; the awakening-factor context does not belong to this chapter. To confuse the two is to graft a doctrine-of-concentration anatomy onto a path-factor function.

⚠️ **Flattening or erasing the "intermediate phase" between the two traditions.** One may neither say the Theravāda intermediate rung sets up a ground "just as the Sarvāstivāda does," nor say the Theravāda "has no intermediate jhāna." There is one correct reading only: the North adds a ground, the South adds a reckoning, one observation, two architectures.

⚠️ **Mishearing applied thought's "investing of attention" as the mindfulness of *satipaṭṭhāna*.** Applied and sustained thought are the "aiming and holding" factors of the concentration track, belonging to a different track from the mindfulness (*sati*) of the four establishments of mindfulness. This chapter's "watching how that movement quiets" is an analytic description, not an instruction to "apply satipaṭṭhāna in jhāna" — a line drawn already above.

### 6.3 The Three-Layer Close

**The essence.** A jhāna-factor is not a checklist of sensations one passes or fails, but a doctrine of mental events that can be taken apart one factor at a time, each interrogated for what it is (feeling / tranquillity / a formation) and why it ceases (applied and sustained thought are the verbal formation, hence the second jhāna is silence). Two traditions share one and the same four-jhāna canonical floor, each cutting a single decisive stroke into "what this one factor is" — on the applied-and-sustained axis, the "verbal-formation → silence" mechanism; on the intermediate-phase axis, the "ground and reckoning" convergence of the two traditions; on the rapture-and-bliss axis, the "feeling and tranquillity" mirror.

**As regards the understanding of practice** (not the pointing-out of method). To see these three cuts clearly at least sets down one burden of the meditator from the opening: that beam of subtle movement she noticed is not a signal of failure but precisely the factor the texts place first and ask to be let go first; the direction of deepening concentration is not "amassing more" but "setting down, layer by layer, a finer stirring." But this chapter stops at understanding, and does not cross the line into any steps for "how to attain" — taking one factor apart, and teaching someone how to enter it, are two different things.

**The open question.** What this chapter takes apart is the *jhāna-factor* — the nature and the cause-of-cessation of the constituents within concentration; what it has not yet touched is the *nature of concentration* itself: what attaining absorption consists in, over which the two schools have another dispute (whether concentration is solely one-pointedness of mind; how the defiled, the pure, and the savoring kinds of concentration are to be distinguished; where the difference lies between attainment, unification, and the sustained equipoise of absorption). That is the edge of the next chapter's blade. Of the three axes of Part III of this volume — the axis of the person (object matched to person), the axis of the factor (this chapter), the axis of the nature of concentration (the next) — two have now been set out.

To close, the whole chapter can be gathered into a single line. The four jhānas are the layer-by-layer subtraction of a finer "stirring": the verbal movement of applied and sustained thought stilled first, the elation of rapture faded next, the enjoyment of bliss set down after, returning at last to the pure equanimity and mindfulness — and this direction of "subtracting movement layer by layer" is one tune with the subtraction toward which this volume's closing chapter will gather, "concentration must in the end return to prajñā." If a single sentence is to be cut for this stroke, it is this: **When applied-and-sustained thought grows still, concentration is born.**

---

## Notes

[^1]: *Madhyama Āgama*, fascicle 43, the *Discourse on the Analysis of Mental Action*: "A monk, secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states, with awareness and with examining, with rapture-and-bliss born of seclusion, enters and abides in the first jhāna …"; the shared four-jhāna floor and sequence of falling-away. Taishō vol. 1, No. 26 (T0026).

[^2]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 14, discourse 347 (the Susīma discourse): "Secluded from awareness and examining, inwardly clear, the mind one, without awareness, without examining, with rapture-and-bliss born of concentration, endowed with the second jhāna … pure mindfulness, the mind one, endowed with the fourth jhāna" — a second witness to the four jhānas; "pure mindfulness, the mind one" cross-checks against the *Madhyama*'s "purity of equanimity-and-mindfulness." Taishō vol. 2, No. 99 (T0099).

[^3]: *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta* (the Discourse on the Establishments of Mindfulness), *Dīgha Nikāya* 22 (DN ii 290); the four-jhāna stock formula, verbs of falling-away *vitakkavicārānaṁ vūpasamā* (the stilling of applied and sustained thought) → *pītiyā virāgā* (the fading of rapture) → *sukhassa pahānā* (the abandoning of bliss). The *Brahmajāla-sutta* (DN 1) gives the same formula and itself judges applied and sustained thought to be "coarse" (*oḷārika*). Pāli text follows the Mahāsaṅgīti CC0 edition; rendering of the verbs after Bhikkhu Sujato's CC0 translation.

[^4]: *Prakaraṇapāda*, fascicle 1: "What is applied thought? The coarse-stirring nature of the mind. What is sustained thought? The subtle-stirring nature of the mind"; fascicle 3: "Sustained thought … follows upon applied thought, makes the mind stir subtly; this is called sustained thought." Taishō vol. 26, No. 1542 (T1542).

[^5]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 42, the verdict: "within one and the same mind, the coarse nature is called applied thought, the subtle nature sustained thought … because their functions differ: applied thought is sharp and swift, sustained thought slow and dull; jointly assisting one mind, though coarse and subtle, they do not conflict." Taishō vol. 27, No. 1545 (T1545).

[^6]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 2: "Applied and sustained thought, these two, can certainly not be held to be associated in one mind … the phrase 'possessing five factors' is said with respect to one ground, not one instant"; tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558). Set beside the *Mahāvibhāṣā* fascicle 42 verdict, this is marked as a difference the Abhidharma itself permits (the *Mahāvibhāṣā* on harmony in the instant, the *Kośa* on the possibility within one ground), not stitched into one composite.

[^7]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 42: "The *Prajñapti* says: as when a bell, a chime, a vessel of copper or iron is struck, its sound, in setting out, is coarse first and subtle after — so too applied and sustained thought. The *Dharmaskandha* says: as when heaven cracks thunder, or a man blows a conch, it is large first and faint after … as a bird, flying in the sky, beats its wings and soars, coarse first and subtle after — so too applied and sustained thought." Taishō vol. 27, No. 1545 (T1545). The bell-and-chime simile and the bird simile are carried here by the *Mahāvibhāṣā*'s citation of the *Prajñapti* and the *Dharmaskandha*; they are embedded from the *Mahāvibhāṣā*, not from the *Visuddhimagga*.

[^8]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 80: "The second dhyāna ceases the root of speech. The root of speech is applied and sustained thought … In the second dhyāna applied and sustained thought are already ceased; there is no root of speech, and so it is said to be born of concentration. Further, the second dhyāna is called noble silence … The Buddha said to Maudgalyāyana: do not slight the second dhyāna, for this is the noble ones' way of silence." Taishō vol. 27, No. 1545 (T1545).

[^9]: *Saṃyukta Āgama*, fascicle 18, discourse 501: "If a monk stills awareness-and-examining, inwardly clear, the mind one, without awareness, without examining, the concentration born of rapture-and-bliss, and dwells endowed with the second jhāna, this is called noble silence … Maudgalyāyana, you should keep noble silence; give rise to no heedlessness." Taishō vol. 2, No. 99 (T0099). The old rendering "awareness-and-examining" is the new "applied-and-sustained thought."

[^10]: *Mahāvibhāṣā*, fascicle 152, the three-formation sequence of the attainment of cessation: "first the verbal formation ceases (applied and sustained thought), next the bodily formation ceases (in-and-out breathing), last the mental formation ceases (feeling and perception)"; fascicle 171: "applied and sustained thought, coarse-stirring, are not at peace; the higher grounds, subtle, are at peace." Taishō vol. 27, No. 1545 (T1545).

[^11]: *Madhyama Āgama*, fascicle 17, discourse 73 (the *Discourse on the Deva*): "I shall train in three concentrations: I shall train in the concentration with awareness and examining, the concentration without awareness and with little examining, the concentration without awareness and without examining …"; "the concentration without awareness and with little examining" is the canonical witness for the intermediate phase "applied thought ceased, sustained thought remaining." Taishō vol. 1, No. 26 (T0026).

[^12]: *Madhyama Āgama*, fascicle 18, discourse 76 (the *Uggasirā Discourse*), listing "the concentration with awareness and examining, the concentration without awareness and with little examining, the concentration without awareness and without examining" under the four establishments of mindfulness for repeated cultivation, attesting that "the concentration without awareness and with little examining" is an established item in the discourses, not a one-off phrasing of the Deva discourse. Taishō vol. 1, No. 26 (T0026). The *Saṃyukta Āgama*, treating concentration, has only the two divisions (with awareness and examining / without awareness and examining), and not this intermediate phase.

