The Triple Training
June 05, 2023

The Canon divides the noble eightfold path into three sections. The first section is the discernment section: right view, right resolve. The second section is the virtue section: right speech, right action, right livelihood. Then the third is the concentration section: right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

There are other parts of the Canon where the Buddha lists these factors in a different order. He calls them the Triple Training—which is training in heightened virtue, heightened concentration, heightened discernment—saying that when concentration is fostered by virtue, it has great fruit, great benefit. When discernment is fostered by concentration, it has great fruit and great benefit. When the mind is fostered by discernment, it gains release from the effluents.

That explanation has led many people to believe that you have to start first with virtue, and only when your virtue is really pure can you go to concentration. When that’s good, then you start thinking about discernment. But the fact that the eightfold path lists them in a different order makes an important point. Sometimes you need discernment to help with your virtue and with your concentration.

This became a controversial point. It’s also one of the distinctive features of the forest tradition. When Ajaan Lee wrote his first book, which very closely reflected the teachings he had received from Ajaan Mun, he talked about how all three of the parts of the triple training nurture one another.

When Ajaan Maha Boowa wrote his first Dhamma book, he called it Discernment Fosters Concentration. It was meant to be provocative. He pointed out how there are basically two types of people who meditate. Some people find that they can get their minds to settle down really easily, without much thought. Then, when the mind is settled, it can work on discernment. Other people, though, have trouble settling down. They first need to use their discernment to think their way through the problems that keep them from settling down. Then they can settle down. Once the mind is settled down, then they can develop their discernment even further.

The analogy he gives is of cutting down a tree. If a tree is standing out alone in a meadow, there’s not much difficulty in cutting it down. You can cut it down in any direction you want it to go. It’s not entangled in anything else, so it’s going to fall right down. If you’re cutting down a tree in the forest, though, that’s different. You have to figure out how to lop off this branch, lop off that branch, get a sense of where it can fall so that it doesn’t simply get snagged on another tree.

So think about now all three parts of the practice nurture one another. For example, we have a tendency to think about the meditation as being the whole practice, but virtue plays a really important part.

When Ajaan Suwat was asked once about how to carry meditation into daily life, he focused entirely on the five precepts, because the precepts do develop qualities you need to meditate. Like the precept on speech: If you’re careful about what you say, making sure that it’s true and beneficial and timely, then when the time comes to sit down and meditate, it’s easier to be careful about how you talk to yourself. After all, talking to yourself is an important part of the concentration: directed thought and evaluation. That’s your internal conversation. It’s two of the factors of the first jhāna. So you want to make sure that when you talk to yourself outside of meditation, you get practice in making sure it’s true, beneficial, and right for the time and place.

There are a lot of things that might be true and beneficial right now, but this is the time to settle down. So thoughts that don’t deal with settling the mind down and putting aside greed and distress with reference to the world, you put them aside.

Also, the fact that you’re following the precepts means you have to be very attentive to your intentions, because that’s what makes the difference between breaking a precept and not breaking it. Only when you break it intentionally does it count as broken. When the time comes to get the mind into concentration, you’re basically firming up the intention to stay.

Then, of course, the concentration turns around and helps you with the precepts. You begin to see areas where you’re not that clearly aware of what your real intention is. But as you get deeper and deeper into concentration and then come out of concentration, you see the mind a lot more clearly. That helps strengthen your virtue.

The fact that you’re following the precepts also means you’re developing three qualities that’ll be necessary for concentration. The first is mindfulness, the ability to keep something in mind. Alertness: the ability to watch what you’re doing, without daydreaming. Then, third, ardency: You want to do it well.

In other words, you have to keep your precept in mind, and then you have to watch your actions to make sure that they don’t go against the precept. If you see any tendency inside the mind to want to break the precept, you have to fight it. This is where the ardency of right effort comes in.

So you’re developing the qualities of right mindfulness and right effort that will lead the mind into concentration. As you’re sitting here meditating, you need mindfulness to keep the breath in mind. You need alertness to watch what you’re doing to make sure the mind stays with the breath. If it’s not with the breath, then you bring in ardency to bring it back. While you are with the breath, you’re ardent to be as sensitive as possible to the mind and the breath, because the more sensitive you are to the breathing, the more comfortable it becomes. So virtue and concentration help each other this way.

The same with concentration and discernment. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked: “How strong does your concentration have to be before you can start doing discernment work?” The answer is that you’re already doing discernment work as you get the mind into concentration. The two of them help each other along. The Buddha himself makes this point. He says that to get the mind into right concentration, you need both tranquility and insight in addition to virtue. There has to be a certain amount of insight into how you’re fabricating your mind-states—the way you talk to yourself, the perceptions you use, the feelings you focus on—if you want the mind to settle down.

If you don’t see these things happening in the present moment, it’s going to be really hard for the mind to settle down. Now, there are some people who settle down very quickly simply by letting go of their thoughts of the day. But that kind of concentration is not really a skill. Those same people, on the days when they have trouble letting go, don’t know what to do.

