Meditation has become the practice most people associate with Buddhism, but the early texts tell a different story. In Nikāya Buddhism and Early Chan: A Different Meditative Paradigm, scholar Grzegorz Polak compares early Pali Nikayas—the scriptural layers that predate the Theravada tradition— with early Chan sources. He finds a shared, largely overlooked emphasis: that ethical conduct and a specific way of life are the preconditions for meditative attainment, not concentration practice alone. Reading the two side by side, he suggests Chan may be less an innovation than a return to something already present in the earliest Buddhist texts.

Polak also looks at jhana, the state of meditative absorption widely understood today as something mastered by focusing on an object. Some early texts describe it differently. They place more emphasis on removing mental hindrances—sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt. These texts make it clear that jhana is central to the Buddhist path yet they praise a kind of jhana that does not involve focusing on any object. Polak’s discoveries raise important questions for our understanding of jhana and early Buddhist practice.

Join us on October 29 at 1 p.m. ET to learn more about Polak’s point of view and the implications for practice and daily life.