Dear Bhante Brahmali,
thanks so much for your answers! To me the word of the Buddha is essential, so to get it right as much as possible even in small details, and to see the legitimate degrees of freedom in understanding it, helps me a lot in my practice. Also seeing how abhidhammic concepts and other traditions have shifted the understanding for more than 1500 years in Theravada I think justifies a critical re-reading. Ven. Analayo’s and Ven. Sujato’s clarifications are great examples for that.
Thanks for clarifying how it can’t be santa-vitakkam etc. It didn’t make a good sense, but again, it’s good to know what doesn’t work - the dead ends in interpretation are equally important to me.
About the being blissed out etc: wouldn’t you say that what makes the jhana the powerful experience is what constitutes a jhana factor proper? I mean, later on the unification of the mind is also a strong experience, and later I guess the upekkha must be the same.
So to include vitakka-vicara in that list unnecessarily implies that they are of the same logical register - which they are not. It overemphasizes the similarity and underemphasizes the differences of vitakka-vicara and piti-sukha.
, I circle around the same point all the time: to bring vitakka-vicara to a proper place, which is for me as a tool for the seperation of the mind from unwholesome states to establish the first Jhana. And against a wide-spread understanding that with a little bit of peace of mind, and many thoughts “I probably had the first Jhana”.
Thanks!