Thank you very much!
Ahah perfect!
By the way, do you know if there’s a sutta saying that we have to emerge from jhana before practicing vipassana?
It could be interesting for our subject, as Ajahn Brahm seems to be saying that it’s precisely because of extreme concentration in one point that our understanding is temporarily suppressed. Whether we need to emerge from the jhanas to practice insight meditation may make us lean a little more towards non-corporeal jhana or corporeal jhana.
Below are things that give me the impression that you don’t have to emerge from the first 7 jhanas to practice insight meditation towards them.
In MN 111, AN 4.124, AN 9.36, MN 64, and MN 52, they talk about practicing insight meditation (impermanence, non-self, dissatisfaction) about the jhanas, but they don’t talk about emerging from the first 7 jhanas.
- MN 111 talks about practising insight with the 9 jhanas, but it’s only for the last 2 jhanas (“neither perception nor non-perception” and “cessation of perception and feeling”) that Sariputta is said to emerge from the jhana to inspect it.
- AN 4.124 speaks of practicing insight with the 4 rupajhana, without specifying that one must emerge from them. Don’t mention the other 5 jhanas.
- MN 64 speaks of practicing insight with the first 7 jhanas, without specifying that one must emerge from them. Don’t mention the other 2 jhanas.
- MN 52 talks about practicing insight with the first 7 jhanas, without specifying that one must emerge from them. Don’t mention the other 2 jhanas.
- AN 9.36 talks about practising insight with the first 7 jhanas, and says that “penetration of final knowledge” can only happen with the first 7 jhanas, and says that to describe/explain the last 2 jhanas (“neither perception nor non-perception” and “cessation of perception and feeling”) one must emerge from these jhanas (this is not specified for the other jhanas).
All this gives me the strong impression that insight meditation can be performed during the jhanas. Of course, you know these suttas much better than I do, but I was interested in your thoughts.
Thanks again Bhante for your kindness and help!
EDIT: rereading this topic and this message, I realize that you’ve already answered my questions, great!
Please, do you know the name of Venerable Analayo’s paper on MN 111? I’d love to read it. Thanks in advance.
My friend its only understand by seeing jhanas as the states we experience as humans
Waking, dreaming, deep sleep
4th jhana is what?
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If this is the translation, then the simile of third jhana that referring to physical body will be in conflict with this translation and many other sutta. See below:
Simile of third jhana:
t’s like a pool with blue water lilies, or pink or white lotuses. Some of them sprout and grow in the water without rising above it, thriving underwater. From the tip to the root they’re drenched, steeped, filled, and soaked with cool water. There’s no part of them that’s not soaked with cool water.
In the same way, a mendicant drenches, steeps, fills, and spreads their body with bliss free of rapture. There’s no part of the body that’s not spread with bliss free of rapture. This pertains to their samadhi.
The fact is that it is probably referring to the transformation of the physical body it self, it is more logical. The body is cooled with perfected precepts, then the mind is cooled with samadhi + wisdom.
As the jhana progress, the desires (fire) + other feelings are abandoned permanently with wisdom, the breathing is slow down/cease, the physical body transform become cool permanently. This happen NOT only during sitting meditation, but any posture(s).
This is also collaborated with SN 41.6 of different between someone who reached sannavedayitanirodha and a death person.
“What’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling?”
“When someone dies, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled; their vitality is spent; their warmth is dissipated; and their faculties (indriya) have disintegrated.
When a mendicant has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, their physical, verbal, and mental processes have ceased and stilled. But their vitality is not spent; their warmth is not dissipated; and their faculties (indriya) are very clear.
That’s the difference between someone who has passed away and a mendicant who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling.”
So, someone who has reached cessation of perception and feeling will have a body similar to death body, but only little warmth and vitality is remained, but the senses (indriya) are very clear & bright due to no hindrances (most of the time).
vs death body is totally cool without any sign of life and the body will disintegrate over time.
Also, human is a physical world. We see each other in term of the physical body interaction (speech/action).
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An Arahant will not be practicing anymore. They will just use the wisdom to maintaning/live/stay in jhana day in and day out to enjoy blissful life till death of body.
