If jhana is total absorption without physical sensation, why is pain only abandoned in the fourth jhana?

The Watercooler
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Im not quite sure that can be right.

If awakened monastics, completely free from attachment to sensual desire where also completely free from sensation and perception then when they went on almsround they would bump into the walls.

This wouldn’t be so bad for them, as since they are free they wouldnt suffer, but it would look hilarious and it also makes no sense.

The idea that somehow jhana makes you go blind and deaf and so on is simply nonsensical, and a picture of metaphysics that allows a whole bunch of mind-perceptions without recourse to body-sensations is simply not compatible with the philosophical position of the ebt.

“Where there are no feelings (sensations, perceptions) at all, could one point to anything at all and say “i am that”? No!” (My paraphrase.)

So one cannot be in jhana without some perceptual ground.

In first jhana one perceives (feels, has the sensation of) thought, pleasure and happiness

In second jhana one has a subtle but true perception/sensation/feeling of the absense of thought and the presense of pleasure and happiness.

In third jhana one has the subtle but true perception/sensation/feeling/experience of the absense of emotional happiness and the presense of physical pleasure.

With the ceasing of pleasure one is said to be in 4th jhana.

NOTHING in the original pericope or as far as i can tell in the ebts more generally would lead one to beleive in:

Any form of mind body dualism.

Any notion of experiences sans percievables on which they are conditional.

And frankly any reason to beleive that even in fourth jhana that the subjective perception is absent, after all in the original pericope it is precisely from 4th jhana that

One fashions a mind made body
One flys around like a superman
One observes the arising and passing of beings
One recalls ones past lives

How could any of that occur if you couldnt see hear touch taste smell anything?

Ridiculous.

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Venerable, this type of speech is not very inspiring. Please remember that you are posting on a public forum that anyone can read.

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I understand why you find what I said above to be offensive. Actually, I’m merely speaking my mind.

Yes, I understand this is a public forum, and do intend the above to be read by the public.

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It’s not that I find it offensive. Rather, speaking only for myself as a lay follower, I’m saying I expect a higher standard of conduct from monastics such as yourself.

In any case, be well :pray:

Edit:

I do think it’s an unfair accusation though. Ven. Sujato regularly posts about his translation choices, explains his philosophy, etc. right here on D&D. Making Ven. Sujato probably the most transparent translator of the EBTs to date.

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There is more than two millenia of exegetical momentum behind this fundamentally yogic interpretation of samādhi as an exercise in self-hypnotism leading to a trance state of total external perceptual black-out and non-dual experiential “melting” into the absolutely unified fullness of a singular mental image, so the amount of effort being put into rationalization and interpretive gymnastics within this thread and in “nostril-focusing” schools of thought everywhere is not surprising.

But within a EBT context the pericope of monks attaining and weilding iddhi directly from the fourth jhāna is a slam-dunk argument against such conceptions of the jhānas, even if we think of the powers as purely mental operations. Such operations, being composed of imagery other than the singular nimitta of hypnotic focus, would necessarily require a fall from pseudo-perceptual trance-unity. Of course the same strategy of rationalization could be applied here, claiming that iddhi can be weilded immediately after such a fall but not during the fourth jhāna proper, but then we can always make words mean whatever we want them to mean with enough motivation and effort, especially with such slippery topics as meditation, the general landscape of the psyche, and frickin’ psychic powers.

Thank you for pointing out this hole in the self-hypnotists’ scriptural support; I had never thought of it before.

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I’m pretty clearly of the opinion that sati, including anapana is an S phenomena and that jhana is the original meditation pericope.

The pericope claims it is possible to fashion a mind made body that can fly and see and think and everything.

All one need do is

Find a secluded spot, away from people.

Sit comfortably.

And bring the mind to that very spot.

Allow drowsiness, anxiety, and past grievences to fade away, and thinking true pure thoughts, experience the joy and pleasure there.

Allowing thoughts to come to rest, experience the joy and pleasure there.

Allowing joy to come to rest, experience the pure pleasure, thoughless, emotionless pleasure, and

Allowing that to come to rest experience a mind empty of doubt, drowsiness, anxiety, thought, (even good thoughts) emotion, and perfectly balanced.

Now! From there all you gotta do is fashion your mind made body amd fly around! Easy!! :wink:

All the nimitta stuff and thousands of years of exegesis is material looking back at the pericope from much futhur away than even S, and S clearly records the loss of jhana as an accessable practice to the community.

While it is possible that the exegetical tradition eminates from knowlegable sources in the practice it is also possible that even before the end of the presectarian period the literate community had lost access to the original practice.

