Clarification for precepts: let’s say someone doesn’t even keep the 5 precepts properly, i.e. they might kill insects or tell minor lies from time to time.
I am neither an accomplished meditator or trained to be a teacher, but this my take on this matter.
The River Crossing
You have to let go of one shore
before swimming across the river
to ascend the other shore.
The act of obtaining release from the
5 Hindrances & Letting Go of the 10 fetters
is letting go of one shore
before proceeding in the meditation path
of “calm and seeing” to the other shore.
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Ajahn Brahmali just gave a teaching on this sutta this morning. Hope it will be useful for you.
May the Buddha please teach me Dhamma in brief! May the Holy One teach me the Dhamma in brief! Hopefully I can understand the meaning of what the Buddha says! Hopefully I can be an heir of the Buddha’s teaching!”
“Well then, mendicant, you should purify the starting point of skillful qualities.
What is the starting point of skillful qualities?
Well purified ethics and correct view.
When your ethics are well purified and your view is correct, you should develop the four kinds of mindfulness meditation in three ways, depending on and grounded on ethics.
SN 47.3
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Can’t remember having read or heard from the suttas or from the honorable teachers that breaking the precepts or not seeing danger in sensual pleasures would in effect make you totally incapable of achieving the jhanas. Unless you either completely lack sila and hence not see anything wrong with going against those precepts, or if you experience such a great remorse from breaking the precepts that it completely paralyses you, I think it should be possible to achieve jhanas even without establishing an impeccable ethical conduct by always keeping the precepts. I think it’s probably the other way around; when the meditation progresses through repeatedly experienced jhanas, it becomes gradually more and more difficult to act against the precepts (or against the right view, right intention and right action).
However, I do think that being intoxicated by alcohol or having a drowsy mental state due to indulgence in the sensual pleasures or having an agitated mind due to lying would probably obstruct the meditation’s progression to jhanas while experiencing those mental hindrances. Refraining from those acts would thus be beneficial for the practice, and to some extent a necessity, but it depends on e.g. the degree of experienced agitation, drowsiness or intoxication, and on your own reflection regarding what has happened and why and what you can learn from it, and on the severity of the offence.
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I also wonder what Vens @Brahmali and @Sunyo think about this matter. Because for me it seems that you can enter Aj. Brahm’s jhanas without fulfilling either of the two mentioned conditions. But if it is so, then what Aj. Brahm teaches simply can’t be jhanas (at least right jhanas) and hence can’t lead to any meaningful liberation.
Why do you think so?
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Ajahn Brahm teaches the noble eightfold path, the eighth of which is jhana. He never says ethics has no role in jhana.
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You have to live a generally ethical life, but you can make occasional mistakes. Is this what you mean? At the time of entering a jhāna, however, your mind has to be completely pure and thus ethical.
And yes, you have to see the danger in sensual pleasures to enter jhāna. This is straight from the suttas:
Mendicants, without giving up these six qualities you can’t enter and remain in the first absorption. What six? Desire for sensual pleasures, ill will, dullness and drowsiness, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. And the drawbacks of sensual pleasures have not been truly seen clearly with right wisdom. Without giving up these six qualities you can’t enter and remain in the first absorption. (AN 6.73)
I have never heard Ajahn Brahm denying this.
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I don’t know how to ‘drive’ the site properly so I’m not sure how to link the pages in, ( sry) but I was sure I recalled seeing something about Sarakāni that might help with your question.
He might have gotten to stream entry some other way than jhanas specifically …. I don’t know the full story, But it seems he drank alcohol anyway which is against the precepts.
SN 55.24
Edit: thank you mod for adding the link. I also decided to tone my wording which may not have been quite correct to the situation. 
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Hi! I don’t really have anything to add to what has already been said.
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As for the precepts it is highly unlikely one will get deep meditation without keeping the precepts as strictly as possible. As far as meditation practice there is a mechanical and functional reason for this as Ajahn Brahm states in the quote below which is from the first talk of the 1998 Vassa Way of Samatha.
“If a person is having difficulty with the higher practices such as samadhi, such as the gaining of deep meditative peacefulness (jhana) then one of the first places they should pay attention is on their practice of sila (precepts). Because if you cannot let go of the coarser defilements of the mind which manifest as things like bad speech, lying, harsh speech, misuse of the senses in sexuality, lying, stealing, taking alcohol or drugs which manifest in the breaking of the precepts of a novice, nun or a monk. If one cannot overcome those coarse defilements which cause the breaking of precepts then you’ll have very little chance of overcoming those very refined defilements which obstructs the mind from the deep meditations and which obstructs the mind from wisdom.”
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I believe that when you maintain virtue and a pure heart free from hindrance, jhana naturally becomes a way of life for you.
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