The last post on this blog argued that the little verb pajānāti names a trained way of knowing, and that the canon’s meditation formulas hand the practitioner exact words to “know with”. Within hours, the first question arrived in our own workshop: what about meditation words like “buddho”? Millions of meditators, especially in the Thai tradition, sit repeating the Buddha’s name with the breath. Repetition of a word, over and over — is that not precisely the “mantra” that noting teachers warn against (and what you’ll read below might even explain the origin of mantras)? And on the other side: is noting itself not just more thinking?

(Readers new to this discussion may want to begin with the companion piece, Pajānāti: The Prefix That Tells You How to Know — this post stands on its own, but that one supplies the verb the following paragraphs keep leaning on.)

Both worries dissolve in the same place: the old texts themselves, which turn out to distinguish, with some comedy and great precision, four different ways a “word can ride” a meditation. Two of them are failure modes. The other two of them are the tradition’s own instruments, built for very different meditative applications. Let’s get started:

1. The jackal’s knowledge

Begin with the first failure mode. A sound comes; you say inwardly, “hearing”; nothing else happens. The word sits on the experience like a caption under a photograph – accurate, and … idle. The classical commentators considered exactly this case when explaining the instruction “going, he knows: ‘going,’” and they raised the objection themselves:

Kāmaṃ soṇasiṅgālādayopi gacchantā ‘gacchāmā’ti jānanti, na panetaṃ evarūpaṃ jānanaṃ sandhāya vuttaṃ. Evarūpañhi jānanaṃ sattūpaladdhiṃ na pajahati, attasaññaṃ na ugghāṭeti, kammaṭṭhānaṃ vā satipaṭṭhānabhāvanā vā na hoti.¹

“Granted, even dogs and jackals, when walking, know: ‘we are walking.’ But it is not that sort of knowing that was meant. For that sort of knowing does not abandon the perception of a being, does not remove the notion of a self; it is neither a meditation subject nor the development of satipaṭṭhāna.”

So the label that merely registers is, on the tradition’s own telling, the jackal’s knowledge with vocabulary. Not wrong. But also not yet meditation (this is in contradiction to some ways how noting is taught – however keep going, you’ll find our entirety of breaking down word use in meditation highly enlightening (pun intended)).

2. The nag at the trough

The opposite failure: the word keeps running — buddho, buddho, “rising, falling,” “one, two” — while you are somewhere else, planning dinner, rehearsing an argument. A word-loop with no object under it. The Buddha drew this horse himself, in a discourse to Sandha, and the comedy is deliberate:

Bhadro hi, saddha, assājānīyo doṇiyā baddho na ‘yavasaṃ yavasa’nti jhāyati. Taṃ kissa hetu? Bhadrassa hi, saddha, assājānīyassa doṇiyā baddhassa evaṃ hoti — ‘kiṃ nu kho maṃ ajja assadammasārathi kāraṇaṃ kāressati, kimassāhaṃ paṭikaromī’ti.²

“A fine thoroughbred tied at the feeding-trough does not brood: ‘fodder, fodder!’ Why not? Because the thoroughbred at the trough thinks: ‘What task will the trainer set me today? What shall I do for him in return?’” — while the sutta’s wretched nag stands at the same trough, brooding: ‘fodder, fodder!’

The point is more precise than “repetition is bad.” Both horses stand at one trough, and both are thinking. The nag’s thought is a loop at an object of craving; the thoroughbred’s is a live question aimed at its actual situation. When teachers warn against “mere mantra,” this brooding loop — a word running at nothing, converging on nothing — is the thing they warned against. The warning isn’t so much about repetition, quite the contrary: The proof is the next section, where the tradition prescribes repetition in so many words.

3. One word, one object: the names (samathā)

Here is the Visuddhimagga instructing a beginner at the earth-disc, the classical concentration exercise — verbatim:

Pathavī mahī, medinī, bhūmi, vasudhā, vasundharātiādīsu pathavīnāmesu yamicchati, yadassa saññānukūlaṃ hoti, taṃ vattabbaṃ. Apica ‘pathavī’ti etadeva nāmaṃ pākaṭaṃ, tasmā pākaṭavaseneva ‘pathavī pathavī’ti bhāvetabbaṃ.³

“Among the names for earth — pathavī, mahī, medinī, bhūmi, vasudhā, vasundharā — whichever one wishes, whichever suits one’s perception, that should be said. But ‘earth’ is the most evident name, so by way of its evidence it should be developed: ‘earth, earth.’”

