In Buddhism, (Pali: , Sanskrit: |karmasthāna) which literally means place of work. Its original meaning was someone's occupation (farming, trading, cattle-tending, etc.) but this meaning has developed into several distinct but related usages all having to do with Buddhist meditation.
Its most basic meaning is as a word for meditation, with meditation being the main occupation of Buddhist monks. In Burma, senior meditation practitioners are known as "kammatthanacariyas" (meditation masters). The Thai Forest Tradition names itself Kammaṭṭhāna Forest tradition in reference to their practice of meditating in the forests.
In the Pali literature, prior to the post-canonical Pali commentaries, the term comes up in only a handful of discourses and then in the context of "work" or "trade."
Buddhaghosa uses "kammatthana" to refer to each of his forty meditation objects listed in the third chapter of the Visuddhimagga, which are partially derived from the Pāli Canon. In this sense "kammatthana" can be understood as "occupations" in the sense of "things to occupy the mind" or "workplaces" in the sense of "places to focus the mind on during the work of meditation". Throughout his translation of the Visuddhimagga, Ñāṇamoli translates this term simply as "meditation subject".[1]
Kasina (Pali: |kasina|a whole|links=no, Sanskrit: |kṛtsna|links=no) refers to a class of basic visual objects of meditation used in Theravada Buddhism. The objects are described in the Pali Canon and summarized in the famous Visuddhimagga meditation treatise as kammaṭṭhāna on which to focus the mind whenever attention drifts.[2] Kasina meditation is one of the most common types of samatha-vipassana, intended to settle the mind of the practitioner and create a foundation for further practices of meditation.
The Visuddhimagga concerns kasina meditation.[3] According to American scholar-monk Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, "the text then tries to fit all other meditation methods into the mold of kasina practice, so that they too give rise to countersigns, but even by its own admission, breath meditation does not fit well into the mold."[3] He argues that by emphasizing kasina meditation, the Visuddhimagga departs from the focus on jhāna in the Pali Canon. Thanissaro Bhikkhu states this indicates that what "jhana means in the commentaries is something quite different from what it means in the Canon."[3]
Although practice with kasiṇas is associated with the Theravāda tradition, it appears to have been more widely known among various Buddhist schools in India at one time. Asanga makes reference to kasiṇas in the Samāhitabhūmi section of his Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra.[4] Uppalavannā, one of the Buddha's chief female disciples, famously attained arahantship using a fire (tejo) kasina as her object of meditation.[5] [6] [7]
Of the forty objects meditated upon as kammaṭṭhāna, the first ten are kasina described as 'things one can behold directly'. These are described in the Visuddhimagga, and also mentioned in the Pali Tipitaka.[8] They are: