What this chapter covers: This chapter explains how to develop concentration using the remaining nine totality devices (kasina): water, fire, air, blue, yellow, red, white, light, and limited space. Each follows the same basic method as the earth totality device covered in Chapter 4, with specific differences noted for each. The chapter also maps each device to the special powers it can unlock and explains who is capable of this practice.
The Water Device
To practice the water totality device, sit comfortably and focus on water, following the same general method described in the earth device chapter (Chapter 4).
If you have natural aptitude from previous practice, the meditation sign can arise from any natural body of water — a pool, lake, lagoon, or even the ocean. This is what happened to the Elder Cula-Siva: wanting to leave behind worldly gain and honour for a secluded life, he boarded a ship at Mannar and sailed to India. As he gazed at the ocean during the voyage, the counterpart sign — a mental image mirroring that vast ocean — arose spontaneously in his mind.
If you don’t have such natural aptitude, prepare carefully. Avoid the four faults of a totality device (see Chapter 4) and don’t focus on the water’s colour. Fill a bowl or water pot to the brim with clear, clean water — strained through cloth if needed — and place it in a screened, quiet spot on the outskirts of the monastery.
Sit comfortably. Don’t focus on the water’s colour or analyse its physical properties. Instead, set your mind on the name-concept — the mental label — as the primary object of attention. It is not the water itself you attend to, but the concept evoked by its name. Use whatever name feels natural — “water,” “rain,” “liquid,” “dew,” “fluid” — repeating it mentally. The recommended label is simply “water, water.”
As you develop this practice, two signs will arise:
- The learning sign appears to move, just like water does. If the water has bubbles or froth, these will show up in the sign too — this indicates a flaw in your preparation.
- The counterpart sign appears completely still — like a crystal fan suspended in space, or like a mirror disk made of crystal.
When the counterpart sign appears, you’ve reached access concentration (the threshold of deep absorption). From here, the four-fold and five-fold levels of deep absorption (jhana) become available, following the same process as the earth device.
The Fire Device
To practice the fire device, focus on fire to develop the meditation sign.
If you have natural aptitude, the sign can arise from any fire — a lamp flame, a furnace, a kiln, or even a forest fire. The Elder Cittagutta, for instance, was simply looking at a lamp flame while sitting in the assembly hall on a teaching day, and the sign arose right there.
If you don’t have natural aptitude, prepare a fire yourself:
- Split some damp heartwood, dry it, and break it into short lengths
- Go to a suitable spot — a tree root or a shed
- Build a pile of wood as you would for firing bowls, and light it
- Cut a hole about a span and four fingers wide in a rush mat, leather, or cloth
- Hang this screen in front of the fire and sit behind it
Don’t pay attention to the grass and sticks at the bottom or the smoke above. Focus only on the dense, glowing combustion in the middle.
Don’t focus on the fire’s colour or analyse its heat. As with water, set your mind on the name-concept as the primary object of attention — not the fire itself, but the concept evoked by its name. You can use any of the traditional names for fire: “fire,” “the Bright One” (pavaka), “the Leaver of the Black Trail” (kanhavattani), “the Knower of Creatures” (jataveda), or “the Altar of Sacrifice” (hutasana) — but the recommended label is simply “fire, fire.”
The signs that arise:
- The learning sign appears to sink and flicker as flames detach. If you used a natural fire, any flaws — firebrands, embers, ashes, smoke — will show up in this sign.
- The counterpart sign appears completely motionless — like a piece of red cloth suspended in space, or like a golden fan, or a golden column.
From here, access concentration and the levels of deep absorption follow as before.
The Air Device
The air device is unique because you can work with air either by sight or by touch.
By sight: Watch the tops of densely leaved sugarcane standing with level tops, or bamboo, or trees, swaying in the wind. Or watch hair about four fingers long on someone’s head being blown by the breeze. Establish your attention with the thought: “This wind is striking on this place.”
By touch: Sit where wind enters through a window or a crack in a wall. Establish your attention on the sensation where the wind touches your body.
Use the label “air, air” (or “wind,” “breeze,” “blowing”).
The signs that arise:
- The learning sign appears to move, like the swirling steam rising from a pot of rice gruel just taken off the stove.
