But Analayo nowhere says that you don’t need jhana to attain nibbana. He just says you don’t need jhana to attain stream entry.
It’s worth quoting Analayo in full from the book:
16. ABSORPTION
Another aspect of the teaching of vipassanā meditation relates to concentration. A stream enterer is endowed with the factors of the noble eightfold path (translated by Bodhi 2000: 1793), including right concentration. Since one type of definition of “right concentration” lists the four absorptions (jhāna), this can give the impression that absorptive abilities are required for reaching even the first level of awakening.
The question of the supposed necessity of absorptive abilities for stream entry became a major controversy with the large-scale spread of vipassanā meditation. The type of vipassanā meditation taught by Mahāsi Sayādaw does not allocate time to the formal cultivation of mental tranquility. This left considerable room for criticism. Ostensibly as a way to forestall further criticism, Mahāsi Sayādaw and his disciples baptized experiences of insight meditation as a form of absorption, presented as being a “vipassanā-jhāna” (Anālayo 2020a).
This apparently polemical move appears to have set a precedent for a reinterpretation of the significance of absorption among Theravāda meditation practitioners, even leading to the idea that absorption in itself is productive of insight (Arbel 2017). Such an assumption is not an accurate reflection of the nature and purpose of absorption attainment described in the early discourses (Anālayo 2017c: 109–23 and 2020a).
Another related strand of reinterpretation takes the term jhāna, “absorption,” to refer to experiences within easy reach of any practitioner, rather than requiring a high level of meditative expertise. Such assumptions also stand in contrast to the indications that can be gleaned from the early discourses, where the attainment of absorption appears to correspond to profound concentrative experiences that require considerable meditative training (Anālayo 2017c: 123–50 and 2019j).
A case in point is a description of the Buddha’s own prolonged struggle with various obstructions to the attainment of the first absorption, which he related to his monastic disciple Anuruddha, who had similar problems (translated by Ñāṇamoli 1995/2005: 1012). Anuruddha features in the list of eminent monastic disciples as outstanding for clairvoyance, which requires a high degree of concentrative ability. Another discourse reports that the Buddha’s own eventual mastery of absorption was such that he was able to enter each of these at will in ascending and descending order even while being on the verge of passing away (translated by Walshe 1987: 271 and Bodhi 2000: 251). For the Buddha and this outstanding disciple to have to struggle initially to attain and stabilize even just the first absorption, in spite of their evident abilities attested by their later meditative mastery, makes it fairly obvious that in the thought-world of the early discourses the term jhāna indeed stood for profound meditative experiences.
Besides, a comparative study of references to “right concentration” in the early discourses brings to light that an equation with the attainment of the four absorptions does not seem to reflect the earliest stages in defining this particular path factor (Anālayo 2019b). The original idea of what makes concentration “right” appears to have been rather the need to cultivate it in collaboration with the other seven path factors. Of particular importance here is right view. In fact, mere attainment of absorption in the absence of right view would hardly qualify as being the path factor of right concentration.
This in turn makes it fair to conclude that the attainment of stream entry does not require the cultivation of absorptive abilities. In fact, some reports of stream entry attainment in Pāli discourses involve persons who may not have meditated at all previously, let alone been proficient in absorption (Anālayo 2003: 80). From this viewpoint, there would have been no need to invent “vipassanā-jhānas,” with its apparent repercussions to fuel attempts to authenticate lightly concentrated meditation experiences by applying to them the prestigious label of jhāna.