Only a sekha is still practicing.
Remember SN 54.11 and many others:
Those bhikkhus who are arahants, whose taints are destroyed, who have lived the holy life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached their own goal, utterly destroyed the fetters of existence, those completely liberated through final knowledge: for them samadhi by mindfulness of breathing, when developed and cultivated, leads to a pleasant dwelling in this very life and to sati and sampajjana.**
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Here, the English word ‘practicing’ refers to engaging in jhāna, doing jhāna, being ‘in’ jhāna, not learning how to get better at it.
We see this idiomatic usage in phrases like, “I’ve been practicing medicine for 20 years”, or, “Having been a doctor for 40 years, I’ve decided to close my practice. “
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Ajahn Brahmali and I addressed some of these ideas in a talk linked earlier in this thread. But I don’t mind restating some of these things.
- AN9.35 for example says, “When a mendicant enters and emerges from all these attainments [including jhānas], their mind becomes pliable and workable.”
- AN5.28 mentions remembering and reviewing the jhānas in order to “penetrate and grasp them with wisdom”. This is mentioned as an aspect of developing samādhi. This statement does not make a whole lot of sense if you can also contemplate the jhānas while you’re in them, which, if you could, would seem to be a much better moment to “grasp them with wisdom”.
When the suttas leave the emerging from jhāna unmentioned, it’s like I’d say, “John went to bed at 9 o’clock. In the morning he made breakfast before going to work.” Now, if you replied, “you didn’t say John got out of bed to have breakfast”, you’re technically right. But that doesn’t mean I therefore meant to say that John made breakfast in bed! And if you’d insist that I should have clarified that, you’re just being overly demanding on how language is used, where things are always implied.
It’s the same with the jhānas in the kind of suttas you mentioned. Some people sort of insist the text should phrase things the way they’d expect, that they should always mention one needs to come out of jhāna. But the audience in the time of the Buddha would have known what these states were like, so they didn’t always need to be told one has to come out of them in order to contemplate. That would’ve been so obvious to them (as it will be to anyone who attains them nowadays), that it wasn’t considered necessary to mention all the time, just like I wouldn’t need to say John got out of bed to make breakfast.
But the fact remains that we do have some references in the canon that one has to come out of jhāna. These admittedly aren’t super common, but I think that these ideas are implied in all other texts as well. The alternative interpretation doesn’t make sense to me: if one could contemplate in jhana, then why are there even a few such statements that say you emerge before the mind is malleable, or that you understand them when you review them?
The general way in which the suttas are phrased is in large part due to the nature of oral literature, which uses standardized passages. The jhāna formulas are always exactly the same, just “copy pasted” from elsewhere, as are the insights that follow, generally. We shouldn’t expect from these texts a detailed moment-by-moment step-by-step description like a personal teacher would give us nowadays.
Some of the suttas you mentioned I specifically addressed in the talk I linked earlier. Other than that:
- AN9.36 says you can’t become enlightened based on the two last attainments, but this directly contradicts what all other suttas say. A very common statement in the canon is: “[A mendicant] enters and remains in the cessation of perception and feeling. And, having seen with wisdom, their defilements come to an end.” So I’m not sure what AN9.36 is on about. It also has no parallels. (PS. If we’re overly literal, then “having seen with wisdom” would also imply that one contemplates inside cessation of perception and feeling, since it’s never said that they come out of it.)
- The Chinese parallel to MN64 (at MA205) mentions a very different way to develop insight based on jhānas, namely to contemplate the rise and fall of them, which implies that the jhāna has ceased when you do this (otherwise how can you contemplate the fall?)
- The Chinese parallel to MN52 doesn’t end at the 7th attainment.
It’s in Early Buddhist Meditation Studies. Also worth reading are the sections on not hearing sound in jhāna and on vitakka-vicāra not meaning verbal thinking, but “thought” on a more subtle level.
(I’m not too keen on Venerable’s interpretation of Ānapanassati, though, or that in jhāna one feels the body in some sort of refined way. In both these cases the disagreement comes back to the word kāya we discussed earlier.)
