Venerable Sir, would you kindly explain about Right Concentration (sammā-samādhi).

‘Right Concentration’ (sammā-samādhi) means the product of the first seven constituent steps of the Noble Eightfold Path. By the first seven constituent steps of the Noble Eightfold Path developing well, the concentrated mind of meditative absorption (jhāna) that forms as a result, whose five mental hindrances―desire for sense pleasures, hate, sloth and torpor, restlessness and scruples, and sceptical doubt―are subdued, is called Right Concentration.

Even in the mind of samādhi―state of deep concentration of the mind―that is of meditative absorption, craving lurks. Buddha refers to the samādhi with meditative absorption as the enjoyment (assāda) in feeling. Where there is enjoyment, there is bound to be an adverse consequence (ādīnava). While the enjoyment gives rise to pleasure, the adverse consequence gives rise to suffering. In the samādhi, you perceive, “there is samādhi in me,” “the soul is in samādhi,” or “in that soul there is samādhi.” Purely as a result, you invariably get attached to the enjoyment born of the samādhi. Simply because of it, by having clung to meditative absorptions, you get rebirth in brahma worlds of the fine-material or non-material sphere even without escaping the fourfold-hell. So, as a result, you keep falling into the suffering of the ‘becoming’ over and over again. The restraint of the sense-faculties―namely, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind―that comes about when one abstains from unwholesome actions and becomes stronger in wholesome actions will be the foundation for the worldly Right Concentration. The mind of meditative absorption which forms strictly as a result of it will be the fruit of Right Concentration.

Venerable Sir, what is supermundane Right Concentration (lokuttara sammā-samādhi)?

Supposing you behold the worldly Right Concentration with penetrative insight-wisdom. There, arises supermundane Right Concentration. Craving does not lurk in supermundane Right Concentration. He or she, who knows well the enjoyment and the adverse consequences in samādhi, will be a person who finds the way to escape (nissarana) feeling. He or she wisely contemplates how they plunged down to the fourfold-hell again, after spending eons in brahma worlds of the fine-material and non-material spheres by having mastered samādhi in the round of rebirths past; how they magically travelled with supernatural powers in the past using meditative absorptions of the fine-material and non-material spheres. The one who has formed supermundane Right Concentration is skilful enough to view all these karma-formations of the samādhi as impermanent. So, they don’t get attached to the mind of meditative absorption forming at present. It is while seeing the impermanence of such mind of meditative absorption that they enjoy the comfort produced by it. They’re skilful to notice it is when the longness of in-breath and out-breath became impermanent that the shortness of in-breath and out-breath came into being; it is when the shortness of in-breath and out-breath became impermanent that ‘thought-conception and discursive thinking’ (vitakka-vicāra) quieted down; it is when thought-conception and discursive thinking became impermanent that rapture (pīti) and joy (sukha) arose; it is when rapture and joy became impermanent that the mind became equanimous (upekkhā). Like this, seeing with penetrative insight-wisdom the true nature, the transient nature, of samādhi, they’re skilful to do away with the craving for samādhi and uncover the escape (nissarana).

The one who has formed supermundane Right Concentration sees that the mind of samādhi, the mind of meditative absorption, is just a formation of the five clinging aggregates that forms centred around rūpa. Sees that to take the samādhi as permanent would be to take the five clinging aggregates as permanent. And so, to be rid of the craving for the five clinging aggregates by escaping the craving for samādhi would be supermundane Right Concentration. It is as a product of this supermundane Right Concentration that the ‘noble insight-faculties’ (sammā-ñāna) arise in you and thereby the noble deliverance (sammā-vimutti) is realized.