SuttaCentral
I think you should think more in terms of paricita samadhi. It is true that in retreat environments a few percentage of people, fluke deep meditative states[actually there is no such thing as a fluke it’s always yathapaccayena(in accordance with causes)]. But have not much understanding, what happened? How it happened?
But someone who has mastery of samadhi/mastery of mind, has no confusions about how to enter samadhi. They enter at will.
Yes, basically most of the content from the Hillside Hermitage approach has being earth shattering to me. Beware though, it takes some time to really understand what they are pointing at but once you start to get it, it really changes your worldview on what is supposed to be “practice” and what the suttas are about.
I think that succes in meditation (and probably also practice) relies most upon a mind that is not yet that much concerned with achieving this and that. It is not yet that goal-oriented.
But gradually mind becomes more and more goal-oriented, directed.
There is something pure and unburdened and great to a mind that is not goal-oriented or directed. A mind not on a Path, not busy to achieve this and that. Not being strategical, not acting like a businessman who see all she does as investment for later. A mind without possessing, also no wisdom, love, or compassion. L
In buddhism there is also room for those who feel it this way. Who cannot be that kind of practioner who is always strategical, diplomatic, thoughtful, retraint, a businessman in all he thinks, says and does.
The EBT teachings describe a practice and life of control, restraint, always being strategical, a diplomate, controlled, never spontaneous, but i do not see this as essential Dhamma.
Essential Dhamma, for me, is about purity, being without business mentallity, a heart that is fully opened.
I also feel that many people are of themselves restraint, often to much, and it is not wholesome at all for them to become even more retraint. They will only explode.
That is also my experience. Many suttas contain linearized summaries. However, actual practice, with guidance and support from teachers and community, is much more complicated.
The aim of practice Dhamma is to free oneself from suffering, which is created by not properly working mind. So while is true that concentrated mind sees things as they are, there are many practices, not directly related to samadhi, which nevertheless are very helpful and supportive in the attempts to make mind concentrated.
In the end of eighties in previous century, I went as friend to certain group of prisoners who practiced meditation, and one of them told me, that he likes the practice since it makes his mind more peaceful.
So if you have no any higher ambitions, you can practice meditation for such reasons, but in order to succeed in Dhamma and make a serious progress, it is good to be familiar with Suttas, and try to practice according them.
Of course, many things depend on individual predispositions, and there may be some individuals with unusual skills who can concentrate mind very easily, but even them must protect sensory organs from unsuitable objects which makes mind distracted.
Well, I will suggest: 1. Seek nothing, just sit, mindfully breathe in and out; and 2. Be acting with awareness at the present moment.
Thanks for posting the link to this video. Incredible how comfortable the junior monks are sitting in silence contemplating what is being said with no compulsion to fill the silence! Will be looking at other videos from these teachers now 
You may have all the answers you need from that Hillside Dhamma video (they are great, have watched several already :)), but Ill add my 2c worth anyway:
The Buddha’s teaching is for the permanent elimination of all suffering, not “success in meditation”. So, if you are permanently free from suffering, good on you and half your luck, Im not. However, Im guessing you are not as someone who was enlightened certainly would not question the value of sila
Meditation is not the goal and meditative tranquility is not the goal. Meditation is the raft* to get you to the goal, along with the other 2 sections of the 8-fold-instruction-manual (sila and panna).
*As you may know, the Buddha described his teaching as a raft to get you to where you want to go, after which you can set it aside, you dont need to worship it or build a massive stupa for it, just leave it by a tree and walk on…
Re your list:
You don’t need to be a celibate Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni to achieve enlightenment…but if you are full time fully dedicated to a goal you are probably more likely to get there than the average schmuck.
I might be wrong but I don’t see the Buddha teaching good vs. evil in the way other teachers and religions teach such things. Even the precepts are not commandments but worded as “I undertake the training rule to avoid x”. As the Hillside teacher suggested, its whether the source of your volitional action is rooted in greed hatred or delusion (or not) that matters, not actually what the action itself is…that makes more sense to me. In other words, it is not that having sex is “evil”, rather, it is that a life of celibacy is more conducive to achieving enlightenment (for laypeople as well as Bhikkhus/Bhikkhunis).
From my own experience, my meditation is much better when my sila is strong, and much better when I eat in moderation (I often skip dinner) and much better when I follow all the advice of the Buddha….he is absolutely right in my personal experience, its not just believing the text blindly…but I DON’T always follow it, it can be hard as a layperson in my defence but I don’t pretend otherwise, I do break a precept here and there (a glass of wine occasionally etc).
