First Dhyāna Samādhi and Seeing the Mind, Attaining the Fruit

Question: Is the first dhyāna attained before or after seeing the mind? Looking at your lecture notes, it seems that the first dhyāna is attained in a specific state after seeing the mind. But non-Buddhists have not seen the mind and have not eradicated the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi), so how did they also attain the first dhyāna?

Answer: There is no necessary connection between the first dhyāna and seeing the mind. Even without seeing the mind or realizing the fruits, one may still cultivate the meditative concentration of the first dhyāna. That is exactly how it was with non-Buddhists; they even cultivated the formless absorptions, such as the concentration of neither perception nor non-perception, far surpassing the first dhyāna. This is because the non-Buddhists of past eras had very pure minds; they were able to distance themselves from the mundane world and cultivate meditative concentration deep in the mountains, without greed for worldly things, so it was easy for them to bring forth dhyāna. Moreover, at that time people in society as a whole were rather simple and unsophisticated; material things and information were not well developed, and the environmental conditioning was not so severe, so the thoughts in people's minds were very few, and attaining concentration naturally came quickly.

Under the environmental conditions of modern society, cultivating meditative concentration is not so easy, and the first dhyāna is even harder. Therefore, only after eradicating the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) does it become somewhat easier to cultivate the first dhyāna; before realizing the fruits and seeing the mind, it is very difficult to attain the first dhyāna. However, this does not preclude exceptions or special cases. In the meditative absorption (samādhi) attained right upon realizing the fruits, if one can strike while the iron is hot and continue to add fuel to the fire, the first dhyāna may perhaps appear not long afterward. Once this stage of meditative absorption has passed, the mind becomes somewhat lax, meditative concentration becomes relatively hard to cultivate, and the first dhyāna will not easily manifest. Therefore, seizing the right moment and the proper degree of heat is crucial and important.