AN 4.190 has a pretty clear (over-simple?) classification for practice and its result
Realizing jhanas --> state of a deva
Realizing brahmaviharas --> state of brahma
Realizing arupas --> state of ānejja (imperturbable)
Realizing dukkha, origin, cessation, path --> ariya
We know that it’s more complex than that, all four are intricately connected in other suttas, the jhanas helping with the realizations of the truths, brahmaviharas at least with highly developing the mind or leading to jhanas, ānejja associated with the fourth jhana, just before the three knowledges, etc.
But still, again it makes me wonder why so many suttas don’t doctrinally culminate in the noble realization. Many end with a good human rebirth, or as a deva. If, as it is stated in other places dealing with the samsaric journey, a rebirth as a deva is in itself utterly pointless, why waste dhamma on it?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a “A Real-Time Map of Births and Deaths” for all the realms? It might be that the probability to attain arahantship from a deva or brahma realm is just higher. Then the Buddha might have propagated different paths for individuals, knowing that at least they might ascend from ‘there’ (sounds like sukhavati btw).
I think it might be an example of the Buddha’s miraculous power of mind. To be able to tell the degree of a disciple’s aspiration and the development of their faculties, and teach according to that.
Does anyone know if the ānejja mentioned above is synonymous to the āneñjasamādhi mentioned in the Ud3.3 ?
"Then the Gracious One, after rising from that concentration, addressed venerable Ānanda, saying:
“If you knew, Ānanda, you would not say even this much about them. I and these five hundred monks, Ānanda, have all been sat in imperturbable concentration.”
I’m pretty sure it is. As in Ud 3.3 ānejja usually signifies a state transcending dukkha and sukha. Sometimes it stands alone like in MN 106, but more often connected with or coming after the 4th jhana - the state that transcended the sukha of the 3rd. So it poses no difficulty to understand the Udana in that sense. Especially with the ending verse:
“He who is victorious over the thorn of sense desire,
Scolding, slaying, and other bonds,
He who stands unmoved like a mountain,
That monk does not shake in regard to pleasure and pain.”
I wouldn’t dare to state this philologically, but the dictionary entry for anejja says:
The third P form ān-eñja is a direct (later, and probably re-instituted formation from Sk. iñjya, which in an interesting way became in BSk. re-sanskritised to āñijya (which on the other hand may represent āñejja & thus give the latter the feature of a later, but more specifically Pāli form) The editions of P. Texts show a great variance of spelling based on MSS. vacillation, in part also due to confusion of derivation