A name, chosen for personal fit, spoken, then repeated internally. One word, one object, again and again — each repetition setting the mind back down on the same thing until the mind stays there of itself. This is the concentration tradition’s use of a word, and buddho belongs to this category: the recollection of the Buddha, condensed to his name, repeated with the breath – a practice the Thai and wider Theravāda world built on the same principle the manual states for “earth, earth.” The same wing of the tradition counts breaths with number-words – and writes the expiry date directly into the instruction.

Kīvaciraṃ panetaṃ gaṇetabbanti? Yāva vinā gaṇanāya assāsapassāsārammaṇe sati santiṭṭhati. Bahivisaṭavitakkavicchedaṃ katvā assāsapassāsārammaṇe satisaṇṭhāpanatthaṃyeva hi gaṇanāti.⁴

“For how long should one count? Until, without counting, mindfulness stands steady on the breath — for counting exists only to cut off outward-straying thought and to plant mindfulness on the breath.”

A name is a word with a built-in ending: as unification approaches (see pajanati article for more on this), the word thins and drops, which is what forest meditators have long reported of buddho — at some depth the word quietly dies and only the knowing of the breath remains. Silence is the name completing its work; it’s intentional and a sign of progress.

4. One word for each thing: the probes (vipassanā)

Now the insight tradition’s use, which runs the other way around: not one word repeated at one object, but one word deployed at each object as it arises. This is what the satipaṭṭhāna formulas actually look like on the page, quotation marks and all:

Dīghaṃ vā assasanto ‘dīghaṃ assasāmī’ti pajānāti… Sarāgaṃ vā cittaṃ ‘sarāgaṃ cittan’ti pajānāti… Santaṃ vā ajjhattaṃ kāmacchandaṃ ‘atthi me ajjhattaṃ kāmacchando’ti pajānāti.⁵

“Breathing in long, he discerns: ‘long I breathe in’… A mind with lust he discerns: ‘a mind with lust’… Sense-desire being present in him, he discerns: ‘there is in me sense-desire.’”

Breath, mind-state, hindrance: a different word for each, at contact, in the first person. And what is the word for? The commentarial similes for the thinking-factor answer with pictures. First the strike of a gong, from Nāgasena’s exchange with the king:

Yathā, mahārāja, kaṃsathālaṃ ākoṭitaṃ pacchā anuravati anusandahati, yathā ākoṭanā, evaṃ vitakko daṭṭhabbo; yathā anuravanā, evaṃ vicāro daṭṭhabbo.⁶

“As when a bronze gong is struck and afterwards it rings on and resounds: the striking, great king, is how applied thought should be seen; the ringing-on is how examination should be seen.”

And then the Visuddhimagga’s tarnished bowl, the plainest mechanics in the whole literature:

Malaggahitaṃ kaṃsabhājanaṃ ekena hatthena daḷhaṃ gahetvā itarena hatthena cuṇṇatelavālaṇḍupakena parimajjantassa daḷhagahaṇahattho viya vitakko, parimajjanahattho viya vicāro.⁷

“When a man takes a tarnished bronze bowl, grips it firmly with one hand, and with the other hand rubs it with powder and oil and a woolen pad: applied thought is like the hand that grips; examination is like the hand that rubs.”

The note is the gripping hand. It polishes nothing by itself; it holds the moment still so that the looking can work — the arising edge, the passing edge, the not-mine of the sound. This is why noting is not “more thinking.” The mind produces inner words in any case; the note takes a word the mind would have spent on commentary and spends it on contact. And like the name, the probe thins as its work matures: the Burmese teachers themselves describe the labels growing lighter and dropping away as insight-knowledge ripens, the knowing running on without them (as jhana develops out of it).

