There is no contradiction; nor did i discern you pointing out a contradiction.
Sujato agrees with MN 19.
Its hard for me to derive clear meaning from this statement. The word ‘vicara’ is not found in MN 117:14.2 and Sujato appears to be unusually suggesting Samma Sammā Saṅkappa here is Samma Samadhi. This is not convincing.
Sujato told you the Pali text of MN 125 on Sutta Central is corrupted (with the repeated phase: “sensual pleasures”). Access to Insight uses a different Pali text, which indicates the stopping of thinking prior to the 2nd jhana:
The Tathagata then disciplines him further, saying: ‘Come you, monk, fare along contemplating the body in the body, but do not apply yourself to a train of thought connected with the body; fare along contemplating the feelings in the feelings… the mind in the mind… mental states in mental states, but do not apply yourself to a train of thought connected with mental states.’
How would rupa be ceased with jhana? Nama I guess would make sense but only if we discard the arupa samadhis first. Traditionally, jhana is directly tied to the rupadhatu, so it would be considered an escape from kama, not rupa. This is what I mean about people making up their own theories. I doubt any traditional Buddhist source says anything like “the goal of jhana is the cessation of namarupa.” It would be considered part of the process, but it isn’t meditation that does that, it’s awakening.
I mean the goal of jhana is the development of psychic powers, if we just read the patipada as a straightforward description of early buddhsit praxis withput feeling the need to align it to all the technical and numerical terminology that develops in the rest of the canon.
Once the astral body has been produced it is used to see the past lives, the arising amd passing of beings, and finally the distruction of the poisons of sensuality, desire for “being” and desire to “know”.
Thats what the patipada says, ten or eleven times over, at the beginning of the first big book of buddhism, as asserted by all the vinaya traditions except the sarvastivadans.
(Pardon my oversimplifications, but that is, imo, the basic picture here.)
Namarupa minus nama is no longer namarupa. Nama ceasing is namarupa ceasing. Water, earth, fire, and air are still seen , but they do lose something. They find no footing, that is, they lose their substance without contrast or distinguishing features to identify them and so cannot be labeled or named. There is only the seen, only the heard, and only the felt.
Both the Pali Athakavaga and its Chinese counterpart mention the importance of the cessation of namarupa. See Snp 4.11 and Y13
I suspect “[When] mentality ceases, and materiality becomes no more” should be read [When] mentality ceases, materiality becomes no more.
Ultimately, I think meditation should inform the reading of the text and vice versa. My own meditation experiences have led me to my own conclusions.
Added later:
I think it is safe to say that nama ceases when sanna ceases. Rupa remains in some weakened sense.
That is the most interesting ( to me) comment I’ve read on here so far. Feel free to drop the Pali and speak my language more often lol
I must find this patipada - this sounds like one of the things I’m looking for to further understandings I have come to - but not by the way of Buddhism.
I see what you mean now. This would be a temporary cessation of awareness of form, which would amount to a formless samadhi or cessation samadhi I would guess. Jhanas themselves wouldn’t reach that point in the tradition scheme of eight or nine levels of samadhi. Ultimately, though, this isn’t the way to the cessation of form. When you wake up from samadhi, form is back again. It hasn’t itself ceased, awareness of it was suppressed. [<- Actually, this isn’t right. The traditional view was that a practitioner can be reborn in a formless realm from practicing formless samadhis, so it can be an ultimate way to the cessation of form.]
I’ve begun a forum wiki that collects them together in one place recently. It may not include many new sources to those who are well read, but I hope that it would eventually be useful to anyone who wants to research topics surrounding the four jhanas in various languages, not just in Pali. It will require some help from others to become as comprehensive as I would like.
When you say “wake up from samadhi”, what do you mean? Are you talking about when you are up and about interacting with people or in some state while still on the cushion? I am trying to imagine how the Buddha could navigate the world and complex social interactions without name and form in some sense. I think final nibbana occurring at death implies that all other experiences of nibbana are temporary. If not, what was the significance of his final nibbana?
I believe, possibly erroneously, that nothingness is emptiness. No one is home, but it is still luminous. There is unparsed sense data. Visual data at least. The lights don’t go out. The person is gone along with the notion of a separate world. That is, the duality is gone. If blacking out is the goal. I have not gotten there. That sounds more like Jain mediation to me.
