Ancient meditation systems in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand?

[Stefos]

Hi everyone,

I was reading a number of places that particular forms of meditation are being taught in Thailand and Myanmar in particular,
perhaps Sri Lanka, that are very old and unbroken in lineage.....perhaps stemming from the ancient communities who sent monks there.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thank you,
Stefos

[SarathW]

Hi Stefos
I have listened to hundreds of Sri Lankan monks and I could not find any particular ancient type technique for meditation in Sri Lanka.
They all talked about Satipathana mainly.
It is important to understand Sri Lanka lost the Buddhist lineage and restated only about a few hundred years back from the monks imported from Myanmar.

[bazzaman]

Could be you are referring to what is known as "boran kammathana","Yogāvacara", or "Esoteric Southern Buddhism".
I don't know if there are any active centres of practice. It is a subject of much scholarly interest.
This Wikipedia page is quite good. It lists a lot of scholarly references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_ ... c_Buddhism
There is an old tread here on DW:
viewtopic.php?t=22434

As an aside... one of the leading scholars on this is Francois Bizot. All of his work on this subject seems to be only in French. But his autobiography is in an English translation; and it is a very interesting read. It's titled "The Gate".

[thomaslaw]

Are these ancient meditation systems in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand connected with Early Buddhism (or the Buddha)?

[Sam Vara]

Could be you are referring to what is known as "boran kammathana","Yogāvacara", or "Esoteric Southern Buddhism".
I don't know if there are any active centres of practice. It is a subject of much scholarly interest.
This Wikipedia page is quite good. It lists a lot of scholarly references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_ ... c_Buddhism
There is an old tread here on DW:
viewtopic.php?t=22434

As an aside... one of the leading scholars on this is Francois Bizot. All of his work on this subject seems to be only in French. But his autobiography is in an English translation; and it is a very interesting read. It's titled "The Gate".

There is a good introduction to Yogāvacara in the first few chapters of Paul Dennison's book "Jhāna Consciousness".

An organisation which takes a Yogāvacara approach to meditation is the UK - based Samatha Trust.

[Stefos]

Hi Stefos
I have listened to hundreds of Sri Lankan monks and I could not find any particular ancient type technique for meditation in Sri Lanka.
They all talked about Satipathana mainly.
It is important to understand Sri Lanka lost the Buddhist lineage and restated only about a few hundred years back from the monks imported from Myanmar.

Hi,

Thank you for clarifying this for me.

Stefos

[Stefos]

Could be you are referring to what is known as "boran kammathana","Yogāvacara", or "Esoteric Southern Buddhism".
I don't know if there are any active centres of practice. It is a subject of much scholarly interest.
This Wikipedia page is quite good. It lists a lot of scholarly references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_ ... c_Buddhism
There is an old tread here on DW:
viewtopic.php?t=22434

As an aside... one of the leading scholars on this is Francois Bizot. All of his work on this subject seems to be only in French. But his autobiography is in an English translation; and it is a very interesting read. It's titled "The Gate".

Hi,

Thank you for putting words to my question.

Yes, I'm wondering how much of those 3 have ancient roots.

Stefos

[ultraben]

Hi Stefos,

There is this book (which I have not read) which probably specifically covers the topic you are asking about (pre-modern meditation methods): https://www.shambhala.com/esoteric-theravada.html

I have a few resources on Boran Kammathana in Thai language that I could share, but not much use unless you can speak Thai. You can still see certain esoteric elements in modern-day Thai Buddhism.

We are certainly lucky that these days we all have easy access to the Pali Suttas

[bazzaman]

A lecture by Kate Crosby, author of the above-mentioned book:

[Stefos]

Could be you are referring to what is known as "boran kammathana","Yogāvacara", or "Esoteric Southern Buddhism".
I don't know if there are any active centres of practice. It is a subject of much scholarly interest.
This Wikipedia page is quite good. It lists a lot of scholarly references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_ ... c_Buddhism
There is an old tread here on DW:
viewtopic.php?t=22434

As an aside... one of the leading scholars on this is Francois Bizot. All of his work on this subject seems to be only in French. But his autobiography is in an English translation; and it is a very interesting read. It's titled "The Gate".

There is a good introduction to Yogāvacara in the first few chapters of Paul Dennison's book "Jhāna Consciousness".

An organisation which takes a Yogāvacara approach to meditation is the UK - based Samatha Trust.

Thank you

Stefos

[AgarikaJ]

Hi Stefos,

There is this book (which I have not read) which probably specifically covers the topic you are asking about (pre-modern meditation methods): https://www.shambhala.com/esoteric-theravada.html

I have a few resources on Boran Kammathana in Thai language that I could share, but not much use unless you can speak Thai. You can still see certain esoteric elements in modern-day Thai Buddhism.

