EBTs which indicate the experience of the body disappears while meditating?

[cjmacie]

@Erika_ODonnell

@Dhammanando

Even where translators render kāya as ‘body’ it doesn’t settle the question as to whether it is the material body or the body of mental factors that is referred to. The latter understanding is explicitly stated as early as the Abhidhamma Piṭaka’s Vibhaṅga:

It seems to me that in the West we are coming from Cartesian mind-body dualism; part of the metaphysical worldview we learn through our culture is that the physical and the mental are two different things…

And discussions of this sort almost invariably invoke notions of the “physical body”, which, strictly speaking, is not experienced directly. The modern notion ties in with the scientific view, which seeks the objective, that which is observed only externally. The body as “mine” is experienced phenomenologically – as proprioceptive phenomena presented to the mind.

Arguably, the Buddha speaks strictly of what appears in the mind, in the individual’s direct experience, which is where dukkha arises, and where it can be escaped from. In fact notions like the 5 khandha-s and the 4 Mahābhūta as perceptual modes represent what could be called a phenomenological analysis – they can be seen as byproducts of deeply investigating the details of mental processes.