What are pīti and sukha?

What is pīti?

Pī-ti sounds a bit like "pity" but with the two vowel sounds reversed in position. The long sound (like "ee" in English) comes after the "p". That's what the short line, called a macron, over the first "i" indicates. Then the short sound (like the "i" in the English word "bit") comes after the "t". Say "pea-tip" but miss off the final "p" and you've got it.

How we know pīti is a physical sensation

Pīti is a physical sensation. It's something we feel in the body. It may be weak or strong. It may be short-lived or lasting. It may be confined to one place, or it may be felt throughout the body. However it may manifest, it is something physical. We know that because of the way it's described by Buddha-ghosa, a great Buddhist scholar of the fifth-century AD. He lived many centuries after the composition of the Pāli suttas, but he spoke and wrote in the same language, and so he understood what its words meant.

How Buddha-ghosa described pīti

Buddha-ghosa discussed pīti in his explanation of Jhāna practice known as the Visuddhi-magga ("The Path of Purity"). There he distinguished five kinds of pīti. These five kinds can be thought of as a series of stages as the experience grows, though we don't always pass through all five of them. It's clear from the descriptions he gives that he was talking about physical experiences, experiences of the body.

• Minor pīti he said "is only able to raise the hairs on the body".
• Momentary pīti "is like flashes of lightening at different moments".
• Showering pīti "breaks over the body again and again like waves on the sea shore".
• Uplifting pīti "can be powerful enough to levitate the body and make it spring up into the air".
• "But when pervading pīti arises, the whole body is completely pervaded, like a filled bladder, like a rock cavern invaded by a huge inundation". ^{Footnote 1}

How the body is affected by pīti

Notice that "the body" is mentioned in four out of these five descriptions. Pīti may be weak or strong. It may be temporary, repeated or lasting. It may be partial or complete. We may pass through any or all of these stages as we train ourselves to experience pīti, even uplifting pīti. I've never left my seat and floated up towards the ceiling, but when the experience has been strong, and my eyes remained closed, I've certainly felt I might easily have been in mid-air—if it wasn't for the pressure on my seat!

Our purpose though is not to cultivate extraordinary experiences, but to generate the sukha with which we can embrace whatever reactivity may be present in our minds or our emotions.

So what is pīti?

Other teachers and translators have rendered pīti in ways that seem to miss this emphasis on it as a physical sensation. One teacher has rendered Step 5 as "breathing in (or out) and feeling joyful," Step 6 as "breathing in (or out) and feeling happy". ^{Footnote 2} A widely used translation of the suttas speaks of breathing in (and out) while experiencing rapture in Step 5, and while experiencing pleasure in Step 6. ^{Footnote 3}

The effects of pīti

Even the dictionaries fail to translate it in ways that bring out the physical nature of pīti. The older Pāli-English Dictionary suggests "joy, delight, zest, exuberence", while the newer Dictionary of Pāli gives just "joy" or "pleasure". All these words represent the possible effects of pīti, but none of them tells us what pīti itself is.

What pīti is

What then is pīti? My own attempt to translate pīti is to call it "an enhanced body-sensitivity". We feel physical sensations. They may vary, and they can grow, but when pīti arises we feel pleasurable sensations in the body.

In Step 3 we were asked to "experience the whole body". As we do so we develop a body-sensitivity. We come to feel sensations that tell us the body is here and is alive. In Step 5 these sensations develop further. They become stronger and more pervasive. That's why I call it an enhanced body-sensitivity.

What is sukha?

Say su-kha the way it's written. Strictly the "k" is aspirated, which means it's followed by a little outbreath of air ("kh"), but the difference between "k" and "kh", while obvious to speakers of Indian languages, is difficult for a European ear to hear.

Sukha has two meanings. When it describes other things it's the normal Pāli word for "pleasant" or "happy". It's often used in the texts to describe pleasant feelings (sukhā vedanā). But it can also be a "thing" in itself: "happiness" or "pleasantness". That's how it's used in Step 6 where sukha is something we experience.

What sukha means as a "thing" in itself

The Pāli-English Dictionary suggests three words to translate sukha when it's used in this sense: "wellbeing", "happiness", and "ease". In the context of Step 6 I've chosen to use "well-being". Well-being, I think, has a holistic sense which is appropriate here. It can include what we feel when the body is comfortable and at ease, or when experiencing the pleasantness of the enhanced sensitivity. But it is more than something purely physical. It can also include the contentedness and even joy we may feel when the body is at ease and the mind is relaxed and quiet.

Some readers may be familiar with the word dukkha "pain", "unpleasantness", "stress", or "suffering". Sukha is the opposite of dukkha.

With Step 6 we begin to move beyond mindfulness of the body and to experience the whole of our being: body, mind and emotions.

Understanding Steps 5 and 6

Now that we have gained an understanding of the two key experiences in Steps 5 and 6, we can read them again, with all the words put into English this time.

Step 5. One trains oneself, "Experiencing an enhanced body-sensitivity I'll breathe in;"
one trains oneself, "Experiencing an enhanced body-sensitivity I'll breathe out."

Step 6. One trains oneself, "Experiencing well-being I'll breathe in;"
one trains oneself, "Experiencing well-being I'll breathe out."

Yet the two words we've been exploring, pīti and sukha, have a significance beyond just what they mean, as we'll explore on the next page.

Footnotes

1. Buddhaghosa, Visuddhi-magga, IV. 94–98, following the translation of Ñāṇamoli, The Path of Purification, Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka, 1975, p. 137f.

2. Thich Nhat Hanh: Breathe! You are Alive, 1988, London: Rider, p. 7.

3. Ñānamoli and Bodhi, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, 2015, Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, p. 994