Can you hear sound and feel body in jhāna?

Thank you for the explanation. I had seen the expression and I remembered it from the pasumdhovaka sutta but I really didn’t think anyone could go as far as taking it to mean the 4 jhanas. It’s too far fetched for me so I personally label that as irrelevant and move on.

Thanks Frank.

I believe your limiting that concentration to one exclusively accessible by arahants is based on Ven Thanissaro’s translation of AN 9.37 below? -

“Once, friend, when I was staying in Saketa at the Game Refuge in the Black Forest, the nun Jatila Bhagika went to where I was staying, and on arrival—having bowed to me—stood to one side. As she was standing there, she said to me: ‘The concentration whereby—neither pressed down nor forced back, nor with fabrication kept blocked or suppressed—still as a result of release, contented as a result of standing still, and as a result of contentment one is not agitated: This concentration is said by the Blessed One to be the fruit of what (kiṃphalo)?’

“I said to her, ‘Sister, the concentration whereby—neither pressed down nor forced back, nor with fabrication kept blocked or suppressed—still as a result of release, contented as a result of standing still, and as a result of contentment one is not agitated: This concentration is said by the Blessed One to be the fruit of gnosis (aññāphalo).’ This is another way of being percipient when not sensitive to that dimension.”

see also fn 1 to his translation : Ananda Sutta: With Ananda

There are 2 problems with Ven T’s translation:

  1. kiṃphalo is not a tappurisa compound but a bahubbīhi. This leads to aññāphalo also being a bahubbīhi compound. Aññāphalo should thus be translated as “has aññā as its fruit”, not “fruit of aññā”.

  2. This leads to the 2nd problem which is more damning. In Ven T’s model, where the samādhi which is “na sasaṅ­khā­ra­nig­gay­ha­vārita­gata” is accessible only by arahants, the poor arahant has to undergo awakening and non-agitation over and over again, as he/she will then as a result of this concentration be -

still as a result of release, contented as a result of standing still, and as a result of contentment one is not agitated

So, in Ven T’s schema, the arahant will by implication be someone who is not content and who frets about the future, unless he/she accesses this concentration to become content and anxiety-free. Come on! Really?

Could you point to any textual support for this bifurcation? As far as I can tell, there is only one bifurcation of the jhanas - the type supported by Right View, and the type not supported by Right View (see AN 4.123 and AN 4.124, which appear to have been one sutta originally, judging from how both are attested in MA 168). In both types of jhana, they are described by the exact same formulae in terms of their cognitive and hedonic content. I would like to see a proper argument ventilated, and not just a suspicion expressed that the arahant’s jhana’s cognitive and hedonic content are different from a non-arahant’s jhana.

For me, the mention of the na sasaṅ­khā­ra­nig­gay­ha­vārita­gata concentration by Ven Ananda after the formless attainment is a mere literary device - “BTW, let’s not forget the jhanas”.

This brings me to -

No, you can’t do that, as a search for “na sasaṅ­khā­ra” leads also to sasaṅkhāraparinibbāyī (an attainer of Nibbana with effort". Here is where “na sasaṅ­khā­ra­nig­gay­ha­vārita­gata” pops up -

AN 3.101
AN 9.37
DN 34
AN 5.27

DN 34 contains the AN 5.27 listing, and this is what DN 34 says -

Katame pañca dhammā uppādetabbā? Pañca ñāṇiko sammāsamādhi: ‘ayaṃ samādhi ­pac­cup­pan­na­su­kho ceva āyatiñca sukhavipāko’ti paccattaṃyeva ñāṇaṃ uppajjati. ‘Ayaṃ samādhi ariyo nirāmiso’ti paccattaññeva ñāṇaṃ uppajjati. ‘Ayaṃ samādhi akāpuri­sa­sevito’ti paccattaṃyeva ñāṇaṃ uppajjati. ‘Ayaṃ samādhi santo paṇīto paṭippas­sad­dha­laddho eko­dibhā­vā­dhi­gato, na sasaṅ­khā­ra­nig­gay­ha­vārita­gato’ti paccattaṃyeva ñāṇaṃ uppajjati. ‘So kho panāhaṃ imaṃ samādhiṃ satova samāpajjāmi sato vuṭṭhahāmī’ti paccattaṃyeva ñāṇaṃ uppajjati. Ime pañca dhammā uppādetabbā.

Note, it applies these distinctions to Right Concentration.

But, why not? If we look at the passage, it makes the transition from the na sasaṅ­khā­ra­nig­gay­ha­vārita­gata concentration to the 6 Supernormal Knowledges. According to AN 9.35, these powers are accessible to anyone emerging from any of the jhana or formless attainments.

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Remember that buddha as a child have entered jhana too so I don’t think the child couldn’t hear sound at all there and the most important thing is he entered that state unintentionally effortlessly naturally without instruction/guidance at all by his own that’s very different to the adult buddha where he used instructions from his former teachers to do heavy mortification like starvation and long breath holding without result/jhana at all

So simplicity is king here , obviously the little buddha is not smarter than the adult buddha but the end result told us a different story