We are certainly lucky that these days we all have easy access to the Pali Suttas

I found the book from Kate Crosby on Boran Kammatthana ('Esoteric Theravada') very illuminating and it certainly became clear, that this was not just an aberrant meditation technique, polluted by superstitions, but one very grounded in the Suttas and the Abidhamma.

The main difference seems to be, that nimittas are not just seen as random signs, to be more or less ignored, or in the worst case even seen as a hindrance of practice. Instead, they were seen as specific and meaningful signs of the mind, minutely categorized and classified, and as such an imoportant and objective tool to determine the concrete progress towards the Jhanas.

The second difference is, that Pali is seen as a natural language (in the same way as Sanskrit) and that with the help of Pali, the Dhamma could be truthfully expressed to a point, where it could influence reality directly; see Yantras, Sak Yant tattoos and amulets.

Following that, meditation was seen not as pure mind science, as it nowaydays is, but as something that would have a concrete influence in the material world and specifically on the own physical body. I do not want to go too much into details, the book does explain it at length.

King Mongkut, in his reforms in the 19th century under heavy influence from thoughts and ideas of the surrounding imperial powers, but also to centralize his own absolute control over the Sangha, removed the competing independence of monks to practice these traditions, which reached into medicine, schooling and many other parts of daily life. He also removed much of the emphasis on the Abidhamma and meditation based on it, loosing a large part of experienced meditation teacher lines in the process (he actually let all their writings that could be found be burned).


Two points that Kate Crosby makes, which I find important to mention, so the above is not misunderstood:

1) reducing meditation to what is written in the Suttas (and Abidhamma) is of course the proper method; but what was also lost in this process was the centuries-long experience of actual meditators doing nothing else in their life -- the Suttas, I guess this is not controversial -- give very little concrete guidance beyond the bare-bones steps.

2) also Boran Kammatthana, clearly a much older and more nuanced tradition than modern Vipassana meditation, is in itself not that old: it can be traced securely to the 15th century. Whatever happened before, due to the fragility of palm leaf books, is lost forever; there are no known extant descriptions of detailed meditation techniques for example from Sukhothai, even though we do know that there were meditators under Royal Patronage there. The same is true for Sri Lanka, where writings about more 'esoteric' (?) traditions were completely lost.


To my knowledge, there are actually no much older meditation manuals that pre-date the split to Sanskrit; from the 4th century on, there are lots, written under the guidance or influence from Sanskrit-speaking Indian meditators going to China. However, they seem -- to me, from what I know about them -- to already have a very clear Mahayana slant (Bodhisattvas and the resulting philosophical change in the nature of what a/the Buddha is/was) and are thus obviously even further removed from the Suttas.
With regard to Theravada, most of it is based on Buddhaghosa in the 5th century. He of course wrote the Visuddhimagga, which has as a glaring absence any commentary on the Abhidhamma or anything going deeper into meditation techniques. Therefore, Theravadans need to basically make-do and "gain the Dhamma by experience instead of book-reading", as Ajahn Chah has said on numerous occasions.

[Kumara]

An organisation which takes a Yogāvacara approach to meditation is the UK - based Samatha Trust.

That means it's in line with the Visuddhimagga's idea of jhana.

Incidentally, that's where Aj Brahm learnt meditation from too.

[Sam Vara]

An organisation which takes a Yogāvacara approach to meditation is the UK - based Samatha Trust.

That means it's in line with the Visuddhimagga's idea of jhana.

Incidentally, that's where Aj Brahm learnt meditation from too.

Yes, Ian Rose of the Samatha Trust has recently published a very nice book on the Visuddhimagga:

https://samatha.org/explore-publications/texts

and Ajahn Brahm acknowledged his debt to the Samatha Trust on a trip to Cambridge a few years ago. A few old-timers from the 1970s turned up to say hello, and he spotted them among a very large crowd.

[Kumara]

Incidentally, that's where Aj Brahm learnt meditation from too.

Ajahn Brahm acknowledged his debt to the Samatha Trust on a trip to Cambridge a few years ago.

In his talks, he repeatedly gave the impression that he learnt it from Aj Chah instead. That made the Wat Pah Pong sangha unhappy with him. This is long before the bhikkhuni issue.

[Sam Vara]

Incidentally, that's where Aj Brahm learnt meditation from too.

Ajahn Brahm acknowledged his debt to the Samatha Trust on a trip to Cambridge a few years ago.

In his talks, he repeatedly gave the impression that he learnt it from Aj Chah instead. That made the Wat Pah Pong sangha unhappy with him. This is long before the bhikkhuni issue.

Yes, I remember Venerable Dhammanando saying here on DW some years ago that Ajahn Brahm avoided falling into the error of the "eternal citta" because he first started meditating under the auspices of the Samatha Trust in Cambridge, rather than beginning in the Thai Forest Sangha.