Guided meditation by the Buddha?

Discussion
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Does MN140 sutta seems like a guided meditation to you. Anyone tried meditating with this instruction?

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Never tried to meditate as extensively as explained in this Sutta. Thanks for pointing it out.
With Metta

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MN 140 is not a guided meditation, it’s a description of the upper levels of the path to help an advanced meditator. It would not be profitable for a learner to treat it as such.

Once the practitioner has an idea of the noble eightfold path, there are several directions they can take. One is based on the elements, which I have developed. This is the interaction of dynamics, such as the fire sticks mentioned in MN 140, and the fire and water expression of tranquillity and insight in SN 46.53. This is not a guided meditation, but a way of understanding how the path operates at the level of the seven factors of awakening.

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Yes. I tried it many times. I love that sutta. It a really raw instance. I loved that Buddha didn’t really care to immediately say it’s him

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It is to the eye of the beholder. :sweat_smile: i myself took it also directly like its written. I even believe it actually is way closer to Buddha early style of teaching. You can see he roamed free. So it must have been early

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Usually, the instruction into first Jhana is succinctly stated as “Quite secluded (withdrawn, separated) from sensual desires”. It seems to me that contemplating the elements (earth, water, fire, air, space) as with proper wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ is a method to achieve this.

Furthermore, by contemplating feelings as dependent on contacts (pleasant, painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant), One understands: ‘With the cessation of that same contact to be felt as (pleasant, painful) neither-painful-nor-pleasant, its corresponding feeling…ceases and subsides.’. One experiences Then there remains only equanimity, purified and bright, malleable, wieldy, and radiant., which is the fourth Jhana apparently.

Happy to hear your views on this.

Dhātuvibhaṅgasutta
Majjhima Nikāya MN140

“What, bhikkhu, is the earth element? The earth element may be either internal or external. What is the internal earth element? Whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to, that is, head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines, mesentery, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind dispassionate towards the earth element.