manifestation the gratification of the mental factors (cetasika-assādapaccupa((hānā).1 It is invariably said to be born of contact (phassa). Contact is the coming together (sa/gati) of a sense object, a sense faculty, and the appropriate type of consciousness.
When these three come together consciousness makes contact with the object. It experiences the affective quality of the object, and from this experience a feeling arises keyed to the object’s affective quality.2
Since contact is of six kinds by way of the six sense faculties, feeling is also of six kinds corresponding to the six kinds of contact from which it is born. There is feeling born of eye-contact, feeling born of ear-contact, feeling born of nose, tongue, body, and mind-contact.3 Feeling is also divided by way of its affective tone either into three or five classes. On the threefold division there is pleasant feeling (sukhāvedanā), painful feeling (dukkhāvedanā), and neither pleasant nor painful feeling (adukkhamasukhā vedanā), i.e., neutral feeling. The pleasant feeling may be subdivided into bodily pleasant feeling (kāyika sukha) called “pleasure” (sukha) and mental pleasant feeling (cetasikasukha) called “joy” (somanassa). The painful feeling may also be subdivided into bodily painful feeling (kāyikadukkha) called “pain” (dukkha) and mental painful feeling (cetasikadukkha) called “displeasure” (domanassa). In this system of classification the neutral feeling is called “equanimity” (upekkhā). Thus on the fivefold division we find the following five types of feeling: pleasure, joy, pain, displeasure, and equanimity.4 According to the Abhidhamma, pleasure and pain are found only in association with body-consciousness, joy and displeasure only in association with mind-consciousness, and equanimity in association with both mind-consciousness and the other four classes of sense consciousness.5
The VibhaKga statement that the sukha of the first jhāna is mental happiness born of mind-contact means that it is a form of joy or somanassa. In the AKguttara Nikāya the Buddha enumerates contrasting types of mental happiness: the happiness of the household life and that of monastic life, the happiness of sense pleasures and that of renunciation, happiness with attachments and taints and happiness without attachments and taints, worldly happiness and spiritual happiness, the happiness of concentration and happiness without concentration, etc.6 Happiness associated with greed and directed to pleasurable forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles is sensual happiness (kāmasukha). Happiness associated with the wholesome roots produced by the renunciation of sensual enjoyments is spiritual happiness (nirāmisasukha) or the happiness of renunciation (nekkhammasukha). The happiness of jhāna is a spiritual happiness born of seclusion from sense pleasures and the hindrances (pavivekasukha). It is also a happiness of concentration (samādhisukha).
1. Expositor, l:145f. Dhs.A. pp. 83-84.
2. MN. 3:242-43.
3. SN. 2:3.
4. MN. 1:398-400.
5. Narada, Manual, pp. 143ff.
6. AN. 1:80-81.
The Buddha shows that happiness is causally conditioned. It arises in the sequence of conditions issuing in liberation. In this sequence it follows rapture (pīti) and tranquility (passaddhi) and leads to concentration (samādhi). The Upanisā Sutta says: “Gladness is the supporting condition for rapture; rapture is the supporting condition for tranquility, tranquility for happiness, happiness for concentration.”1 (Wr. tr.). The commentary explains that “gladness” (pāmojja) represents the initial forms of rapture, “pīti” the stronger forms. “Tranquility” (passaddhi) is the calm that emerges through the subsiding of defilements; the happiness (sukha) to which it leads the commentary calls “the happiness preceding absorption”2 and the subcommentary “the happiness pertaining to the access to jhāna”.3 The resulting concentration is the pādakajjhāna, the jhāna forming a basis for insight. From this we can infer that the happiness included in this causal sequence is the nascent jhāna factor of sukha, which begins to emerge in the access stage and reaches full maturity in the actual jhāna itself. But since sukha is always present whenever pīti is present, it follows that sukha must have arisen at the very beginning of the sequence. In the stage bearing its name it only acquires special prominence, not a first appearance. When happiness gains in force, it exercises the function of suppressing its direct opposite, the hindrance of restlessness and worry, which causes unhappiness through its agitating nature.
Pīti and sukha link together in a very close relationship, so that it may be difficult to distinguish them. Nevertheless the two are not identical states. Sukha always accompanies pīti but pīti does not always accompany sukha: “Where there is pīti there is sukha but where there is sukha there is not necessarily pīti.”4 (Wr. tr.). In the third jhāna there is sukha but no pīti. Pīti, as we noted, belongs to the aggregate of mental formations, sukha to the aggregate of feelings. The Dhammasa/ga5i A((akathā explains pīti as “delight in the attaining of the desired object” and sukha as “the enjoyment of the taste of what is acquired.” The text illustrates the difference between them by means of a vivid simile.
Rapture is like a weary traveller in the desert in summer, who hears of, or sees water or a shady wood. Ease is like his enjoying the water or entering the forest shade. For a man who, travelling along the path through a great desert and overcome by the heat, is thirsty and desirous of drink, if he saw a man on the way, would ask, ‘Where is water?’ The other would say, ‘Beyond the wood is a dense forest with a natural lake. Go there, and you will get some.’ He hearing these words would be glad and delighted, and as he went would see lotus leaves, etc., fallen on the ground and become more glad and delighted.
