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Chapter Two

The Lessons of Fabrication

Three passages in the Canon—one in SN 47:16, one in SN 47:40, the other in MN 118 and at least five other discourses—explain how the establishing of mindfulness is to be cultivated and developed.

The first passage sets out the prerequisites for properly establishing mindfulness:

We have already noted the importance of right view (“views made straight”) as a prerequisite for right mindfulness. This passage adds to the list of prerequisites the path factors related to virtue, which MN 44 identifies as right speech, right action, and right livelihood. It’s not hard to see why these factors would be required for mindfulness to become right: If you engage in harmful behavior, you’ll want to forget the harm you have done. This forgetfulness puts barriers in your memory that are sure to weaken mindfulness. A bad conscience can also weaken alertness, as you develop a tendency not to want to look carefully into your motivations for acting (AN 3:69). This is why mindfulness can be established rightly only in dependence on virtuous behavior. At the same time, a lack of virtue makes it difficult to gladden the mind, an important step in using mindfulness to develop right concentration.

The second passage in the above list, SN 47:40, sets a more encompassing framework for developing the establishing of mindfulness.

Two points stand out here, one general and one specific. The general point is that right mindfulness has to be developed through the practice of all eight factors of the path, including right effort and right concentration. This means that, whereas right mindfulness leads to and acts as an integral part of right concentration—as noted in the preceding chapter—the development of right concentration in turn aids in the development of right mindfulness. In other words, each supports the other in strengthening the path. This point is confirmed by the standard descriptions of the four jhānas, which state that the fourth jhāna is the stage at which mindfulness becomes pure.

The more specific point lies in what this passage adds to the standard satipaṭṭhāna formula: the fact that the development of the establishing of mindfulness lies in remaining focused—in each of the four frameworks—on the phenomenon of origination, passing away, and origination-and-passing-away with reference to that particular frame.

The phrasing of this passage contains two details worth noticing. First is the use of the locative case to express the idea of origination in reference to each of these four frames. SN 47:42, using the genitive case—a grammatical case that indicates possession—identifies the origination of each of these objects: nutriment as the origination of the body, contact as the origination of feeling, name-and-form as the origination of mind, and attention as the origination of mental qualities. But that’s not what you’re being told to look for here. Instead of looking for the origination of your frame, you watch origination and passing away of phenomena as viewed in reference to or in the context of that frame.

In other words, while maintaining any of the four frames of reference as a framework for your attention, you keep watch over how events arise from causes and how they pass away, all with reference to that frame. This is particularly clear in the context of the body: You aren’t interested in looking just at the role of food in sustaining the body, for that would trivialize the practice. Instead, you watch how the experience of the body has an impact on the origination and passing away of physical or mental phenomena experienced in the present, and how their origination and passing away have an impact on the body. A similar principle applies to the other frames of reference as well. For example, with feelings: You notice how the way you breathe influences feelings of pleasure or pain, or how feelings of pleasure or pain influence states of mind.

The second important detail to notice is that this passage uses the term “origination” (samudaya). This is sometimes mistranslated as “arising,” giving the impression that you simply watch passively as phenomena come and go. However, the word samudaya actually carries the meaning of causation, which means that you must also ferret out exactly what is causing those phenomena to come and go. As any scientist knows, establishing a causal relationship involves more than simply watching. You have to make experimental changes in your environment to test what is and is not affecting the phenomenon in which you’re interested. If, for example, you suspect that the temperature of your room is having an impact on your health, you have to raise or lower the thermostat to see what effect that has on how healthy you feel.

Similarly, to keep watch on the origination of phenomena with reference, say, to the sense of the body, you have to make adjustments in your physical and mental actions to see what is actually causing what.

This observation is borne out by five passages in the discourses. The first is that, as SN 47:40 shows, the process of remaining focused on the origination of phenomena is developed by cultivating all the path factors, and especially the practice of right concentration. Now, right concentration requires consciously shaping the state of your mind. Through the process of learning what works and what doesn’t work in giving rise to the jhānas, you gain hands-on experience in manipulating the causes of the mental phenomena you are trying to develop or abandon. This is how the process of origination becomes clear.

