https://www.sanparks.org/gallery/var/resizes/sightings/addo_ps/Jackal%20SA_0904_0606_S2.JPG
In the Great Jhana Wars, one of the battlefronts is the question of what exactly happens after jhana. Crudely put, the “weak jhana” advocates say that one does insight while still inside the jhana, while the “strong jhana” advocates say that one withdraws from jhana before doing insight.
Now, I don’t want to discuss all the issues here, but I do want to draw attention to one little sutta that, I believe, has some bearing on the question, but is little noticed. The text is SN 35.240. It gives a nice simile of a tortoise and a jackal. Let me share my translation of the relevant portions here.
Once upon a time, mendicants, a tortoise was grazing along the bank of a river in the afternoon. At the same time, a jackal was also hunting along the river bank. The tortoise saw the jackal off in the distance hunting, so it drew its limbs and neck inside its shell, and kept still and silent.
But the jackal also saw the tortoise off in the distance grazing. So it went up to the tortoise and waiting nearby, thinking: ‘When that tortoise sticks one or other of its limbs or neck out from its shell, I’ll grab it right there, rip it out, and eat it!’
But when that tortoise didn’t extend one or other of its limbs or neck from its shell, the jackal got bored and left, since it couldn’t find a way in.
In the same way, Māra the Wicked One is always waiting nearby, thinking: ‘Hopefully I can find a way in through the ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind.’
The crucial point is the two words that describe the tortoise “drawing in” his limbs (samodahati) and “sticking them out” (abhininnāmeti). Samodahati is from the same root as samādhi, and the similarity between the tortoise and a meditator in samadhi should be obvious.
But abhininnāmeti is even more interesting. It’s a rare use of this term, although not unique. A similar usage is found in SN 4.24, where it’s applied to a crab that extends its limbs, to similarly disastrous results: a cruel gang of kids break them off. Normally, however, the term is used to describe what a meditator does after fourth jhana:
When their mind is unified in samādhi like this—purified, bright, spotless, rid of taints, pliable, workable, steady, and attained to stillness—they turn it toward recollection of past lives.
The root of abhininnameti is namati, to bend or turn, hence the usual translation. However, if the tortoise simile is a good example of the colloquial meaning, perhaps we should be saying a meditator “extends” or “projects” their mind rather than “turns” it. It would make far more sense in the context of samadhi.
Like a tortoise, a meditator keeps their mind withdrawn—the five limbs (including the neck) of the tortoise are explicitly compared to the five senses—and when ready they “project” their mind back out to investigate higher understandings.
What stops this example from being conclusive is that the application of the metaphor doesn’t use the context of samadhi. Rather, it uses sense restraint. Still, the idea is similar.
Note: I subsequently looked closer into nibbidā, and concluded some of the things I said here were wrong. But I leave it so that the following discussion makes sense.
Incidentally, the passage nicely illustrates another technical term, too. The jackal gets bored, nibbijja, related to the very common doctrinal term nibbidā. While nibbidā is usually translated as "disenchantment* or “disillusionment”, it sometimes has a stronger sense and is rendered as “repulsion”. However, this context—and it is not alone—shows that, while it sometimes has the strong sense of “repulsion”, it can also be used in a milder sense of “gets bored with” or “gets tired of”.
We find a similar sense in the related passages at SN 4.24 and SN 4.25, where Māra, failing to find a weak spot in the Buddha, speaks nibbejanīyā gāthāyo, “verses of disillusionment”. Here it refers to the sadness of failure, giving up the fight.
Perhaps, indeed, we should be using these terms rather than “disenchantment” or “disillusionment”. Nibbidā is specifically about the emotional push away from something, not about “seeing through illusions”. We could maybe use “disinterest”, or perhaps better “being fed up”. (Actually, the best translation would be ennui, but it’s just too French!)