At any rate I really dont have access to most of that material so I have no way of really knowing what it says except by hearsay or a sudden career change.

All i am saying is that the pericope makes several pretty specific claims involving what is and isnt happening in jhana and its subsequent development into enlightenment and one of those claims involves a mind made body that can see hear touch smell taste so it is definitely not the case that in any sensible sense can it be said that the 4th Jhana is a state without seeing hearing touching smelling tasting.

AT NO POINT In the pericope does it ever say a single thing about a bright light, about breathing, about blacking out, about anything like any of that stuff from S or the rest.

Obviously however there is a pretty wide range of options left open between what the state lacks and what it requires.

So self hypnosis and non dual melty states are all well and good, but unless you are somewhere where you can have what i suppose the world would write off as a “controlled hallucination” of an astral body that can fly and see ghosts then you probably arnt doing it right.

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It is only while in the jhana state that sensual perceptions are gone (it’s part of what defines the first jhana state in the first place).

I find it hard to believe you’re not aware of this, tbh :cowboy_hat_face:

What do you make of people who say they experience such states? Are they lying or confused or something else?

And remember that, what is possible in practice must be possible in theory. But that something is not possible in theory doesn’t mean it’s not possible in practice (theory can be wrong) :slight_smile:

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I am claiming they are confused, mostly conceptually.

You cant have an experience without a sensation, like the nimitta for example, its a light. A light is a sight, its on the list, so it falls over before it even gets of the ground.

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But you must know no one is claiming jhanas are experiences without sensation?

The argument is that it’s the mental bliss that’s the sensation (including vitakka & vicara which is subtle mental movement in this line of reasoning)

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LOL! I will take this to mean that you are not interested in any further discussion. Which, of course, is perfectly fine!

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A fair assumption, but actually i was being hyperbolic as i often am when excited.

But ive said my bit, so will return to other projects.

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Thank you for this message Venerable!

A priori, it seems to me that indeed, even for pro sense jhana, from the second jhāna, there are no more thoughts. Your sutta therefore seems to refute sense jhana.

I’m very interested in any replies you might get from the pro sense jhana (please, if you support these sense jhanas, feel free to reply!).

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To me, this subject is important. Therefore, it’s vital that I speak as accurately and clearly as I can. I cannot afford to do any less, even if I may be judged poorly for it.

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Venerable, :pray: I don’t really mind you voicing your thoughts aloud. But if you want to speak accurately and clearly, then maybe you can explain why it “is a very poor translation for evaṁbhūto”. I already gave an example where a compound ending in -bhūto refers to something that happened in the past and has ended, namely: “For in the past, venerable sir, when I was still a householder (agārika-bhūto)". (SN46.30) Why is it impossible for evaṃbhūto to have a same sense of past?

He thinks the phrase is a bit ambiguous and best translated in a way that doesn’t import too much meaning: “Following my usual ‘principle of least meaning’ we should avoid creating dramatic or difficult meanings out of simple or ambiguous terms.” (AN3.63 walking in 4th jhana? - #5 by sujato)

See also:

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The bhūto in this example is conveyed in English as “was”. Using this example as a template to translate evaṃbhūto, we get “when I was thus” (which I think is even better than B.Bodhi’s “when I am in such a state”).

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That’s a possible interpretation, and I’m happy to drop “state” from the translation, which isn’t in the Pali. So it is an improvement on Ven. Bodhi’s translation, in my opinion. But when glossing evaṃbhūto, the commentary to AN3.63 interprets it more as a perfect past, not a simple past (i.e. “having been” (hutvā) rather than “was”), which is also definitely possible. (Meaning having been in jhanas, afterwards you’re walking.)

Since this is I think the only sutta where there is an indication to walking in jhanas, and since in the sutta itself the Buddha actually says he sits down before he enters jhāna, I think the commentary is more likely to be correct. Also because I can’t see how one could walk without breathing, in the fourth jhana.

Bhante Sujato’s translation is a middle way which let’s us read it both ways. I don’t think it is all that poor, considering. If he wanted to reflect his own view, then he could have done so a lot more directly.

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Yes, I agree, and to force a different reading on it seems a case of starting from a pre established idea and combing through the texts in an effort to find something that vaguely supports it.

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But if I were to re-translate it, I would prefer “when I have become thus”, which is probably the most literal translation possible without sounding un-English.

Compare that with “When I’m practicing like this” for evaṁbhūto.

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Again, the problem is that while it may be literal it is not idiomatic, it doesn’t convey much meaning to the reader.
Maybe, ‘when I have been doing this…’.

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Stephen, do you know Pali?

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