The thorns, in order

Both healthy uses of the word share one destiny, with the canon stating it as a sequence — a list of “thorns,” each attainment pricked by the coarser thing it has outgrown:

…paṭhamassa jhānassa saddo kaṇṭako, dutiyassa jhānassa vitakkavicārā kaṇṭakā, tatiyassa jhānassa pīti kaṇṭako…⁸

“…sound is the thorn of the first absorption; thought and examination are the thorn of the second; rapture is the thorn of the third…”

Outer sound goes first; the inner word goes next. The parallel discourses preserved in Chinese say the same thing as a ladder of silences: on attaining the first meditation, speech falls silent; on attaining the second, thought falls silent.⁹ Every word-instrument in this post — the name, the numbers, the note — works below that line and is scheduled to retire at it.

Is it converging?

Which gives the practical test, usable tonight, for any word-practice at all.

If your buddho is slowly thinning — the gaps quieter, the mind more gathered around the breath — it is a name, and it is working. If your notes are growing lighter and quicker while the seeing gets sharper, it is a probe, and it is working. If the word has run for weeks at the same volume, touching nothing, you have the nag’s loop; the repair is not a better word but a reunion — bring the word back to an object, or an object back to the word. If the word faithfully reports while nothing is ever examined, you have the jackal’s caption; let the word do less and the looking do more. One question sorts all four: is it converging — toward stillness, or toward seeing? The texts above expect every wholesome word to be moving toward one silence or the other.

A grammatical postscript

Readers of the pajānāti post may enjoy one last detail: the texts mark this whole distinction in their grammar. Set the two toolkits side by side. The concentration words are bare names — “earth,” “space,” buddho, the numbers — no “I,” no statement, a noun pointing at its object. The insight words are little sentences — “impermanent,” “long I breathe in,” “there is in me sense-desire” — each predicating something of a present object. A name points; a sentence discerns. The two kits are never confused in the texts, even where translations have confused them for us; the tradition knew which kind of word it was handing you, and what job that word was built to finish.

— Quentin I. Marks

Notes

1. Sumaṅgalavilāsinī on DN 22 (CST s0102a §375) = Papañcasūdanī on MN 10 (s0201a §108), on the posture section (iriyāpathapabba). The same passage goes on to concede the label’s psychology: ‘gacchāmī’ti cittaṃ uppajjati, “the thought ‘I am going’ arises” — the quarrel is only with stopping there.
2. AN 11.9, Sandhasuttaṃ (s0404m4). The nag’s side of the contrast: so doṇiyā baddho ‘yavasaṃ yavasa’nti jhāyati.
3. Visuddhimagga IV (e0101n §§55–57), Pathavīkasiṇaniddesa. The subcommentarial verse tradition adds the interiorization: karoto manasā eva punappunañca yogino — “doing it with the mind alone, again and again” (abh06t).
4. Visuddhimagga VIII (e0101n §§223–224), Ānāpānassatikathā, with the slow and swift counting methods.
5. DN 22 (s0102m §§374, 381; nīvaraṇa section) = MN 10 (s0201m §§107 ff.). On pajānāti as “discerns,” see the previous post and Vism XIV (e0102n §423).
6. Milindapañha (s0518m §14); the carpenter simile for vitakka precedes it (§13).
7. Visuddhimagga IV (e0101n §71), with the potter and compass-pin similes in the same passage: majjhe sannirumbhitvā ṭhitakaṇṭako viya abhiniropano vitakko, bahi paribbhamanakaṇṭako viya anumajjano vicāro — the fixed and the traveling pin.
8. AN 10.72, Kaṇṭakasuttaṃ (s0404m3 §72). The list runs on: rapture the thorn of the third jhāna, the breath itself of the fourth.
9. Saṃyukta-āgama, T 99 (CBETA), at 0121b03: 初禪正受時，言語寂滅；第二禪正受時，覺觀寂滅 — “on attaining the first dhyāna, speech falls silent; on attaining the second dhyāna, thought and examination fall silent.”
10. The two lexicons, catalogued: the census and corpus study behind Hidden in Plain Sight (forthcoming), Appendices A–B.