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I do wonder why Bhante @Sujato translates the jhāna similes like that, since he wrote in A History of Mindfulness:
These beautiful images of embodied bliss complement the psychological jhāna formulas. […] It would be a mistake to think that ‘body’ here refers to the ordinary physical body, which completely disappears in jhāna. The Suttas use ‘body’ in an idiomatic sense to stress the immediacy of direct personal experience; the meaning is something like ‘the entire field of awareness’.
Tse-fu Kuan, who has done the most in-depth investigation of the term that I’m aware of, likewise wrote in Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: “the simile-accompanied glosses on the jhānas … contain the term kāya, [which] here probably refers to the experiencer of sensation”.
Both Pāli Text Society dictionaries, when specifically referring to these similes under kāya, suggest similar ideas: “experiencer” or “being” or “inner sense”, not “body”. So in my translation I use ‘experience’.
It can’t be the body that feels the pīti and sukha, because in the suttas the pīti that is felt in the first two jhānas is repeatedly called mental (pīti-māna). It’s similar with the sukha, which is called non-physical (nirāmisa) and in other ways is indicated to be mental. For example, it is said in MN139 that the sukha that comes from the body (and other physical senses) is not to be developed, and that one should seek sukha “internally”, i.e. in the mind.
The second jhāna simile also talks about the water in the lake (which stands for sukha) not coming from the four quarters nor the sky (= the 5 senses) but “wells up from within” (= coming from the mind). From my translation:
You drenched, suffused, filled, and pervaded your experience with [mental] delight and bliss caused by the unification, so that there is no single part of your whole experience that is not pervaded with it. Imagine a lake which has no water flowing in from the east, west, north, or south, and which is also never replenished with rain. But it has water welling up within. The spring of water welling up within the lake drenches, suffuses, fills, and pervades that lake with cool water, so that no single part of the lake is not pervaded with it. Likewise, you drenched, suffused, filled, and pervaded your experience with delight and bliss caused by the unification, so that there is no single part of your whole experience that is not pervaded with it. That is the second step in the development of the noble five-factored right unification of the mind.
(I also explained these similes in this talk.)
If you have no perception and feeling (= no consciousness), you can’t have “very clear” awareness through the senses. Since this is opposed to a dead person whose faculties have “disintegrated”, it must mean their senses are still able to function afterwards. I expect that’s why Bhikkhu Bodhi translates “faculties become exceptionally clear”, rather than “are very clear”.
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Whilst not listed on SuttaCentral it did once have a parallel as it’s quoted entirely in the Sarvastivada Abhidharma. Based on this sutta, insight occurs whilst in Jhana. That contradicts an absorbed view.
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Does that quoted parallel literally say that one is in jhana while one does contemplate? Or is it implied in the same way John is implied to stay in bed while he cooks breakfast in my (admittedly mundane) example?
AN9.36 also says “they contemplate the phenomena (of the jhana) as impermanent … as falling apart”. I would argue that one can only do this effectively after the jhana has ended, because while it is present, you can’t see its falling apart and impermanence.
I mean, some take the relative absence of explicit mentions that the meditator emerges from jhana as evidence that one can contemplate in them. But I could use the same line of reasoning and say that no sutta explicitly says that one has to stay in jhana to contemplate them. It’s an interpretation added on top of what is actually said. So that “proves” that in jhana one can’t contemplate.
Few would buy that argument, however, which shows you can’t really argue from absence of what is said. You have to go by what is actually said. And, as I said before, there are actually some texts that say that one has to come out of jhana, “remember” and “review” them. I would actually include MN111 in that, for it say Sariputta only understood these phenomena after they had disappeared.
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Thank you so much Venerable for your reply!!!
This sutta confused me when I read it, because at first sight it goes against the impressions I had!
But on rereading it, I get the impression that the sutta is a little ambiguous.
For example, one might think that when the Buddha speaks of a meditator who “emerges from all these attainments”, he’s talking specifically about a meditator who has successively attained all the jhanas (from the first jhana to the cessation of perception of feeling - it’s this succession that the sutta describes), so that at the end the meditator is in the 9th jhana and must therefore emerge to be able to realize things through insight.