This point is confirmed by the passages from AN 8:70 and MN 125 that we noted in Chapter One can be read as illustrating the development of the establishing of mindfulness. As these passages point out, you deepen the level of concentration attained in the first stage of mindfulness practice by consciously dropping layers of thought and refining the feelings that result from establishing mindfulness. This requires hands-on familiarity with the patterns of causation at work in the processes of the mind—a familiarity that can come only by manipulating those processes to achieve the desired effect.

The fourth passage illustrating the need for the manipulation of causal factors is the simile of the cook (SN 47:8), which we encountered in Chapter One: The cook has to keep varying his food to find exactly what pleases his master. Otherwise, his master will tire of his cooking and stop giving him rewards. In the same way, as a meditator you have to keep adjusting physical and mental phenomena to provide the mind with just the right conditions for settling down. This can be accomplished only by actively exploring cause and effect.

The fact that the process of origination is understood through the manipulation of causal factors is also borne out by a fifth passage, in MN 118, in which the Buddha explains how the establishing of mindfulness is to be cultivated and developed. In this case, his instructions are more specific, showing the precise way in which his approach to meditation is proactive and experimental. The passage starts by describing sixteen steps in breath meditation, and then shows how each tetrad, or set of four steps, brings one of the four establishings of mindfulness to the culmination of its development. We will consider the full passage in more detail in Chapters Six and Seven. Here I would like to focus on the steps themselves, and the establishing of mindfulness that each tetrad develops. I have put the steps in boldface so that you can easily locate them again when you want to remind yourself of what each step entails.

What stands out most prominently in this list of steps is the amount of willed, proactive activity they involve. Steps 3 through 16 are all described as acts of self-training, in which you set the intention to breathe in a particular way and—while consciously breathing—to pay attention to a particular topic with the purpose of developing it in a particular direction. You’re not simply aware of what’s happening in the present moment, for each training is expressed in the future tense: “I will breathe…” You want to move the present moment into a particular future direction. This is how these sixteen steps develop not only mindfulness and alertness, but also their companion quality of ardency.

Intention in the role of fabrication figures explicitly in steps 4, 7, and 8. The terms bodily fabrication (kāya-saṅkhāra) and mental fabrication (citta-saṅkhāra), used in those steps, are explained as follows:

This means that in step 4 you deliberately try to calm the breath. In step 8, after sensitizing yourself to the effect of perceptions and feelings on the mind in step 7, you try to cultivate perceptions and feelings that will have a calming effect. And although verbal fabrication is not mentioned by name in any of the steps, the use of the training phrase “I will breathe” is, in itself, an example of using verbal fabrication skillfully. So all three forms of fabrication play a role in these sixteen steps.

The proactive nature of these steps is also clear in steps 10 through 12, in which you try to move your mind in a skillful direction: gladdening it when its energy is low, steadying it when its energy is scattered or uneven, and releasing it—at least temporarily—from unskillful mind states, or from the factors of the lower stages of concentration so as to move it to higher stages. Similarly, in steps 13–16 you direct the mind in an even more skillful direction by focusing it on topics that will lead step by step to full release.

The Buddha was clearly conscious of the proactive nature of these sixteen steps, for he explicitly recommended them as superior to a more passive and equanimous approach to mindfulness of breathing.

The Commentary reads Ariṭṭha’s statement here as indicating he has reached the third level of awakening, non-return, where all sensuality and irritation have been totally abandoned. But the fact that Ariṭṭha has to subdue irritation here shows that he hasn’t totally abandoned it. In fact, from what we know of him from other discourses in the Canon (such as MN 22, where he refuses to abandon a pernicious wrong view), it’s highly improbable that he has reached any high level of attainment. A more likely interpretation is that he’s simply practicing mindful equanimity in the present moment, having temporarily subdued desire for past and future sensual pleasures, and having temporarily subdued any thought of irritation with regard to the present.

The important point here is that, although this relatively passive approach counts as a type of mindfulness of breathing, the Buddha does not recommend it. Instead he recommends the more active approach of the sixteen steps. His reasons for doing so relate to issues in right concentration, right effort, and right view: the three factors of the path that, as we have seen, interact most directly with right mindfulness. We will focus on the issues related to right view in the next chapter, and those related to right concentration and right effort here—although bear in mind that right view is inevitably connected with these issues as well.

