Lay Meditation in Early Buddhism: A Response to Anālayo (2022)

Abstract

In a recent article, Anālayo (2022) attempts to correct what he perceives to be a mistaken impression of the status of meditation among the lay followers of the Buddha as recounted in the Suttapiṭaka. The author surveys the Pāli Nikāyas, Chinese Āgamas, and several Sanskrit and Tibetan texts for examples that he presents as evidence of the “remarkable” prevalence of meditation among lay Buddhists in early Buddhism, using four categories: recollection, concentration, mindfulness, and insight. However, the majority of the examples he cites fail to support such a conclusion, and the author makes numerous unwarranted assumptions based on ambiguous situations. I analyze representative examples of texts cited by Anālayo and ultimately reject his claim that “the contemporary spread of lay meditation... [is] a revival of an ancient Indian antecedent, rather than an innovation.” Instead, I suggest that, apart from the lay practice of recollecting the Three Jewels (tiratana-anussati), the prevailing scholarly view is correct: unambiguous depictions of lay meditation in the Suttapiṭaka, while they exist, are extremely rare. Keywords: lay meditation, early Buddhism, mindfulness, Suttapiṭaka