Especially if we consider that the Buddha meant here that even having only reached the first jhana, one must emerge from this first jhana to be able to realize things with insight, then this implies some strange things in relation to the rest of the sutta. Indeed, what is the Buddha talking about when he speaks of the things we become capable of realizing through insight? In the sutta, he talks about multiplying oneself, reading people’s minds, walking through walls, diving into the earth, walking on water and so on. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but it seemed to me that attaining the first jhana is not enough to accomplish these things. So it would seem a little strange to me if the Buddha meant that even when you reach the first jhana, you have to emerge from it to be able to achieve things through insight.
What do you think?
Interesting. It’s true that in the context of body jhanas, it seems to me that piti and sukha are felt at the level of the biological body. But even within these bodily jhanas, the origin of piti and sukha seems to be a mental exercise of meditation (for example, some say to concentrate on the breath, then on a pleasant sensation; or some say to have an enlarged attention on the body and the breath; etc.). In the sense that even in these jhanas, the origin of piti and sukha is not a material contact between the body and an object, even if they are felt in the biological body ; for example, since the piti and sukha of body jhanas come from the mental exercises of meditation - even if they are felt in the biological body - piti and sukha do not therefore have the same origin as the bodily pleasure of sexual intercourse (material contact of the sexes), or of tasting a good gourmet meal (material contact of tongue and food).
So the idea of bodily jhana doesn’t necessarily seem contradictory to the point you’re making here.
I also wanted to thank you for the content you gave me. I will check it out. And thanks for all the dhamma talk you give, it’s a gold mine for practicing the Dhamma!
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To add some context, the type of “proof” you are describing (as bad reasoning) is basically the moving the goalposts fallacy:
Moving the goalposts is an informal fallacy in which evidence presented in response to a specific claim is dismissed and some other (often greater) evidence is demanded. That is, after an attempt has been made to score a goal, the goalposts are moved to exclude the attempt.[14] The problem with changing the rules of the game is that the meaning of the result is changed, too.[15]
Aha! but the Buddha didn’t say it in EXACTLY a way that would 100% unambiguously prove your argument, therefore you must be wrong.
Like, the whole exercise here is that we’re trying to decide between a small set of plausible interpretations of the Pali in the EBTs 
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The specific translation is probably what confuses you. Bhikkhu Bodhi has: “When, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu enters and emerges from each of these meditative attainments, his mind becomes malleable and wieldy.” The Pali has a distributive because it’s repeating the pronoun (taṃ), so this is what it most naturally means, each of these attainments, including the first jhana. I’m pretty sure that is also what Ven Sujato has in mind with “all”.
I personally am also a bit wary about suttas that claim one can get enlightened from the first jhāna, but that is what it says. (I think there’s also other suttas that seem to this, although I can’t remember them at the moment.)
They’re still “cognized by the body”, though, and that is how the five kāmaguṇas (five “sense stimulations”) are explained, which are so often opposed to the jhānas. Some people can also imagine sex scenes and get orgasms or other pleasant bodily feelings without touching themselves. Then that is also caused by the mind, but it is still a sensual pleasure.
In AN2.70 it is said:
“There are, mendicants, these two kinds of happiness (sukha). What two? Physical (kāya) happiness and mental (citta) happiness. These are the two kinds of happiness. The better of these two kinds of happiness is mental happiness.”
We can compare to AN2.68:
“There are, mendicants, these two kinds of happiness (sukha). What two? Material happiness and spiritual happiness. These are the two kinds of happiness. The better of these two kinds of happiness is spiritual happiness.”
The jhānas are often called “spiritual happiness” as opposed to “material happiness” which is said to come from the five senses. Now in light of AN2.70 this simply means mental happiness as opposed to bodily happiness.