But if you’re the type of person who needs to understand what’s going on in the mind before the mind will be willing to let go of things, then you begin to see: The way you breathe is going to be an important factor, the way you talk to yourself will be important, as will the images your hold in mind. When you breathe in, where is the breath coming from? Where did it start? How do you know when it’s a good time to start breathing in? How do you know when it’s a good time to start breathing out?

You need to have certain images in mind or ideas in mind that’ll help you settle down. Well, those are all different forms of fabrication, and as the Buddha said, when you see things in terms of fabrication—what you’re intentionally doing in the present moment, whether the intention is clear or not, you’re trying to make it clear in that act of clarifying your intentions in the present moment: That’s what insight is all about. So the discernment helps the concentration.

And, of course, concentration, as you get settled in, helps you discern things in the mind that you wouldn’t have seen before. The background noise begins to calm down, and things that were hidden by the background noise suddenly become clear. It’s like the Webb telescope: It has to get way far away from the Earth so that it can start looking at the universe in terms of the infrared. Because there’s less interference from the warmth of the Earth, you can see a lot more than you can with telescopes closer to the Earth.

As you try to allow the background noise in the mind to settle down, things will become clearer. And again, the fact that you’ve been looking at your mind in terms of these kinds of fabrication makes you more and more inclined to dig deeper into the issue of intention, because that’s what fabrication is: a form of intention.

So the discernment helps the concentration, the concentration helps the discernment. Of course, your discernment helps your virtue as well. The more clearly you understand what’s going on in the mind, the more precise you can be in observing the precepts and being really harmless.

For the practice to be complete, you need all three, and they help one another along. It’s strange that this was a controversial issue in the early days of the forest tradition, because when you look at the Canon, the Canon is full of explanations of how all the different factors of the Triple Training help one another.

There were the Buddha’s instructions to Rahula. Rahula asked him how to do breath meditation, but before the Buddha gave him his breath meditation instructions, he gave him some contemplations, including the contemplation of impermanence to get past the conceit, “I am”; the contemplation of the body to get past sensual desire; the contemplation of the body in terms of elements. Doing those contemplations, you can begin to get a sense of distance, realizing that your body is no different from the physical elements outside. All of these are classified as discernment contemplations, but you do them first to get the mind in the right mood to settle down where it can watch the breath properly.

That’s a case of discernment fostering concentration.

There’s another passage where the Buddha talks about how virtue helps discernment and discernment helps virtue, in the same way that your right hand washes your left hand, and your left hand washes your right.

And of course, there are the different lists in the wings to awakening. In some of them, discernment comes first, as in the noble eightfold path, followed by virtue and then concentration. In the five faculties or the five strengths, virtue comes first, then concentration, then discernment. In the seven factors of awakening, you start with mindfulness, which is aiming the mind toward concentration, and then you bring in your discernment before you get to concentration, while all of the factors are based on virtue.

There’s plenty in the Canon to indicate that all these things help one another along. The problem back in the early days of the forest tradition was that the scholars tended to get fixated on one teaching at the expense of others. But it’s good that even though the forest tradition wasn’t that well-versed in the Canon, they got the principles right. It’s because of that that we have this opportunity to practice in a way that’s not too narrow. And you don’t have to wait until your virtue is perfect before you can start meditating, which is what people were taught back in those days. If your virtue isn’t perfect, then you start meditating, you’re going to go crazy: That’s how the people were warned.

But your virtue isn’t going to get anywhere near perfect until your concentration is there, until your discernment is there. So you need these things to help one another. Our problem here in the West, though, is the other way around. We tend to emphasize the concentration and the discernment, whereas virtue gets lost or downplayed. But it is an important part of the practice, an important part of training the mind. It’s one of the reasons why we don’t have people observing a vow of silence here at the monastery, because we want people to get practice in engaging in right speech, to treat it as part of the practice. So when you’re sitting down eating by the kitchen, don’t just talk about anything. Talk about things that’ll be true, beneficial, and timely. As for the Dhamma you want to discuss down there in the kitchen, ask yourself: How much of that do you really know?

One time early on when I was a young monk, I was sitting with another young monk and we were discussing Dhamma. At one point I said, "Well, I think it’s like this.” Ajaan Fuang happened to be walking past and he said, “If you don’t know, don’t say anything.” This is what’s called “guarding the truth,” asking yourself: How much do you really know? If you’re not 100% well-based in your knowledge, stay quiet. That cuts through a lot of the verbal pollution down around the kitchen and anywhere else in the monastery. Regard it all as part of the practice.

It’s not that we’re practicing only when we sit here together as a group or when you’re off under the trees, doing sitting meditation or walking meditation. The whole day is time to practice. As Ajaan Fuang said, if we divide up our day into times—time to eat, time to work, time to whatever—the practice never has a chance to get timeless. We’ll never get to meet the timeless Dhamma.

So as soon as you get up in the morning and you open your eyes, it’s time to practice. Even before you open your eyes, when you take your first conscious breath, think thoughts of goodwill. How can you help yourself, how can you help others today? Well, one is by meditating. Focus on the breath and stay there. Learn how to engage in right effort all through the day. That way, the practice becomes more complete, and when it’s more complete, then all the factors can start giving their full benefits.