Someone just asked me about this sutta, I replied and have now looked around to see if there’ more conversation about it. I’ll now put my reply here, as I find this interesting and am interested if you guys think my sense is in the right direction:
I’m not familiar with this sutta but I gave it a go. It talked about ‘effacement’, which is an English word I’m not familiar with. The dictionary doesn’t help me much - for ‘efface’ it says:
- erase (a mark) from a surface
- make oneself appear insignificant or inconspicuous
Not obvious to me how the sentences make sense with either of those meanings. But the PED gives this for the Pāli, ‘sallekha’:
- austere penance, the higher life
Since I am not familiar with the usage of this term in the canon, my view is only speculative. But I find myself sondering if he is referring to the kind of practices non-Buddhists were doing in India. I’ve spent time in the forests and countryside of India with spiritual practitioners who have not spoken in many years, or help their hand in the air for years - there are others who will never sit, and so on. They believe that will get them closer to god, or get to moksha or whatever. I wonder if that is the type of ‘austere penance’ that sallekha is referring to here.
If so, it would appear that first, the Buddha is saying no, don’t misunderstand, jhāna is not some kind of penance, by which you get a reward because of doing something really hard (training for ages in concentration, sitting totally still for hours every day etc.).
But no, that is not why jhāna practice works. It’s a totaly different principle than the idea of getting benefit merely because somethign is hard to do, such as holding your hand in the air for years etc.
So he’s saying no, that’s not sallekha.
But then (if my interpretation of sallekha is correct), he redefines sallekha! He did this with many words. So if that’s what’s happening here, he’s basically saying no, if you really want to endure difficult things, then the real sallekha is to extinguish your cruelness, by not killing, not stealing etc.
So whereas the non-Buddhist sallekha may be based around ritual, the power of specific actions, he’s ethicising it. He’s making the tasks directly related to ethical behaviour. Holding your hand in the air, or never sitting down etc., these are all difficult, but in the Buddha’s view I think those would be seen as useless. This austerity the Buddha is proposing is also difficult, but it’s totally based on inter-relation - how our actions affect others. And this morality is the necessary foundation for concentration training also, as it happens.
And please note that he concludes the sutta by instructing to pracrice jhāna:
Here are these roots of trees, and here are these empty huts. Practice absorption, Cunda! Don’t be negligent! Don’t regret it later! This is my instruction.”
Etāni,
cunda, rukkhamūlāni, etāni suññāgārāni, jhāyatha, cunda, mā pamādattha, mā pacchāvippaṭisārino ahuvattha—ayaṃ kho amhākaṃ anusāsanī”ti.
Bare in mind that that’s the first time I’ve read that last sutta you asked me about, so my interpretation might not be correct. That’s what comes off the top of my head when I read it though.
And if I’m on the right track, then I might prefer to translate sallekha as ‘austere penance’ as the PED has, rather than the rather obscure word ‘effacement’ which even as a native English speaker gave me no suitable understanding of the word even with the dictionary, and evidently has given others here some trouble too.