- The counterpart sign is quiet and completely motionless.
The rest of the process follows the same pattern as before.
The Colour Devices: Blue, Yellow, Red, and White
These four devices all follow the same basic method. The differences are only in the colour used.
Blue
If you have natural aptitude, the sign can arise from seeing a bush covered in blue flowers, blue flowers spread out as an offering, or any blue cloth or gem.
Otherwise, prepare a device:
- Take blue flowers — blue lotuses, morning glory, or similar — and spread them to completely fill a tray or flat basket, covering all stalks and stamens so only petals show
- Alternatively, bunch up blue cloth to fill the tray, or stretch it tight over the rim like a drum skin
- Or make a disk using a blue-green paint or pigment, surrounded by a border of a different colour
Background Note: The Pali word “nila” covers what we’d call blue, green, and sometimes black — so “blue” here represents that whole range of cool, dark colours.
Focus on it as “blue, blue.” In the learning sign, flaws like gaps between petals or visible stalks will appear. The counterpart sign appears like a crystal fan in space, free from the physical disk. From here, proceed as before.
Yellow
The sign can arise naturally from yellow flowering bushes, yellow cloth, or yellow pigment. The Elder Cittagutta saw an offering being made with pattanga flowers at Cittalapabbata, and the sign arose immediately — the size of the entire flower altar.
Otherwise, prepare a device using kanikara flowers or yellow cloth or pigment, and develop it as “yellow, yellow.” The rest is the same.
Red
The sign can arise naturally from hibiscus bushes in bloom, red flowers spread out, red cloth, gems, or pigment.
Otherwise, prepare a device using hibiscus, jayasumana, or red korandaka flowers, red cloth, or pigment. Develop it as “red, red.” The rest is the same.
White
The sign can arise naturally from a white flowering bush, jasmine flowers spread out, heaps of white lotuses or lilies, white cloth, or pigment. It can also arise from a tin disk, a silver disk, or even the moon’s disk.
Otherwise, prepare a device with any of these white materials and develop it as “white, white.” The rest is the same.
The Light Device
The light device uses a circle of light rather than a physical object.
If you have natural aptitude, the sign can arise when you see a circle of sunlight or moonlight thrown on a wall or floor — coming through a hole in a wall, through gaps in the branches of a dense tree, or through a gap in a thatched hut.
If you don’t have natural aptitude, you can use one of those natural light circles. Or, if none is available:
- Light a lamp inside a pot
- Close the pot’s mouth
- Make a hole in the side
- Place the pot facing a wall
The lamplight coming through the hole throws a steady circle on the wall. This method lasts longer than natural light sources. Develop it as “luminosity, luminosity” or “light, light.”
The signs:
- The learning sign looks like the circle of light on the wall or ground
- The counterpart sign appears like a compact, bright cluster of lights
The rest follows as before.
The Limited-Space Device
The space device uses a bounded opening — a hole in a wall, a keyhole, or a window opening.
If you have natural aptitude, the sign can arise from seeing any such gap or opening.
Otherwise, make a hole about a span and four fingers wide in a well-thatched hut, in a piece of leather, or in a rush mat. Focus on this hole — or any hole in a wall — as “space, space.”
The signs:
- The learning sign shows the hole together with the wall around it. Attempts to mentally extend it fail.
- The counterpart sign appears as only a circle of space, without the surrounding wall. Attempts to extend it succeed.
The rest follows the earth device method.
What Each Device Unlocks
He with Ten Powers, who all things did see, Tells ten totality devices, each of which can be The cause of four-fold and of five-fold deep absorption, The refined mental realm’s own master key. Now, knowing their descriptions and the way To tackle each and how they are developed, There are some further points that will repay Study, each with its special part to play.
Background Note: In the Buddha’s original discourses, only the first eight devices listed here appear. The suttas list “space” and “consciousness” as the ninth and tenth devices, but these overlap with the first two formless attainments (boundless space and boundless consciousness). The commentarial tradition — which this text follows — replaced those two with the light device and the limited-space device to keep them distinct. The light device may have developed from the “perception of light” mentioned in the Anguttara Nikaya. Regarding the space device, the Visuddhi-maha-tika (the sub-commentary) clarifies that “the attainment of the formless states is not produced by means of the space device” and that “the light device is included in the white device.”
