A Conversation between Ven. Aggacitta and Ajahn Brahm

[Dheerayupa]

He is a Thai and doesn’t speak English. I forgot his name as it was a long time ago. Sorry about that.

[mikenz66]

@Dheerayupa quoting a a Thai forest monk

If you teach it and laypeople fail too many times, they will feel discouraged and don’t want to practice meditation at all. Present moment awareness is not too difficult to do and it benefits them. I’ve chosen to do things that will help people.

Actually some of the Burmese teachers give a similar reasoning:

@Chanmyay Sayadaw

So Vipassana meditation is of two types: The first, Vipassana meditation, insight meditation is preceded by Samatha meditation. The second is the pure Vipassana meditation or insight meditation not preceded by Samatha meditation. The first type of Vipassana meditation or Insight Meditation is practised by those who have ample time to devote to their meditation. They have to spend maybe three or four months on Samatha meditation. And when they are satisfied with their attainment of jhana concentration they proceed with Vipassana meditation.

Vipassana Meditation Course: Preliminary Stages

[kumara]

@Erika_ODonnell

On the flip side, Venerable, is it possible to truly 100% believe in impermanence without experiencing absorption?

When one experiences absorption, all that has happened is just an experience. Nothing is understood.

What other way is there to directly experience the impermanence of the five senses (and the parts of the mind that depend on the five senses)?

The understanding of impermanence is not about the five senses, but the direct knowledge of impermanence itself.

Someone who doesn’t practice absorption could infer impermanence from observation (people die, things break, etc.), but how can they go beyond inference?

By direct knowledge.

When you emerge from an absorption experience, you get to reconnect with the five senses. It’s just the same as waking up from sleep.

[mikenz66]

Bhante,

Is it possible you have been working from a different translation? You quoted it as: “That which can be most harmful to the meditator is absorption samādhi (jhāna)…” whereas the PDF that you linked to reads:

That which can possibly be harmful to the meditator is ab-
sorption samādhi (jhāna), the samādhi with deep, sustained calm.
This samādhi brings great peace. Where there is peace, there is
happiness. When there is happiness, attachment and clinging to
that happiness arise. The meditator doesn’t want to contemplate
anything else, he just wants to indulge in that pleasant feeling.
When we have been practising for a long time we may become
adept at entering this samādhi very quickly. As soon as we start
to note our meditation object, the mind enters calm, and we don’t
want to come out to investigate anything. We just get stuck on
that happiness. This is a danger to one who is practising medita-
tion.
https://www.abhayagiri.org/media/books/chah_a_taste_of_freedom.pdf

[kumara]

Yes, indeed. The PDF (2007) has it different from what I got, which is earlier. I’ve removed the link.

[Erika_ODonnell]

@kumara

When you emerge from an absorption experience, you get to reconnect with the five senses. It’s just the same as waking up from sleep.

We must have different ideas of what absorption means. The way I understand absorption is that mind consciousness is still there, usually extremely awake, so the ‘rise and fall’ of the five senses can be directly experienced by the mind consciousness, as one enters and emerges from the absorption.

I know the Thai forest tradition emphasized sleeping very little. It’s possible to fall asleep but still have some residual awareness, this could be called a form of absorption but the awareness is very dull.

Is it this second type of state you have in mind when you use the word absorption?

[kumara]

No. I understand how you use the word. By saying “It’s just the same as waking up from sleep”, I was merely referring to “get(ting) to reconnect with the five senses.” Perhaps it’s clearer if I had said “similar to waking up from a dream".

[kumara]

@Erika_ODonnell

This is from the article:

“Ajahn Chah did teach jhanas, but not publicly,” Ajahn Brahm said in an email. “He would call it appana samadhi , which is the Abhidhamma term. Ajahn Jayasaro, who translated Ajahn Chah’s biography, told me that many old recordings exist of Ajahn Chah teaching appana samadhi.”

I’ve written to Ajahn Jayasaro to ask about this, and he said:

Most of the Ajahn Man disciples preferred using the khanika-upacāra-appanā framework for talking about samādhi. Ajahn Chah also spoke about jhāna on occasion, but emphasised knowing phenomena directly experienced rather than categorising them, either as jhāna or appanā. I can’t remember specific conversations with Ajahn Brahm, but that says more about my memory than anything else. Now, I would say there are old recordings of Ajahn Chah referring to appanā samādhi, (rather than 'teaching it.’)

[kumara]

On the “harmful” quote, let me check with a monk friend (of Ajahn Chah tradition) who’s proficient in Thai. I’ll get back to you all.

[Erika_ODonnell]

@kumara

By saying “It’s just the same as waking up from sleep”, I was merely referring to “get(ting) to reconnect with the five senses.” Perhaps it’s clearer if I had said “similar to waking up from a dream".

But that’s not what absorption feels like. Getting reconnected to the five senses isn’t similar to waking up from a dream at all. Respectfully, venerable, I don’t see how anyone who had experienced absorption would ever make that comparison.

The exception would be absorption-like experiences with dull mindfulness, such as falling asleep without losing awareness.

Another thing is if the mind is not stable enough beforehand, then the absorption experience can be too abrupt and chaotic for the mind to see what’s going on.

So, it seems possible to experience the dis/re-appearance of the five senses in a way that makes it hard or impossible to glean any insight from it. That would be in cases when the mind either lacks stability or strength of mindfulness, AFAIK.

@kumara

I’ve written to Ajahn Jayasaro to ask about this, and he said:

Most of the Ajahn Man disciples preferred using the khanika-upacāra-appanā framework for talking about samādhi. Ajahn Chah also spoke about jhāna on occasion, but emphasised knowing phenomena directly experienced rather than categorising them, either as jhāna or appanā. I can’t remember specific conversations with Ajahn Brahm, but that says more about my memory than anything else. Now, I would say there are old recordings of Ajahn Chah referring to appanā samādhi, (rather than 'teaching it.’)

Maybe Ajahn Chah didn’t think most of his students were ready for such teachings? Why would Ajahn Chah teach about deep samadhi to young Westerners, some of whom didn’t know anything about Buddhism before ordaining?