Editing Noble Eightfold Path (section)

=== Right samadhi (unification of mind)===
{{Main|Dhyāna in Buddhism}}

====''Samadhi''====
''[[Samadhi]]'' (''samyak-samādhi'' / ''sammā-samādhi'') is a common practice or goal in Indian religions. The term ''samadhi'' derives from the root sam-a-dha, which means 'to collect' or 'bring together',{{citation needed|date=October 2018}} and thus it is often translated as 'concentration' or 'unification of mind'. In the early Buddhist texts, samadhi is also associated with the term "[[samatha]]" (calm abiding).{{citation needed|date=October 2018}}

====Dhyana====
Bronkhorst notes that neither the Four Noble Truths nor the Noble Eightfold Path discourse provide details of right ''samadhi''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=10–17 }}</ref> Several ''Suttas'', such as the following in ''Saccavibhanga Sutta'', equate it with ''dhyana'':<ref name=BSac /><ref name=bucknellkangp12 />

{{blockquote|And what is right concentration?

[i] Here, the monk, detached from sense-desires, detached from unwholesome states, enters and remains in the first ''jhana'' (level of concentration, Sanskrit: ''dhyāna''), in which there is applied and sustained thinking, together with joy and pleasure born of detachment;<br />
[ii] And through the subsiding of applied and sustained thinking, with the gaining of inner stillness and oneness of mind, he enters and remains in the second ''jhana'', which is without applied and sustained thinking, and in which there are joy and pleasure born of concentration;<br />
[iii] And through the fading of joy, he remains equanimous, mindful and aware, and he experiences in his body the pleasure of which the Noble Ones say: "equanimous, mindful and dwelling in pleasure", and thus he enters and remains in the third ''jhana'';<br />
[iv] And through the giving up of pleasure and pain, and through the previous disappearance of happiness and sadness, he enters and remains in the fourth ''jhana'', which is without pleasure and pain, and in which there is pure equanimity and mindfulness.<br />
This is called right concentration.<ref name=bucknellkangp12 /><ref name="Bronkhorst2009p16">{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=16–17 }}</ref>}}

Bronkhorst has questioned the historicity and chronology of the description of the four ''jhanas''. Bronkhorst states that this path may be similar to what the Buddha taught, but the details and the form of the description of the ''jhanas'' in particular, and possibly other factors, is likely the work of later scholasticism.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17>{{cite book|author=Johannes Bronkhorst |title=Buddhist Teaching in India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mhuabeq5-cAC |year=2009|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-86171-566-4 |pages=17–19 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Oliver Freiberger |title=Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=2cbCr7M4SJ8C |year=2006| publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-971901-3|pages=249–51}}</ref> Bronkhorst notes that description of the third ''jhana'' cannot have been formulated by the Buddha, since it includes the phrase "Noble Ones say", quoting earlier Buddhists, indicating it was formulated by later Buddhists.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17 /> It is likely that later Buddhist scholars incorporated this, then attributed the details and the path, particularly the insights at the time of liberation, to have been discovered by the Buddha.<ref name=bronkhorst2009p17 />

====Concentration====
In the Theravada tradition, ''samadhi'' is interpreted as concentration on a meditation object. [[Buddhagosa]] defines samadhi as "the centering of consciousness and consciousness concomitants evenly and rightly on a single object...the state in virtue of which consciousness and its concomitants remain evenly and rightly on a single object, undistracted and unscattered."<ref>Visudimagga 84–85{{full citation needed|date=September 2016}}</ref>

According to Henepola Gunaratana, in the suttas samadhi is defined as one-pointedness of mind (''Cittass'ekaggatā'').<ref>Henepola Gunaratana (1995), The Jhanas in Theravada Buddhist Meditation</ref>  According to [[Bhikkhu Bodhi]], the right concentration factor is reaching a one-pointedness of mind and unifying all mental factors, but it is not the same as "a gourmet sitting down to a meal, or a soldier on the battlefield" who also experience one-pointed concentration.<!-- invalid{{Sfn|Bhikkhu Bodhi|2010|pp=97–110}}--> The difference is that the latter have a one-pointed object in focus with complete awareness directed to that object&nbsp;– the meal or the target, respectively. In contrast, right concentration meditative factor in Buddhism is a state of awareness without any object or subject, and ultimately unto no-thingness and emptiness, as articulated in apophatic discourse. <!-- invalid{{Sfn|Bhikkhu Bodhi|2010|pp=97–110}}-->

====Development into equanimity====
Although often translated as "concentration", as in the limiting of the attention of the mind on one object, in the fourth ''dhyana'' "equanimity and mindfulness remain",{{sfn|Bronkhorst|1993|p=63}} and the practice of concentration-meditation may well have been incorporated from non-Buddhist traditions.{{sfn|Bronkhorst|1993|pp=53–70}} Vetter notes that ''samadhi'' consists of the [[four stages of awakening]], but
{{blockquote|...to put it more accurately, the first dhyana seems to provide, after some time, a state of strong concentration, from which the other stages come forth; the second stage is called samadhija.{{sfn|Vetter|1988|p=13}}}}

Gombrich and Wynne note that, while the second ''jhana'' denotes a state of absorption, in the third and fourth ''jhana'' one comes out of this absorption, being mindfully awareness of objects while being indifferent to it.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Gombrich |first=Richard |date=1997 |title=Religious Experience in Early Buddhism |url=https://ocbs.org/religious-experience-in-early-buddhism/ |access-date=31 March 2022 |website=Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies |language=en-GB |archive-date=29 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220129114243/https://ocbs.org/religious-experience-in-early-buddhism/ |url-status=live }}</ref> According to Gombrich, "the later tradition has falsified the jhana by classifying them as the quintessence of the concentrated, calming kind of meditation, ignoring the other – and indeed higher – element."