First, with regard to right concentration, SN 54:8 states that the practice of the sixteen steps develops not only the four establishings of mindfulness but also all the levels of right concentration. Now, according to AN 10:71, two mental qualities are necessary for the development of the four jhānas: tranquility (samatha) and insight (vipassanā).

AN 4:94 describes tranquility as resulting from the ability to steady the mind, settle it down, unify it, and concentrate it. It describes insight as the understanding that comes from investigating fabrications in an appropriate way. Notice that these two qualities—tranquility and insight—are just that: qualities. Nowhere in the Canon are they referred to as specific meditation exercises. Instead, they are described as qualities used by and developed through the exercises leading to jhāna.

The sixteen steps are a primary example of how this can happen, in that they give hands-on experience both with settling the mind and with investigating fabrication in the steps where you consciously calm bodily and mental fabrication. In this way they develop tranquility and insight in tandem (AN 4:170). As we will have occasion to note throughout this book, a distinctive feature of the Buddha’s approach is that he often has you employ as tools on the path physical and mental processes that he also wants you to contemplate and comprehend in action. The practice of gaining sensitivity to fabrication by calming it to promote tranquility, insight, and right concentration is a prime example of this approach.

As for the issues related to right effort, the Buddha recommends the more proactive approach of the sixteen steps because even though mindful equanimity is, in some cases, enough to uproot causes of stress, it’s not enough in all.

Notice that the Buddha offers no specific guidelines for when equanimity will work in giving rise to dispassion and when the more proactive approach of “exerting a fabrication” or “fabricating exertion” is needed. This means that you have to discover from personal experience what works in a particular case and to employ the appropriate corrective. The role of mindfulness in these cases is to keep this range of options in mind, and to remember what has previously worked in cases similar to what you are currently facing.

Of the two main options—equanimity and the fabrication of exertion—the latter phrase appears elsewhere in the Canon in the context of the four bases of power (iddhipāda), which in turn are related to the practice of right concentration.

This indicates that the fabrication of exertion relates, at the very least, to the conscious effort needed to fabricate a state of right concentration. The Canon doesn’t explain which fabrications these passages are referring to, but there’s every likelihood that all three types—bodily, verbal, and mental—are intended, as all three are required to develop strong concentration. As SN 36:11 points out, verbal fabrication is present in the first jhāna; bodily fabrication, in the first three jhānas; and mental fabrication, in all four jhānas and the first four formless dimensions based on the fourth jhāna. This may explain why the sixteen steps of breath meditation focus so much attention, explicit and implicit, on bodily, verbal, and mental fabrication.

As concentration develops, all three types of fabrication are stilled: verbal fabrication in the second jhāna, bodily fabrication in the fourth, and mental fabrication in the cessation of perception and feeling—an attainment that results, at the very least, in the third level of awakening: non-return. In this way, the skillful fabrication of exertion leads to the pacification of all fabrications, and so to release. The sixteen steps of breath meditation, with their conscious calming of fabrication, are a clear embodiment of this approach.

However, the three types of fabrication play a role not only in stilling the mind but also in giving rise to dispassion for different causes of stress. Consciously breathing in a particular way to develop a sense of wellbeing would help make some causes of stress seem less appealing, for you would have an immediate sense of pleasure to measure them against. This would make it easier to feel dispassion for them. Directing your thoughts to a particular topic (as in the six recollections—see Chapter Seven) and evaluating the matter would help engender dispassion for other causes of stress. Adjusting your feelings and perceptions (as in step 8 of breath meditation) would help with others. In particular, many of the Canon’s passages on developing discernment recommend specific perceptions—such as the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self—to develop the dispassion leading to release. This would count as a skillful use of mental fabrication. There are also cases where various combinations of these three types of fabrication would help in instilling dispassion for still other causes of stress.

Because the sixteen steps of breath meditation give practical experience in adjusting these types of fabrication, they cultivate a sensitivity to and dexterity in the process of fabrication, both of which aid in developing the full range of the skills needed to deal with any factor causing stress.

As for equanimity, even though the passage from MN 101 contrasts it with the fabrication of exertion, we have to remember that it’s a mental feeling (SN 36:31), one of the five aggregates (khandha), and so it’s a fabricated phenomenon. When used on the path, it differs from the fabrication of exertion only in that it requires much less effort. In fact, one of the important insights leading to release is that even subtle forms of equanimity are no less fabricated than mental states requiring much more energy. This point is borne out by the fact that when equanimity is employed instead of the fabrication of exertion, it’s used with a particular purpose in mind: to abandon unskillful qualities. This means that it has an underlying agenda, the agenda of right effort, and is not totally free from preference.

