Thank you, bhante and others, for the insightful discussion. As an aside: if that has not been noted on SuttaCentral, it would certainly warrant one or several footnotes. There have been likely dozens of articles and voluminous books arguing that, based on passages like these in MN 26, the formless and other styles of meditation are completely non-Buddhist and incompatible with Buddhism — thereby leading them to come to an assortment of different conclusions.
If there is any difference in meditative approach apart from view I see, it is also the subjectivity.
A common critique of ‘commentarial’ and Abhidhamma-based meditation approaches is that they are object- and concentration-centric. It is about accomplishing feats of concentrated focus upon ‘objects.’ In the early suttas, samādhi is more about a nourishing, replenishing collecting of the mind together via a process of inner subjective purification. It is not necessarily that the proper states arrived at themselves are so different, but rather the approach and attitude — along with the view — which are critical for proper use of samādhi.
I think what the childhood story is pointing to, partly what @sujato has already mentioned, is a sense of emotional well-being and ease arrived at through letting go and relinquishing involvement in agitating mental states or the pursuit of sensual pleasures. This is opposed to, say, a state based on forcing the mind onto the image of a candle, which is more about accomplishing a feat rather than nourishing the mind with a pleasure of renunciation free of sensuality, distraction, and unwholesome states.
The bodhisatta’s journey was all about striving. All about getting, obtaining, arriving at his goal. And then he remembered the spontaneous, effortless peace that he attained as a child with these principles above. He saw that was the way — ease, letting go, subjective purification of our attitudes towards the world rather than the objects in it. Striving and chasing is the main problem itself. This culminates in the four noble truths, where craving to get / indulge in sensuality, states of being, etc. is the cause of picking up the suffering in the world; we must learn to set it down and remove our ‘self’ from the situation.
We see this principle in the Buddha’s description of sati and samādhi practice: he primarily talks about the hindrances — mental states and attitudes within ourself — and we how feed, starve, and remove them as gateways to well-being and wisdom. He contrasts these with the awakening factors — another set of subjective qualities developed within oneself. Then there are examples of how many practices can fulfil these so long as one cultivates with the proper attitudes in line with the underlying principle of them. Of course, sustained recollection and attention are important for having a non-scattered mind, but there is often an overall different tone around these things rather than fixing and drilling the mind into something effortfully.
But my main intent in writing this is to address this idea that
If this is so — how did he attain one as an untrained child, spontaneously and without prior reflection?
If a child did this, what about all the other children in and before his day? Or adults who adopted the same attitude? The very fact that he just stumbled into this state says something: it is naturally accessible to humans and can be stumbled into even by someone with wrong view and no Buddhist practice (which was true of the bodhisatta prior to his going forth even).
Just some ideas.
