He is a Thai and doesn’t speak English. I forgot his name as it was a long time ago. Sorry about that.
Actually some of the Burmese teachers give a similar reasoning:
When one experiences absorption, all that has happened is just an experience. Nothing is understood.
The understanding of impermanence is not about the five senses, but the direct knowledge of impermanence itself.
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.
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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
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Yes, indeed. The PDF (2007) has it different from what I got, which is earlier. I’ve removed the link.
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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?
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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".
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.’)
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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.
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.
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?
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Furthermore, the development of serenity [samatha], which culminates in samādhi, is important, quite apart from insight, as it develops the mind/heart [citta].
See AN4.94 for more about the development of tranquillity/serenity and discernment/insight.
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Regarding: “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.”
…[an individual] comprehend[s] thus, ‘This concentration of mind … is effected and thought out. But whatever is effected and thought out, that is impermanent, it is liable to stopping.’ When [the individual] knows this thus, sees this thus, [their] mind is freed from the canker of sense-pleasures and [their] mind is freed from the canker of becoming and [their] mind is freed from the canker of ignorance. In freedom is the knowledge that [one] is freed and [one] comprehends: “Destroyed is birth, brought to a close the (holy)-faring, done is what was to be done, there is no more of being such or so’. [They] comprehend thus: “The disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of sense-pleasures do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of becoming do not exist here; the disturbances there might be resulting from the canker of ignorance do not exist here. And there is only this degree of disturbance, that is to say the six sensory fields that, conditioned by life, are grounded on this body itself.”
(MN 7; tr. Pali Text Society vol I p 48)
Gautama said that the mindfulness that made up his way of living was something:
… peaceful and choice, something perfect in itself, and a pleasant way of living too.
(SN 54.9, tr. Pali Text Society SN vol V p 285)
In the same chapter, he said:
Before my awakening—when I was still unawakened but intent on awakening—I too usually practiced this kind of meditation.
(SN 54.8)
In the fourth jhana, Gautama exercised his mind to witness many things, including his past habitations and future arisings, and apparently his witness of these things led to the “profound knowledge” or “intuitive wisdom” that cut off the three cankers at the root.
That doesn’t say that everyone who arrives at the fourth concentration is going to experience those things, and the message I take from the passages I’ve quoted above is that even though I haven’t experienced those things, I can still find a way of living that is “peaceful and choice, … perfect in itself”.
Part of the mindfulness that made up Gautama’s was of living was:
[One] trains [oneself], thinking: ‘I will breathe in… breathe out beholding stopping.’
(MN 118, tr. PTS III p 124)
I would argue that he utilized the “survey-sign” taken after the fourth concentration to “behold stopping” breathing in and breathing out, to touch on the fourth concentration as a part of the mindfulness that was his way of living. I would argue that’s in fact what made the other aspects of his mindfulness possible, in a regular rotation.
Although Satipatthana (MN 10) doesn’t mention concentration except in passing (in the factors of enlightenment), the four concentrations culminating in the “stopping” of inhalation and exhalation are included in the mindfulness of Maha Satipatthana (DN 22).
I don’t think that mindfulness is possible without regular attainment of the fourth jhana. If we look at the initial jhanas as indispensable to the mindfulness Gautama recommended (in Anapanasati MN 118 as well), then we have a different perspective on both mindfulness and concentration.
Although I may never witness past habitations and future arisings, and thereby cut off the three cankers as Gautama did, I am satisfied with Gautama’s recommendation of his own mindfulness as a way of living. And enlightenment is not required to practice that mindfulness, as he himself said.
Yes, the experience is not like waking up from a dream. Like I said, I was merely referring to “get(ting) to reconnect with the five senses.”
We can make our own speculations, but what we have here is this:
According to the Tricycle, Aj Brahm said,
Ajahn Jayasaro, who translated Ajahn Chah’s biography, told me that many old recordings exist of Ajahn Chah teaching appana samadhi.”
while according to Aj Jayasaro,
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.’)
Here’s a link:
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In a Taste of Freedom, Ajahn Chah taught:
“it just happens by itself”
This view likely reflects Ajahns Chah’s own practice. Its been said that he had strong samadhi experiences which would just arise spontaneously eg when he was lying down to rest.
This would also explain why Ajahn Chah was not widely known for teaching specific samadhi or jhana instructions.
Has anyone asked Aj Brahm if Tricycle misquoted him?