Hi Venerable, we discussed this issue before here. But to clarify my take on this, because these are interesting discourses that are often overlooked:
SN48.40 I actually deem more problematic for the interpretation of jhanas in which sukha is felt “with the body”, because it says the faculty of sukha has ceased in the third jhana, where there still is sukha.
With this in mind, the faculty of sukha (which SN48.36-38 indeed define as bodily) cannot refer to the sukha of the third jhana itself. The sukha that still exists in the third jhana is actually part of the somanassa faculty, defined in SN48.36-38 as “mental pleasure (sukha)”. This faculty is said in SN48.40 to not exist in the fourth jhana, indicating quite clearly that the sukha of the third jhana is this mental pleasure. As Bhikkhu Bodhi writes in his footnote:
“The pleasure faculty (sukhindriya) here is bodily pleasant feeling, not the happiness (also called sukha) the meditator is said to “experience with the body” in the third jhāna. The latter sukha is actually mental happiness, identical with somanassa.”
(Note that his “with the body” for kāyena is translated by Ven. Sujato as “personally”, which is what I agree it actually means.)
But how then are we to make sense of the statement about the third jhana, that bodily pleasure has ceased there?
In the earlier discussion some people wondered whether SN48.40 may be inauthentic, but it seems very unlikely the Pali editors would have accidentally put an error so obvious and serious in the canon. “Parallels” that were brought up to support this supposed inauthenticity are not really parallels at all, but later summary texts that seem to attempt to try to fix this “problem” of the third jhana. (Yet in doing so they create new problems.) The name of the discourse, “Irregular Order [of the faculties]”, also indicates that the Pāli compilers were well aware of what they were doing. Whoever named the text wouldn’t call it “irregular order” and then not seriously consider the order of the faculties! So this somewhat strange, irregular use of faculties wasn’t an accident. It was intended, of that I’m sure. Either way, dismissing the text as inauthentic is the opposite of reconciling them, so it doesn’t answer the topic’s question.
Alternatively, the definition of the faculties in SN48.36-38 may not apply to SN48.40, but that seems to me equally far-fetched.
A main principle in textual studies is that of lectio difficilior, which suggests that the most difficult readings are more likely to be authentic. This is a difficult passage, but the Pali editors would very unlikely have made such an error accidentally.
Since it is a difficult and unique passage, I also suggest a somewhat difficult and unique way of reading it.
The way I can see to reconcile the texts is as follows. The point that is being made with the third jhana in SN48.40 is exactly to indicate that the sukha that exists there (and therefore in the first and second as well) is not bodily. All bodily sukha has ceased there, is what the discourse says directly, after all.
When you say that in SN48.40 “the first 2 Jhānas still has feelings of pleasure from the physical body”, this is not true. Technically, the discourse just says this bodily pleasure has ceased in the third. It doesn’t literally say that it still existed in the first two jhanas. Point being, it has ceased in the first and second as well, but that is not the relevant point being made in the discourse. That’s how I see it.
It’s not a normal way of phrasing this, for sure, but it is quite clear to me that the discourse tries to creatively map the four faculties of happiness/pleasure/pain/sadness onto the four jhanas. But the problem is, they don’t map on precisely. This is also clear from the domanassa faculty, which the discourse says has ceased in the second jhana, while other discourses (e.g. AN5.176) say it already ceased in the first.
In sum, we should not read SN48.40 as a sequential cessation of the faculties in the sequential jhanas, where one ceases in the first jhana, another in the second, and so forth. Because the faculties just don’t cease that way. We should instead read it as a clarification that certain faculties don’t exist in certain jhanas. But in some cases they may also not exist in earlier jhanas either.
It may not be the most natural reading at first glance, I readily admit that, but this seems to me the only feasible way to read the discourse. Otherwise, we run into problems regardless of how we interpret the jhanas. Unless, and this seems to me the only alternative, we disregard the sutta altogether.
My way of looking at it also has a precedence in the standard fourth jhana formula, which includes the cessation of dukkha and domanassa, which both already ceased earlier, in the first jhana. That statement is a reinforcement of what has ceased; these things don’t cease only in the fourth jhana itself.
Either way, the bodily jhana intepretation runs into more problems with this discourse, it seems to me. It’s actually a strong indication that the sukha of the jhanas (certainly the third) was thought to be mental.
I’ll probably leave it at that for this discussion. Other discourses that were brought up (and likely most that will still be brought up below) to argue against certain interpretations of jhanas, have been discussed quite extensively before. In short, the deep interpretation of jhanas is held by honest scholars with extensive knowledge of the suttas and Pali, supported by the Abhidhamma and commentaries whose job it is to comment upon the discourses, so it’s not like the discourses clearly disprove them. (Edit: There is reasonable room for debate, is what I’m saying, to be clear. I’m not saying that this itself proves anything, nor that scholars or text which disagree aren’t honest.) There’s lots of stuff in favor of disembodied jhanas as well in the discourses. SN48.40 being, in my view, one of them.
To illustrate, the Abhidhamma says about the sukha in the jhanas:
Therein what is pleasure (sukha)? That which is mental ease, mental pleasure, easeful pleasant experience born of mental contact, easeful pleasant feeling born of mental contact. This is called pleasure.
This seems to be in line with my interpretation of SN48.40, where the “faculty of sukha” is bodily pleasure.
Would love to hear others’ takes on this text. If these texts would have to be reconciled with so-called absorption jhana, then so do they with bodily jhana, which I would say is more strongly in disagreement with them. Because it has problems not only with the third but also fourth jhana.
Edit: I clarified this post and the intent behind it a bit further later in the discussion.