Bhante Sujato’s translations aren’t consistent and use both “material” & “of the flesh” (for sāmisa), and “spiritual” & “not-of-the flesh” (for nirāmisa, the latter of which is most literal). With that in mind, here is one example where the pleasure (sukha) of the jhanas is opposed to bodily pleasure (SN36.31):
And what is pleasure (sukha) of the flesh [or “material”]? Mendicants, there are these five kinds of sensual stimulation. What five? Sights known by the eye that are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. Sounds … Smells … Tastes … Touches known [or ‘cognized’] by the body, [which] are likable, desirable, agreeable, pleasant, sensual, and arousing. These are the five kinds of sensual stimulation. The pleasure and happiness that arise from these five kinds of sensual stimulation is called pleasure of the flesh.
And what is pleasure (sukha) not of the flesh [or “spiritual”]? [1st, 2nd, 3rd jhāna] This is called pleasure not of the flesh.
We can put this aside DN9 (my translation):
When they get fully separated from sensory experiences and separated from unskillful states of mind, they attain the first jhana, where there is delight and bliss (sukha) caused by the separation [from the sensory experiences], to which the mind moves and holds on. The perception of sensory experiences which they had before, ceases. At that time there is subtle but true perception of delight and bliss caused by the separation, and they only (eva) have that perception, subtle but true, of delight and bliss caused by the separation. That is how through training some perceptions [of the five senses] cease while others [of pītisukha] arise.
This to me is clearly talking about the jhānas being a mental pleasure—and moreover, also about not being able to feel the body anymore, because the only perception you have is of the mental delight and bliss.
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You are misunderstand the Pali in DN9. I know, because I did so myself once. Ven. Dhammanando was kind enough to correct me. I’ll post it soon, and reply to your other previous posts.
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Let me know what I’m getting wrong. If it’s just the word eva, then that might indeed be interpreted differently, as Sujato seems to do, because it is used in different senses. But considering context, with the cessation of certain perceptions (which are sensual) and the arising of other perceptions, which is “a subtle but true perception” of pītisukha (which is mental) the overall idea seems pretty clear to me.
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This enters and emerges can just be misleading.
The pali term is samāpajjatipi vuṭṭhātipi
samāpajjatipi also can be translated as to reach from pali dictionary.
vuṭṭhātipi can also be translated as to produce (aka result) or even to stay.
Emerges is just doesn’t make senses for 1st up to 7th jhana because the vinnana is still present all the time except the last 2 jhana.
If one is emerges from jhana, where is the mind stay during this emerging. This needs to be answer for one who translate as emerges.
Also many other sutta, it is said to reach and remain and never lose it in jhana such as AN 4.123
If they live in that, are committed to it, and stay on it often without losing it, when they die they’re reborn in the company of the gods of Brahmā’s Host.
If one is losing the jhana, well doesn’t that mean the mind is go back to 5 senses. Then, more birth in sensual realm.
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What do you mean? It stays in the jhāna or it isn’t in jhana. There isn’t an in-between where it is during emerging. Emerging is instant, it doesn’t take time.
It means you lose the ability to attain it, not that you come out of jhāna.
The rest of your post I can’t take seriously, sorry. You can’t learn Pali from a dictionary, I’m afraid.
Here is another example where emerging from the jhāna is implied, even though not explicitly mentioned after the attainment of the jhāna:
Then, in the evening, the Venerable Sariputta emerged from seclusion and went to Jeta’s Grove, Anathapindika’s Park. The Venerable Ananda saw the Venerable Sariputta coming in the distance and said to him: “Friend Sariputta, your faculties are serene, your facial complexion is pure and bright. In what dwelling has the Venerable Sariputta spent the day?” [I.e. he’s no longer in that “dwelling”, which is the first jhāna.]
“Here, friend, secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, I entered and dwelt in the first jhana, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion. (*) Yet, friend, it did not occur to me, ‘I am attaining the first jhana,’ or ‘I have attained the first jhana,’ or ‘I have emerged from the first jhana.’”
“It must be because I-making, mine-making, and the underlying tendency to conceit have been thoroughly uprooted in the Venerable Sariputta for a long time that such thoughts did not occur to him.” (SN28.1)
(*) It’s not mentioned, but at some point Sariputta obviously came out of jhāna, because he talks about “I have emerged” just after.
Now, suttas that directly follow the jhānas with some sort of contemplation similarly imply that one has come out.