[^13]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 28, the *Chapter on Concentration*: "Of the upper seven concentrations, none has applied or sustained thought; only the intermediate dhyāna has sustained thought without applied thought, and so it surpasses the first and does not reach the second; on this sense the name 'intermediate' is set up … this concentration can summon the fruit of the realm of Great Brahmā"; and "Unification is of three kinds in all: one, with applied and with sustained thought; two, without applied thought, with sustained thought alone; three, without applied and without sustained thought … the lowest has applied-and-sustained, the middle has sustained alone, the upper has neither." Tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558).

[^14]: The Theravāda commentaries, beyond the standard "fourfold reckoning" (*catukka-naya*), set up a "fivefold reckoning" (*pañcaka-naya*), inserting between the first jhāna and the second the rung "without applied thought, with sustained thought alone" (*avitakka-vicāramatta*). This is stated here at the level of doctrine, without attaching a specific text-number, so as not to overreach what can be verified. The North sets the phase up as having a ground of its own (*bhūmi*; the fruit, rebirth as Great Brahmā), the South as having a reckoning of its own (*naya*) — one observation, two architectures.

[^15]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 28: "The first possesses five factors: one, applied thought; two, sustained thought; three, rapture; four, bliss; five, unification … The second dhyāna has four factors only: one, inner clarity; two, rapture; three, bliss; four, unification. The third dhyāna possesses five factors … The fourth dhyāna has four factors only …" — the count of jhāna-factors 5 / 4 / 5 / 4. Tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558).

[^16]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 28: "Because the bliss of the first two is included under tranquillity … because in the first two concentrations there is no faculty of pleasure. It is not that the first two concentrations have bodily pleasant feeling, for while actually in concentration the five sense-consciousnesses do not arise. Nor is there mental pleasant feeling, for [the treatise] has said there is rapture; and rapture is the joy-feeling; there cannot be two feelings running together in one mind, so there is no pleasant feeling" — the "bliss" factor of the first two jhānas judged to be tranquillity (*prasrabdhi*), not a pleasant feeling. Tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558).

[^17]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 28: "Inner clarity … this concentration, far removed from the agitation of applied and sustained thought, flows on in continuous purity, and is called inner clarity. If there is the agitation of applied and sustained thought … as a river has waves … therefore it should be said this is the faculty of faith." Tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558).

[^18]: *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya*, fascicle 28: "There is a view: there is no faculty of mental pleasure; where the three dhyānas speak of a bliss-factor, it is all the faculty of pleasure included under bodily feeling … and the fourth concentration, where tranquillity is redoubled, is not said to have a bliss-factor" — this is a counter-view Vasubandhu himself raises and rebuts (close to the Theravāda judgment), not the *Kośa*'s orthodox position. Tr. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558 (T1558).

[^19]: Martin Stuart-Fox, "Jhāna and Buddhist Scholasticism," *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies*, 1989. On the variation of the jhāna-factor list across discourses and treatises and the scholastic systematization of it.

[^20]: Rupert Gethin, *The Buddhist Path to Awakening*, 1992. On the jhāna-factors as a coherent map of the mind progressively coming to rest.

[^21]: Johannes Bronkhorst, *The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India*, c.1986; cf. L. S. Cousins, "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment according to the Pali Sources," *Religion*, 1973, on the precise treatment of *vitakka-vicāra* and of access / absorption.

---

## References

### Primary Buddhist Sources

- *Madhyama Āgama* (《中阿含經》), tr. Saṅghadeva (Eastern Jin), Taishō vol. 1, No. 26.
- *Saṃyukta Āgama* (《雜阿含經》), tr. Guṇabhadra (Liu Song), Taishō vol. 2, No. 99.
- *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya* (《阿毘達磨俱舍論》), composed by Vasubandhu, tr. Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vol. 29, No. 1558.
- *Mahāvibhāṣā* (《阿毘達磨大毘婆沙論》), composed by the five hundred great arhats, tr. Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vol. 27, No. 1545.
- *Prakaraṇapāda* (《阿毘達磨品類足論》), composed by Vasumitra, tr. Xuanzang (Tang), Taishō vol. 26, No. 1542.
- *Dīgha Nikāya* 22, *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta*; *Dīgha Nikāya* 1, *Brahmajāla-sutta* (Mahāsaṅgīti CC0 edition).