Wow … bravo, means we have a lot of Ariya nowaday. Maybe, The Buddha, somehow, made a wrong prediction that his teaching will disappear in future.
Another Hillside talk specifically on celibacy
Hi,
I am not the one who have the authority to speak & teach Dhamma but I have to remind you (maybe right & wrong, it’s up to you) that there are extra-fine defilements or nano-defilements that all the meditators have to extra cautiously avoid or else they shall easily enlightened.
There maybe a lot successful meditators even some of them claim to be enlightened. But, I only remember that The Buddha said
So be careful yourself, check every things with The Sutta first before you take it as Dhamma.
Nice that you take care to remind us, that enlightened ones are rare. The point is that these who have potential to understand Dhamma, also are rare, since as Schopenhauer said:
The great misfortune for intellectual merit is that it has to wait until the good is praised by those who produce only the bad; indeed, the misfortune already lies in the general fact that it has to receive its crown from the hands of human judgement, a quality of which most people possess about as much as a castrate possesses of the power to beget children.
Power of discrimination, esprit de discernement, and consequently judgement: that is what is lacking. They do not know how to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, the wheat from the chaff, gold from tin, and they do not perceive the great distance which separates the commonplace herd from the very rarest.
So either one has the capacity to make a proper value judgement or not, and if not, no amount of checking, verification and comparison with Suttas will help.
Celibacy is not required for lay people.
As well, there are Buddhist monks who marry. Japan has lots of married Buddhist monks. As well the Japanese are always complaining that the monks’ behaviours have gotten out of hand, particularly with the smoking. Many temples practically run as commercial businesses. Zen monks here, in NA, as well are often married.
As far as the aim is nibbana, celibacy is required for everyone. If not celibacy than at least the right view in this particular aspect of Dhamma, namely: no nibbana for one subjected to sensual desire.
So gradation is as follows:
I think you are confusing forums. 
As far as Dhamma goes “married monk” is oxymoron. No one in his senses would talk about non-alcoholic vodka. No such thing exist, either it is vodka and so it has alcohol, or it doesn’t contain any alcohol therefore it isn’t vodka.
Sorry for such gross simile, but I hope it may help you to see what the term bhikkhu means in Pali texts.
With metta
I responded to the question from @Darayavaush - is celibacy required. And the answer I gave is no, not for lay people. He also asked about whether certain things were cultural. I responded to that as well. And the answer I gave is yes. Japanese monks marry and so do some Zen monks in NA. These are just a couple of examples of cultural difference in relation to what he asked. There are others.
One key distinction here is that in Japan, most forms of Buddhism do not use the Vinaya. So they are not technically bhiksus. In English, they are sometimes termed priests rather than monks.
This is different from Buddhism in China, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan, which use the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya.
Well this is quite false. Buddhism was instituted politically as one of the three pillars, along with Confucianism and Shinto when Japan began forming as a nation. The Emperor and then Bakufu had quite some control over the institution and precept violations were criminalized, some I think even punishable by death. It is a cultural development in Japan, in the same way that warrior monks and charismatic leaders of new sects is. It can also be a hereditary thing, with sons taking over temple management from their fathers.
Oh, and another thing they do there is garden. Of course Japan has all these UNESCO heritage sites because of Buddhism, including some of their famous temple gardens. That is not what I am talking about. The monks themselves garden as part of their practice. It is a very elegant thing and I have been to places where they were producing hybrids through grafting as far back as the 1400s.
Various Buddhist sects in Japan are closely affiliated with Imperial Universities, the best known being Kyoto, and many monks are highly educated, professors even.
Starting with Saicho, over 1000 years, Japanese Buddhist priests began to be ordained only according to bodhisattva precepts from the Mahayana Brahmajala Sutra, and not from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya. It is a simple fact that Japanese Buddhism overwhelmingly does not follow the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya.
However, even beyond that difference, Japanese Buddhist priests often do not really follow the precepts of the Mahayana Brahmajala Sutra either, because those precepts also require celibacy.
In other countries that follow Mahayana Buddhism, bodhisattva precepts may be taken in addition to the precepts of the traditional Vinaya.
It is quite beyond me as to what you are arguing. You were given the information that government control over Buddhism in Japan has had an effect over what happened there.
That’s too vague, and you seem to be referring to the Meiji Restoration and other events that are relatively modern. People here should be aware that the trend of Japanese Buddhism abandoning the Vinaya began over 1000 years ago. The traditional Vinaya is no longer a normal part of Japanese Buddhism.