Each of the ten totality devices can serve as a basis for the four-fold and five-fold levels of deep absorption — the master key to the entire realm of refined mental states. Beyond concentration, each device also serves as a foundation for specific higher powers:
- Earth: Multiplying your appearance (“having been one, he becomes many”), creating solid ground in space or on water to stand or sit on, and mastering the bases of mental mastery through limited and boundless methods.
- Water: Diving in and out of solid earth, causing rain and storms, creating rivers and seas, making earth, rocks, and buildings quake.
- Fire: Producing smoke, flames, and showers of sparks. Countering fire with fire. Burning only what you choose to burn. Creating light for seeing with the divine eye. Consuming the body through the fire element at the time of final liberation (nibbana).
- Air: Travelling with the speed of wind. Causing wind storms.
- Blue: Creating dark forms, producing darkness. Mastering the bases of mental mastery through the method of beauty and ugliness. Attaining the liberation through beauty.
- Yellow: Creating yellow forms. Mentally transforming things into gold. Mastery and liberation through beauty.
- Red: Creating red forms. Mastery and liberation through beauty.
- White: Creating white forms. Banishing dullness and drowsiness. Dispelling darkness. Creating light for the divine eye.
- Light: Creating luminous forms. Banishing dullness and drowsiness. Dispelling darkness. Creating light for the divine eye.
- Space: Revealing what is hidden. Creating space inside solid earth and rock to maintain postures within them. Passing unobstructed through walls and barriers.
Extending the Device in All Directions
A principle that applies to every device: it can be extended above (toward the sky), below (toward the earth), and all around (like the boundary of a field). A meditator might extend a device in just one direction, or in all directions — for example, someone wanting to see with the divine eye projects light outward.
The word “exclusive” means that when you are absorbed in one device, it has nothing to do with any other. Just as when you are submerged in water there is water in every direction, when you are absorbed in the earth device, there is only earth — nothing else. The same applies to each device.
“Measureless” means measureless focus — you attend to the whole without measuring it, without thinking “this is where it begins, this is the middle.”
Who Can and Cannot Practice
No meditation device — or any meditation subject at all — can be developed by someone who is blocked in these ways:
- Blocked by past actions (kamma): Those who have committed one of the five actions with immediate consequences — killing one’s mother, killing one’s father, killing an awakened being (arahant), intentionally drawing a Buddha’s blood, or causing a split in the monastic community. These actions result in rebirth in hell for the remainder of the cosmic cycle, regardless of any other actions performed.
- Blocked by mental corruption: Those who hold fixed wrong views — the no-cause view (that things arise without any cause), the moral-inefficacy view (that actions have no real consequences), or the nihilistic view (that there is no such thing as giving, no fruit of good or bad deeds) — or those who are hermaphrodites or eunuchs.
- Blocked by the results of past actions: Those whose rebirth occurred without any wholesome root cause, or with only two wholesome root causes (rather than the full three of non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion).
- Lacking faith: Those without confidence in the Buddha, the teaching (dhamma), and the community (sangha).
- Lacking zeal: Those without the desire and willingness to walk the path that leads to liberation.
- Lacking understanding: Those without both mundane and transcendent right view.
These individuals cannot enter what is called “certainty” (niyama) — the noble path, also known as “rightness in wholesome states.”
Background Note: The five actions with immediate consequences are listed in order of gravity: matricide, parricide, killing an awakened being, intentionally shedding a Buddha’s blood, and causing a schism in the monastic community. All five result in rebirth in hell for the remainder of the cosmic age (kappa), regardless of whatever other actions — good or bad — may have been performed.
For everyone else: the path is open. The task of devoting yourself to meditation should be undertaken by anyone who is free from the blocks caused by past actions, who avoids the blocks caused by corruption, and who nurtures faith, zeal, and understanding by listening to the teaching, spending time with wise people, and so on.
This is the fifth chapter, “The Description of the Remaining Totality Devices,” in the section on the Development of Concentration in the Path of Purification, composed for the purpose of gladdening good people.