### Pāli Parallels

> The Pāli texts below are cited as parallels; the body takes its doctrine from the Chinese, and embeds none of them verbatim except where marked CC0.

- *Dīgha Nikāya* 22 (DN ii 290), the four-jhāna stock formula, CC0 (Mahāsaṅgīti / Sujato); *Dīgha Nikāya* 1, the *Brahmajāla-sutta*'s judgment of applied and sustained thought as "coarse" (*oḷārika*). The *Visuddhimagga*'s fourfold and fivefold reckonings and the *avitakka-vicāramatta* rung are named here only by paraphrase and embedded nowhere verbatim.

### Modern Scholarship

> Publication details for the works below await final verification; the body takes only the gist of each position and quotes none of them verbatim.

- Bronkhorst, Johannes. *The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India.* c.1986. (The suppressive versus the Buddhist stream; applied-and-sustained thought as the signature of the attention-directed line.)
- Cousins, L. S. "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment according to the Pali Sources." *Religion*, 1973. (The precise treatment of *vitakka-vicāra* and of access / absorption.)
- Gethin, Rupert. *The Buddhist Path to Awakening.* 1992. (The jhāna-factors as a coherent map of the mind coming to rest.)
- Stuart-Fox, Martin. "Jhāna and Buddhist Scholasticism." *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies*, 1989. (The variation of the jhāna-factor list and its scholastic systematization.)

### Sūtra & Śāstra Index

| Short name | Full title | Composer / translator | Taishō no. |
|------|------|----------|------------|
| Madhyama Āgama | *Madhyama Āgama* | tr. Saṅghadeva | T0026 |
| Saṃyukta Āgama | *Saṃyukta Āgama* | tr. Guṇabhadra | T0099 |
| Kośa | *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya* | Vasubandhu, tr. Xuanzang | T1558 |
| Mahāvibhāṣā | *Mahāvibhāṣā* | tr. Xuanzang | T1545 |
| Prakaraṇapāda | *Prakaraṇapāda* | Vasumitra, tr. Xuanzang | T1542 |
| Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta | *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta* | — | DN 22 |
| Brahmajāla-sutta | *Brahmajāla-sutta* | — | DN 1 |

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## Cross-References

- **P04, *The Four Jhānas and the Four Formless Attainments*:** the construction of the four-jhāna ladder and the layer-by-layer falling-away 5→4→3→2 — not re-walked here; the stock formula is quoted only to mark the verbs of falling-away.
- **P07, *The Concentration Factor among the Seven Awakening-Factors*:** the place of rapture and tranquillity as awakening-factors leading toward nibbāna — held off here; this chapter treats them only as jhāna-factors / in the arising of concentration.
- **P09, *The Forty Meditation-Objects: A Taxonomy*:** the axis of the person (object matched to temperament) — the preceding chapter; this chapter is the axis of the factor.
- **P11 (forthcoming):** the axis of the nature of concentration — what attaining absorption itself consists in, and the two-school dispute over it — teed at this chapter's close.
- **The volume's closing chapter (forthcoming):** concentration must in the end return to prajñā; the "subtracting movement layer by layer" of the four jhānas is one tune with that closing subtraction.

---

*Paper:* SAMADHI-P10 · *The Anatomy of a Jhāna-Factor* · **SAMĀDHI · Part III · Abhidharma and the Path of Purification**
*Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates (六行門)
*License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
*CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026, fascicles 17 / 18 / 43), the *Saṃyukta Āgama* (T0099, fascicles 14 / 18), the *Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya* (T1558, fascicles 2 / 28), the *Mahāvibhāṣā* (T1545, fascicles 42 / 80 / 152 / 171), and the *Prakaraṇapāda* (T1542, fascicles 1 / 3) verified against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. Pāli references (DN 22, DN 1) follow the Mahāsaṅgīti CC0 edition / Bhikkhu Sujato's CC0 SuttaCentral translation. The *Visuddhimagga* is cited by paraphrase only and embedded nowhere verbatim; the bell- and bird-similes are carried verbatim from the *Mahāvibhāṣā* (T1545).
*Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates