When we read about other people’s meditation experiences, we like to read about the really dramatic ones: The meditator’s awareness leaves his body and goes wandering around, sees all kinds of visions. Or a meditator discovers a sense of oneness with everything she sees. Everything is beautiful, luminous. These things sound very impressive, something we’d like to try too. But you have to look a little further into their stories, and you realize that those kinds of extreme experiences are things that have to be remedied. They’re problems. They actually get in the way of the goal. When meditators have experiences like that, their teacher—if they have a good meditation teacher—will say, “Okay, you’ve got to get over that; you’ve got to get past that. The weird stuff is not what it’s all about.”
The subject was Leigh Brasington, right? And he is a teacher authorized by Ayya Khema, right? Are there many people alive right now whom we can trust more than him on jhāna practice?
I’m struggling to see what this paper actually tells us. I am interested for example in which regions of the brain are involved with vitakka and vicāra. Does this paper tell us anything about that? I could not see anything about that, but I am not really understanding much about what they are saying about brain regions and all that. Can anyone help?
I find it interesting that you contrast ‘The bloke’ and ‘real Theravada monks’. I am not so sure that a set or robs and vows automatically make someone more valid or trustworthy! And even if you do, is it not worth anything that this ‘bloke’ was authorised as a jhāna teacher by a ‘real Theravada nun’?
By the way, does anyone know of jhāna retreats available in Europe by anyone other than the subject of this paper? I’d be very interested in the opportunity for retreats, with them or him!
There were similar issues with the Tibetan meditators. Practices like tummo for example, are secret. But the Dalai Lama sent monks (so I heard) to be researched, out of the compassionate motivation to benefit beings. He also had some included on one or more documentaries about Tibetan Buddhism, allowing practices to be filmed which are never usually allowed to be seen by the uninitiated.
They did it because he told them to, so they were not breaking vows as such, but rather obeying whom they should obey. I don’t know how authority works in Theravada, but if it’s similar to Tibet, the head of a monastery (or preceptor) who is compassionate enough to break vinaya rules (if this research would mean doing that) and giving express permission to his/her monks/nuns to do so, thus relieving them from the burden of vinaya breakage.
I have seen plenty of Tibetan Lamas be open about their attainment of rigpa and so on. I think it’s really important actually. I don’t want to be learning from a teacher who has no experience, so if they tell me they don’t have the experience, I want to go elsewhere. And if they actually do have the experience but are saying otherwise, then we have a liar on the throne, and I really do not like that. I don’t want to be lied to.
I have also seen Tibetan teachers deny attainments they do have, and this saddens me as a sick culture. And it also becomes sicker, when teachers (and there are those who do this) use humility with pride, being more and more ‘humble’ and denying attainments over and over, seemingly as a way to boost their status and make their followers believe they are perfect, buddhas, or whatever.
It is my opinion that in this age, we need honesty. And to add on to that, also honesty about the inauthenticity of the Mahayana sutras, and so on. Enough of the lies and cognitive dissonance! And with that, everyone can trash their blind faith in those inauthentic texts, and therefore trash their sectarian views against the Buddha’s teachings (the arahant ideal, jhāna, and so on).
When I read the suttas I get the impression of an honest group of people, who, when they attained the goal, proclaimed that openly. People who talked frankly, who were willing to answer questions about their attainments and experience. Who didn’t hide behind lies.
And I also wonder if the other, lying attitude, came from the influence of scholars in the early Sangha. Many people spent their lives getting good at the texts. And they were surrounded by a society which valued that over pretty much anything else perhaps, with the well learned Brahmin as the highest spiritual authority. I remember myself, in a Tibetan community, seeing the Khenpo (scholar-monk teacher) coming out of a family house having had dinner, and stinking of alcohol. I thought to myself what a respected member of society he was, and how he had so many friends, and people who would be honoured to invite him to drink and eat.
I don’t know about the alcohol, but the rest, was probably quite similar for big scholars in the early Sangha. And on top of that is the hierarchy of respect within the Sangha itself, both for the Khenpo and the early guys.
That’s the kind of power that people want to hold onto!
But just think, in the face of the Buddha’s teachings, that doesn’t show you in a very good light. The Buddha taught that we are to practice jhāna and become arahants. And you’re a scholar, who doesn’t even do meditation perhaps, or if you do, not well. So if everyone knows this, then your ranking is going to be pretty low!
So a good way to address this balance is to make rules to try to make the actual high ones invisible. Forbid them from speaking about it! And on top of that, maybe re-work some of the suttas to make it seem like there is a way to be an arahant without even doing jhāna! Then then you and your scholar buddies who don’t even practice the Buddha’s path can try to come off like arahants yourselves! That would be a convenient way to rise up the social ranking.
I have a feeling that the lying culture so prevalent in Tibetan Buddhism may have had origins along these lines. And I would say that while it helps the scholars, it doesn’t help the people who actually want to practice Buddhism.
Yes sure there is also a problem when people are allowed to talk of attainments, because some people lie. But when you are allowed, then we have this - those that say they have attainments are of two categories:
People who have attainments and say they don’t, are telling the truth.
People don’t have them and say they do are lying.
And when it is not allowed to speak of your attainments:
People who have them are lying (by saying they don’t)
People don’t have them and say they do are lying.
Either way, the people who don’t have them, are lying when they say they do. All the rule does is turn people with attainments into liars. Thanks!
In the West, we don’t admire lies. It is inappropriate here. And it’s dumb that Westerners who become Buddhists have to adopt the view that lying is good, and ‘humble’. The Buddha didn’t play by those rules, and we have many examples of his disciples being honest and open about their attainments. And that’s what fits the West.
Meditation is a skill. Imagine you wanted to learn another skill - guitar playing. A specific kind of guitar playing.
Now imagine that you went to a guitar teacher who was great at regular jazz, so so at gypsy jazz, played a bit of blues, no heavy metal and no classical, was great with scales and had a good understanding of Western music theory.
Now imagine that you asked him what his strengths and weaknesses were. And he said “I don’t have any strengths, I can’t play guitar”. That would be utterly unhelpful.
Now imagine instead that he said, was great at regular jazz, so so at gypsy jazz, played a bit of blues, no heavy metal and no classical, was great with scales and had a good understanding of Western music theory. That, would be useful information.
Weird is related to ‘average behaviour’. There is the contrast between normal and abnormal.
There is another way to think about this: prepersonal, personal and, transpersonal.
To the average Joe/Jill, weird may refer to anything prepersonal or transpersonal - it all gets lumped in together. What is normal for some may appear weird or supernormal to others.
The Buddha did not teach that Samadhi states are weird and should be avoided. He did not teach that transpersonal insights - that go beyond a sense of self - are something that is weird or abberant.
What do you make of it? Fabricated may be a reference to the ‘perception of’ - perception requires recognition. Recognition requires memory. Memory is a recording and reconstruction of past happenings ergo fabrication?
Sorry this is very late. ‘Intended’ means it has been intentionally given rise to by wilful application of mindfulness to the base of ‘x’. These are all fabricated meaning not ‘falsified’ but in the sense of functionally created (as opposed to Nibbana which is ‘uncreated’- asankhata).
That sounds possibly like one of the jokes of Ajahn Brahm. Who knows?