If coming out of jhāna is even left unmentioned in a sutta where Sāriputta directly after says “‘I have emerged from the first jhana”, how much more so in other texts where the nature of jhāna is not the concern, but the insight that follow? 
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Ah, as far as Pali is concerned, I can’t judge because I don’t know anything about it, it’s you who know.
But I had also read Venerable Bodhi’s translation, and I found it as ambiguous as Sujato’s. Personally, I don’t find that the word “each” implies either that « we’re talking about a meditator who has successively gone through “each” of the 9 jhanas », or that « we’re talking about a meditator who has gone through “each” jhanas taken separately (i.e. without it being necessary to do all 9 jhanas) ».
I personally am also a bit wary about suttas that claim one can get enlightened from the first jhāna, but that is what it says. (I think there’s also other suttas that seem to this, although I can’t remember them at the moment.)
I understand. And apart from awakening, can you remind me if there are suttas saying that the first jhana is enough to walk on water, cross walls, etc.? I’m not sure.
Thank you very much for all these explanations. You manage to explain the Dhamma in a very synthetic way while quoting suttas as references; it’s simply incredible. Truly Bhante, your messages are clear paths that your readers can follow to understand and practice the Dhamma. This makes me very happy.
To return to the subject, perhaps not only is the pleasure of bodily jhanas derived from the mind, but perhaps it is purely mental? I mean, maybe even if this pleasure is felt in the body (so that the meditator manages to feel this pleasure soaked into all his limbs, including the tips of his toes), the pleasure is still not felt thanks to the biological organs, but remains a pure creation of the mind? Mmh, that doesn’t seem aberrant to me, I can imagine it.
On the Jhāna sutta the reference is here
The Pāli Jhāna Sutta of the Aṅguttara Nikāya also indicates that insight is developed while one is in the first seven meditative attainments—the four dhyānas and the three lower formless attainments—called “attainments with perception”(saññāsamāpatti).575 This explains that perception (saññā/saṁjñā) is the decisive factor for the development of insight. Due to the limitation of perception in the base of neitherperception- nor-non-perception and the absence of perception in the attainment of cessation (nirodha-samāpatti), there is no development of insight within these two attainments. In the Jhāna Sutta, a yogin develops insight for the destruction of the taints while in the first dhyāna thus:
“Here, monks, secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a monk enters and dwells in the first jhāna, which is accompanied by thought and examination, with rapture and happiness born of seclusion. Whatever states are included there comprised by form, feeling, perception, volitional formations or consciousness; he views those states as impermanent , as suffering, as a disease, as a boil, as a dart, as misery, as affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as empty, as non-self. Having viewed them thus, his mind then turns away from those states and focuses upon the deathless element.”
The parallel of the Jhāna Sutta is not found in the Chinese Āgamas, but is completely preserved in the Dharmaskandha, one of the six pāda works in the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma.577 It is called Qiyi jing 七依經 in the Chinese canon, and is cited by the Abhidharma masters of different schools to demonstrate that the śamatha needed by a yogin to develop insight is the four dhyānas and the three lower formless attainments, namely the “attainments with perception.”578 The Mahāvibhāṣā, the Tattvasiddhiśāstra, the Prakaraṇāryavākāśāstra, and the Abhidharmasamuccayavyākhyā all cite the Qiyijing 七依經to explain that the extirpation of taints occurs dependent on the first seven meditative attainments; that is, insight is developed while one is in the attainments with perception.579
Issues in Śamatha and Vipaśyanā: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Meditation
Insight occurs whilst in any attainment up until the final two. There, because there is hardly any perception or none at all, insight has to occur after leaving those attainments.
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Ah, I see what you mean now.
I take it to mean that after any of these attainments their mind becomes malleable and capable. One reason is the very next discourse, AN9.36:
“Mendicants, I say that the first absorption is a basis for ending the defilements. The second absorption is also a basis for ending the defilements. [And so forth, up to and including the cessation of perception and feeling.]
When in AN9.35 the Buddha says “a bhikkhu enters and emerges from each of these meditative attainments, his mind becomes malleable and wieldy”, it seems to me to say you can use any of these states to become enlightened, which is exactly what AN9.36 explains.