In fact, several passages in the Canon—most prominently in the list of the seven factors for awakening (SN 46:53)—indicate that, in the interest of developing the path, equanimity has to be consciously developed through the fabrication of exertion and, ultimately—again through the fabrication of exertion—abandoned.

To begin with, the ordinary equanimity of being nonreactive to sensory input should be supplanted with the consciously fabricated equanimity of the higher states of concentration.

For some reason, this passage does not list the equanimity of the fourth jhāna under equanimity coming from singleness. This is strange, because the standard description of the four jhānas states that the fourth jhāna is the stage where not only mindfulness, but also equanimity becomes pure. Also, MN 140 portrays the equanimity of the fourth jhāna as then being applied to the formless dimensions so as to give rise to the formless attainments, which would mean that the equanimity of the formless attainments is identical with the equanimity of the fourth jhāna.

Whatever the case, even though the equanimity of these higher states of concentration is superior to ordinary equanimity at the senses, it can act as an object of clinging and so stand in the way of awakening.

This is why MN 137—after discussing how equanimity coming from multiplicity should be abandoned by developing equanimity coming from singleness—states that equanimity coming from singleness should be abandoned by non-fashioning (atammayatā): the ability to not fashion any sense of self or possession around that equanimity.

Non-fashioning is a principle that can be applied at many levels. When applied to a particular activity, it helps to pry loose any sense of conceit or identification that might surround that activity. When applied to the most refined possible activity—the equanimity in the highest formless attainments—it brings the mind to the threshold of awakening. At that level, it lies beyond both the fabrication of exertion and on-looking equanimity, in a state of poise that is hard for the untrained mind to grasp, in that it neither moves (like fabrication) nor stays still (like equanimity).

However, when non-fashioning is mentioned in the Canon, it usually follows on the mastering of the fabrications of exertion through the development of the factors of the path (MN 78; MN 113). At the same time, as the highest and subtlest form of right effort, it has a purpose: true happiness and wellbeing.

The progression from equanimity at the senses, through equanimity based on concentration, to non-fashioning shows that generic non-reactivity at the senses is not enough to engender the dispassion capable of uprooting all the causes of stress. To succeed in the practice, you have to want to put an end to stress, to actively ferret out the causes of stress—even those hidden in equanimity—and to be willing to employ any method required to uproot them. This is why desire is an integral part of the definition of right effort, as well as being part of the first base of power. One of the duties of right mindfulness is to keep these facts in mind, so as to help direct right effort in its task.

That, however, is only one of the ways in which right mindfulness is developed through the practice of fabricating right effort and right concentration. As it’s trained to the point of right concentration in the midst of fabrication, keeping track of the origination and passing away of physical and mental states, right mindfulness provides a steady basis for observing the processes of both the truth of suffering and the truth of the path in action. In this way right mindfulness helps to sharpen right view, at the same time providing itself with more precise memories of what does and doesn’t work, so that it can remind right effort of more effective ways to lead to right concentration. Right mindfulness, when part of right concentration, also provides a level of refined pleasure that gives insight the strength it needs to abandon pleasures that deflect from the path (MN 14). With this improved level of steadiness, it’s in a better position to remember the lessons gained from the past when they are appropriate to fabricating improved states of right concentration in the present.

In short, as right mindfulness is developed into right concentration, it can more effectively remember to provide information from the past to apply to the present. At the same time, by remembering to provide a solid frame of reference in the present, it enables right view to be more effective in picking up precise information from the present that right mindfulness will be able to carry into the future. This connects with the point noted in the quotation from SN 48:11 in Chapter One: that the practice of right mindfulness not only applies mindfulness to the present, but also strengthens mindfulness for the sake of future practice.

As for why the lessons of fabrication are so important in this process, that’s an issue of right view that we will discuss in the next chapter. Because right view is so intimately connected with right concentration and right effort, this will entail looking at many of the same points we have just covered but from a slightly different angle. The added depth of perspective provided by right view—particularly in its most detailed explication, as dependent co-arising—should more than compensate for any repetition this will involve.