1. “Pāmojjūpanisā pīti; pītūpanisā passaddhi; passaddhūpanisaJ sukhaJ; sukhūpaniso samādhi.” SN.
2:30.
2. “Appanāya pubbabhāgasukhaJ.” Buddhaghosa, [Sa.yutta Nikāya A((hakathā] Sāratthappakāsinī Nāma Sa.yutta((hakathā, [Pāli Text in Burmese script], 3 vols. (Rangoon, Burma: Buddhasāsana Samiti, 1957), 2:50 (hereafter cited as SN.A.).
3. “UpacārajjhānasahitasukhaJ.” Dhammapāla, [Sa.yutta Nikāya Tīka] Sa.yutta(ikā (Pāli Text in Burmese script] 2 vols. (Rangoon, Burma: Buddhasānana Samiti, 1961), 2:65 (hereafter cited as SN.T.).
4. “Yattha pīti tattha sukhaJ yattha sukhaJ tattha na niyamato pīti.” Vism., p. 117. Dhs.A., p. 160.
Going onwards, he would see man with wet clothes and hair, hear the sounds of wild fowl and pea-fowl, etc., see the dense forest of green like a net of jewels growing by the edge of the natural lake, he would see the water lily, the lotus, the white lily, etc., growing in the lake, he would see the clear transparent water, he would be all the more glad and delighted, [118] would descend into the natural lake, bathe and drink at pleasure and, his oppression being allayed, he would eat the fibres and stalks of the lilies, adorn himself with the blue lotus, carry on his shoulders the roots of the mandalaka, ascend from the lake, put on his clothes, dry the bathing cloth in the sun, and in the cool shade where the breeze blew ever so gently lay himself down and say: ‘O bliss! O bliss!’ Thus should this illustration be applied: The time of gladness and delight from when he heard of the natural lake and the dense forest till he saw the water is like rapture having the manner of gladness and delight at the object in view. The time when, after his bath and drink he laid himself down in the cool shade, saying, ‘O bliss! O bliss!’, etc., is the sense of ease grown strong, established in that mode of enjoying the taste of the object.1
Pīti and sukha co-exist in the first jhāna. Therefore the commentarial simile should not be taken to imply that the two are mutually exclusive. Its purport is to suggest that pīti gains prominence before sukha, for which it helps provide a causal foundation.
In the description of the first jhāna, pīti and sukha are said to be “born of seclusion.”
The VibhaKga elaborates: “They are born, well born, come into existence, come well into existence, appear in this seclusion. Therefore ‘born of seclusion’ is said.”2 (Wr. tr.).
The rapture and happiness born of seclusion, the Buddha states, suffuse the whole body of the meditator in such a way that there is no part of his body which remains unaffected by them. This he explains with the help of the following illustration:
Monks, take the case of a monk, who, aloof from sensuous appetites, enters and abides in the first jhāna; he steeps and drenches and fills and suffuses this body with zest [rapture] and ease [happiness] born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest [rapture] and ease [happiness]. Monks, just as a handy bathman or attendant might strew bath powder in some copper basin and gradually sprinkling water, knead it together so that the bath-ball gathered up the moisture, became enveloped in moisture and saturated both in and out, but did not ooze moisture, even so a monk steeps, drenches fills and suffuses this body with zest and ease born of solitude, so that there is not one particle of the body that is not pervaded by this lone-born zest [rapture] and ease [happiness].3
1. Expositor, 1:155-56. Dhs.A., pp. 160-61.
2. “Te imasmiJ viveke jātā honti, sañjātā nibbattā, abhinibbattā, pātubhūtā. Tena vuccati vivekajanti.”
Vibh., p. 267.
3. GS. 3:17-18. “So imaJ eva kāyaJ vivekajena pītisukhena abhisandeti parisandeti paripureti parippharati, nāssa kiñci sabbāvato kāyassa vivekajena pītisukhena apphu:aJ hoti. Seyyathāpi bhikkhave dakkho nahāpako vā nahāpakantevāsī vā kaJsathāle nahāniya cuLLāni okiritvā udakena paripphosakaJ paripphosakaJ sanneyya, sā’ssa nahāniya piLYi snehānugatā snehaparetā sāntarabāhirā phutā snehena na
This statement raises the question how mental qualities like rapture and happiness can suffuse a physical substance like the body. The subcommentary provides an answer. It says that “the material form produced by consciousness suffuses every area where there is material form produced by kamma.”1 (Wr. tr.). The “material form produced by kamma” is the yogi’s physical body. The physical body contains material phenomena of four modes of origination; that is, material phenomena produced by kamma (kammaja.
rūpa.), by consciousness (cittaja. rūpa.), by temperature (utuja. rūpa.), and by food (āhāraja. rūpa.).2 When the yogin attains to jhāna, the jhāna consciousness produces a subtle kind of material form which suffuses his physical body. Since this material form is produced by a consciousness associated with rapture and happiness, the impression is created that rapture and happiness themselves suffuse the whole physical body.