Also, the phrase “a bhikkhu enters and emerges from each of these meditative attainments, his mind becomes malleable and wieldy” is followed by “they become capable of realizing anything that can be realized by insight to which they extend the mind, in each and every case.” (AN9.35) And that phrase is elsewhere also used after abandoning the hindrances in general, like AN3.101–102; and AN5.23:
But when the mind is free of these five corruptions [=hindrances] it’s pliable, workable, and radiant. It’s not brittle, and is completely immersed in samādhi for the ending of defilements. You become capable of realizing anything that can be realized by insight to which you extend the mind, in each and every case.
This reads to me like after the first jhana you already become capable of doing these things.
I don’t know if any text specifically says after first jhana you become capable of the psychic powers. Usually that statement follows the fourth jhāna, but perhaps that is just for sake of brevity. You don’t want to repeat that whole long passage of the psychic powers after each jhāna.
I’m personally somewhat skeptical of awakening after the first jhāna (even though the suttas do say so, so maybe I should be less skeptical), but of the psychic powers I’m not. They are easier than awakening, so you also need less powerful samādhi.
I suppose that’s how some people think of jhānas, but in my opinion it is still going in the wrong direction, namely outwards rather than inwards.
The mental joy (piti-māna) that results in jhānas is frequently said to result from things like contemplating one’s generosity, one’s virtue, and so forth. This gives rise to a happy feeling in the mind, which becomes the object in jhāna. The point isn’t that you spread this kind of joy through the body, the point is that you focus on it and let it become the only thing you’re aware of.
The Buddha was also able to sit still for 7 days feeling exclusively pleasure. Maybe I lack imagination, but I can’t see how you’d do that with body awareness going, even if that is somehow “soaked” with the mind. At some point your body will start aching. I do see how you’d be able to do so if you’re able to completely withdraw the mind from the body, though.
Just as a disclaimer, I’m sure I’m not flawless. I may change my mind on some of the details I’ve shared. 
I’m happy that you say I can explain these things with suttas, because sometimes people just put these ideas aside as “Visuddhimagga jhanas”. I haven’t even read most of the Visuddhimagga, lol. 
Thanks for your good questions and neutrality.
I also realized that AN9.35 is a good sutta to show how the texts are general descriptions of practice, that exiting jhāna is implied. Take this:
With the fading away of rapture, they enter and remain in the third absorption. They cultivate, develop, and make much of that foundation, ensuring that it’s properly stabilized. They think, ‘Why don’t I, with the giving up of pleasure and pain, and the ending of former happiness and sadness, enter and remain in the fourth absorption, without pleasure or pain, with pure equanimity and mindfulness.’ Without charging at the third absorption, with the fading away of rapture, they enter and remain in the third absorption.
Now, if we read this literally, it says: Third jhāna > thinking > fourth jhāna. But I think most people will agree one can’t think in the third jhāna.
So the point of this statement is that they attain third jhāna, exit it, only then think, and then go through jhanās 1–3 again before attaining the fourth. The phrase “they cultivate, develop, and make much of that foundation, ensuring that it’s properly stabilized” is also the exact same idea as Sariputta’s “repeated practice” in MN111, where he exited jhānas before he contemplated them, and then developed the next jhāna by attaining it a number of times.
Similar reflections including thinking continue in AN9.35 up to and including the last two stages. So then, if we’re overly literal, the practitioner is also thinking in the state of neither-perception-nor-non-perception… Obviously they’ve exited these states at some point. But, again, that is implied. It doesn’t have to be said.
The same is true in the very next sutta, AN9.36, where after each jhāna it also includes a thought, namely:
They turn their mind away from those things, and apply it to the deathless [thinking]: ‘This is peaceful; this is sublime—that is, the stilling of all activities, the letting go of all attachments, the ending of craving, fading away, cessation, extinguishment.’
(Well, I know a famous teacher and stirrer of the jhana debate has said you can still think in the 8th “jhāna”… but they also said they teach different jhānas than the Buddha, so whatever.)
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